Affiliate Marketing 101
In this training, we’re going to talk about Affiliate Marketing. This is called Affiliate Marketing 101 because it’s the absolute basic that you have to know before promoting a product. A lot of people get caught in the conundrum of whether they should create their own product or if they should promote somebody else’s products first in order to make money quicker. Well, we’re going to be demystifying that stuff in this training, but, right now, I just want to make sure that you understand what affiliate marketing really is especially in the internet marketing space. In the community of digital information products that we sell. I want to make sure that you understand exactly how everything works before you embark into selecting and promoting a product especially before you promote a product launch.
You’re going to need a systemic approach. You need a system. You need a process to follow. Look, there’s a lot of money to be made by promoting other people’s products but we have to understand how it works. You actually have to create a plan that’s going to maximize the time of your promotion. You see, you’re usually just going to promote a product during the week that it’s launching. Some products promote (you know) -- some products launch for one week, some for ten days, some for two weeks (you know) but, the idea is to concentrate your promotion efforts where you’re just going to send a whole bunch of visitors to that offer using your affiliate link and in order to maximize how many people you can get to click in that short amount of time, during that one week, you have make sure that you have a plan, that you have a system, that you have a process. We’re talking about some Dos and Don’ts. I want to make sure that you understand how it works here.
First of all, how does it work and how do you get paid?
You may know some of the stuff already but I want to make sure that I clear it off the board here, so that you know exactly what we’re talking about. First of all, we have affiliate platforms. These are companies that actually have websites which hosts offers. They actually show you -- they don’t particularly -- they don’t actually host the product itself but, someone can list their products on these platforms. I’m not talking about platforms like JVZoo, for example.
JVZoo is an affiliate platform and a marketplace that actually serves multiple purposes. You also have other platforms, JVZoo is one of the best actually in our particular space, but there are others. There’s Clickbank, there’s Deal Guardian, there’s (what else you got)--you got Commission Junction, you’ve got a whole bunch of them. JVZOo and these other places serve as a marketplace where vendors can go and list their products so that affiliates can go and see what they want to promote. And when I say “they can go and see it”, they can actually see metrics. They can see performance history, they can see all kinds of information about the product listed in this marketplace.
Now, another thing that these platforms do is, they actually facilitate the commission process for every single transaction and they provide a place for you to select these products. Here’s what I mean about by “actual facilitating of the transaction” - that’s just fancy wording, don’t freak out about it. Look, at the end of the day, if you want to promote my product but you don’t know me, you can go to JVZoo and you can find my products inside of that marketplace. You can then click on any one of those products and you can see the performances. You can see how many sales I’ve made of that product. You can see what the conversion rate is, meaning how many visitors actually converted into buyers. You can see what the earnings per click are.
You can see all the information that pertains to that product so you can decide whether or not you want to promote it. You can also apply to become an affiliate. Some vendors have rules that they want you to follow. Basically, the platform is a website, it is a company that both you (as the affiliate) and me (as the vendor) have an account. That platform provides you with a unique link that will sell my product and then they will keep track of how many clicks your link got and how many of the sales from my product should be credited to you. As we’re talking a little bit about the links and stuff, let’s talk about that. You’re connected with the vendor through this unique “affiliate link” and what happens is the platform records every single click that happens. You can login to JVZoo and you can see in your account how many clicks you sent to an offer. You can also see how many sales you made for that offer. Not just you but every single affiliate that’s promoting that offer or that product. They have their own unique link, it’s like a fingerprint.
No two people have the same exact link and that’s how they can differentiate. So usually, an affiliate link, is the URL of the product with some kind of a like a suffix at the end of it. It’s usually a big ugly link to be honest with you. So what happens is, when I list my product on JVZoo - JVZoo creates it own product number. When you join to promote that product then it adds your vendor ID to my product number. Your JVZoo link is going to be something like - jvzoo.com/productnumber/vendornumber. Again, that’s not the actual structure, that’s just me pulling that out of the hat. Just to give you an idea of how an affiliate link is created. Now that you have that unique string on the link, now every time that someone clicks on it, JVZoo keeps track of who clicked, did they buy, did they not buy, who gets credit for this click and you can go in and see all your metrics and so can the vendor. Affiliate links are often cloaked - I’m going to talk a little about this because it is important. There’s a couple of different reasons -- a lot of people think “Ah well, cloaking is just so that you can mask that long and ugly ID”, you know because an affiliate ID is easy to detect by someone that’s in the business. You see that link and you go “Okay, so this guy’s an affiliate for the product, he actually made me click here and he’s going to earn a commission if I buy from here”. Sometimes people will actually go and try to clear their cookies and go without going through your link, so sometimes we cloak the link just so people don’t know that they’re clicking on an affiliate link. But, in our space, to be honest with you, that’s not the biggest reason.
The biggest reason and the most important reason is so that you can actually control the traffic flow after you’ve deployed your link. Here’s what I mean by that. Let’s say I wanted to promote your product and I went to JVZoo because I know that’s where you listed it and I want to promote it so I go and I find your product in the marketplace, I click to apply to promote it and now you approve me as an affiliate. I get my links from JVZoo to promote your product then I go and I type up an email to my subscribers telling them about your products with my affiliate link for that product in hopes that they’ll click on that link, go to your website - by way of JVZoo, purchase the product and then JVZoo will track that and I will get my commission which is whatever percentage you as the vendor are offering. That’s how affiliate marketing works.
Here’s the thing, if I cloak the link, what that means is that I am embedding my affiliate link for your product within a domain of my own. This is done by redirecting so I can create a link like, omarmartin.com/recommends and then the name of your product. I create my own link and I’ve put my affiliate link inside of a folder that will now point to your website. I know this sounds confusing, it really isn’t. You can actually get real simple plugins like pretty links that do this for you. Here’s the cool thing about it, let’s say that I am promoting a product and your launch ends, you’ve gotta create a bunch of articles and I’ve literally saturated the internet with hundreds of links back to your product but then, a week from now, your product launch ends and you take your product down.
Now, I’ve got all the links out there in the internet that are pointing a dead website. A website that no longer exists. If I cloaked it, I have control of that link because that link is sitting within a folder at my site so now, I can go and put a different link inside of that folder at my site. So all of these articles and blog posts and affiliate marketing tactics that you’ve saturated the internet with that you can’t go and collect back (and take back), they’re still useful. They’re just pointing now to a different place. So again, that’s usually why people cloak your links. It’s an important part of creating your campaign and cloaking your links. Let’s talk about cookies. Cookies are this little tidbits of information that your web browser saves on your computer about the things that you clicked on and the places that you visit.
Every computer, every web browser stores cookies on your computers.
What’s important to remember about cookies and about affiliate marketplace is that it works on the last cookie system. Meaning, that cookies are overwritten, coz you might say to me “Omar, what if I get two emails from two different marketers at two different times? First time I clicked on yours then the next day I clicked on John Thornhill’s bonus to see what he was offering.
Well, the last cookie wins and that’s the way that it should be. Whenever someone clicks on a link that takes them to a sales--it overwrites the last affiliate. So you always want to be the last person to send someone to a website just before they buy. And what I do with my subscribers is I tell them in the email or I tell them on the bonus page “Hey, before you make your purchase, before you click on this link be sure to clear your cookies. Because that’s the only way that I’m going to get credit for your purchase. If you don’t clear your cookies and you make this purchase, it’s possible that someone else could be credited for this sale and I won’t be able to award you my bonus.” Your affiliate link is going to set a cookie on the visitor’s computer and that’s how JVZoo can track who sent this visitor.
JVZoo uses a system for paying people. It’s called adaptive payment. They actually are the leading company, affiliate platform that does this. They’ve been doing this since the day they’ve opened and they’re very very good at it. Adaptive payments is the way that PayPal pays both the vendor and the affiliate at the point of sale. So this eliminates the need to wait for an affiliate payment. This really really is enticing to affiliates because what happens now is I don’t have to wait 30 days or 60 days for the vendor to pay me. I get paid right away. So if I sent you a sale today, I get my commission today. I get it right at the point of the sale I mean there’s just seconds or minutes before I get paid.
It’s a very good way to get affiliates onboard when you say “Hey, I’m using JVZOo which means you’re going to get paid instantly. You don’t have to wait 30 days. You don’t have to wait to get a check like you do with ClickBank or some of these other ones. And I like it because not only do you get affiliates right away but if you ever decide to be the vendor it also helps you get affiliates onboard. It helps you to get people to promote for you because you don’t have--you can boast about getting instant payment and letting them know “Hey, you sent the traffic today, you get paid today.” And that’s a very appealing thing to someone that’s investing time and money in sending you traffic.
So, adaptive payments allows the vendor and the affiliate to both get paid at the same exact time. So when that money is collected, what happens is the customer - let’s say the customer is paying $10 and it’s a 50% commission. The customer pays $10 on a JVZoo checkout page, now JVZoo takes their fee so let’s say it’s a dollar, now there’s $9 to be split and it gets split right then and there. JVZoo gets their dollar, the vendor gets $4.50, the affiliate gets $4.50. So that payment is literally split through right at the point of the sale. That’s called adaptive payments and it’s awesome.
The other cool thing about adaptive payments is that if in the future that customers asks for a refund, what happens is the money gets automatically taken out evenly from all three parties as well. You don’t have to worry about a lot of things as a vendor. I love the fact that you don’t have to worry about paying affiliates all the time. You don’t have to worry about the whole holding back money in case there’s - because what happens is that when you’re a vendor and you’re paying out affiliate commission, you tend to hold a percentage in case that there’s a lot of refunds, right. You tend to try to protect yourself.
So, I’ll hold 10 or 20% of the commission that somebody’s due in case I get a whole bunch of refunds later on so I don’t get caught holding it back in case an affiliate sends a crappy traffic, or pulled any kind of scams or something like that. I withheld some money. Well, you don’t have to do that now with adaptive payments because the money’s going to automatically be pulled-out from each account if the person ever requests a refund. That’s a very very powerful thing, that’s adaptive payment.
So this is how it works and this is how you get paid. You need to understand the whole marketplace system. You can go and select a product, you have to apply to be an affiliate, you get your affiliate link, you cloak your affiliate link, when you mail that link to someone they click on it and it sets a cookie on the computer and JVZoo uses adaptive payments that recognizes the cookie when somebody makes the purchase and it uses the adaptive payments to pay out all the parties involved. A very simple method of actually promoting product and making money.
Let’s talk about what products you should be promoting.
We can probably spend an entire day talking about what’s good, what isn’t good. Let’s cover the basic here. First and foremost, product launches happen so often nowadays, I mean it’s really hard to actually support all your friends and mail for everyone that needs you to mail for them. Because product launches are happening all the time. I mean multiple launches a day and you should take the opportunity to capitalize on product launches and that really is powerful because there’s a lot of energy, there’s a lot of urgency that comes with product launch because there’s a special price and during that week that the product is launching, I guarantee you that that product vendor is running a Facebook ads and doing retargeting to try to maximize your sales. They’re doing all kinds of things offering bonuses, offering contests and things, so you can capitalize on that.
The other thing is there’s an urgency that’s usually during the product launch, the product vendor has a countdown timer on the sales page that’s counting to a certain time where the special price ends and this creates an urgency to make your traffic want to buy right away. Instead of contemplating “Ah, I don’t have to buy this right now maybe I’ll do it next week”. You should capitalize on the energy and urgency that comes with a product launch. So product launches are a really good thing to promote, as long as you have a plan and you execute it properly.
Here’s some things to keep in mind.
When you’re deciding whether or not that you’re going to promote something, you should probably choose a vendor that’s going to reciprocate and that’s usually a good thing to get into if you’re a product creator yourself, which, most of us are. If you’re watching this video right now, you’re probably a product creator yourself. I like to mail for products and support products from vendors that will do the same for me. Here’s why. I can go and select from any number of strangers that I don’t know that won’t promote for me in return, there’s hundreds and thousands of products listed in the marketplace out there that I can promote for any given day but, if I’m going to promote something for someone that I know in particular, I would like for them to be able to promote for me in return.
So, instead of taking a chance on some stranger, I would promote for someone that says “Hey, would you mail for me and I’ll mail for you in return.” You might want to select a product from a vendor that will reciprocate. How do you find vendors that will reciprocate? Well, look for competitors in your niche. The whole brick and mortar mentality of what a competitor is does not apply in the online world. Your competitor is/are your biggest allies. There’s a worldwide marketplace. You can fuse traffic, you can do ad swaps, you can promote for him if he promotes for you. So the first thing that you should do is do some searches inside the marketplaces not just JVZoo but also Clickbank, Deal Guardian and every other place that you can think of and put in the niche in the search bar and see what other products come-up then go to that website.
Find out who owns that website, go in and send them an email and say “Hey, I’d like to promote your product on my site. Can you promote mine on your site?” This way, you can actually promote products that are not only going to make you money as an affiliate marketer but they’re also going to make money as a vendor yourself because the guy that owns that product is going to promote for you as well. So that’s the kind of thing that I like to consider when selecting a product as well.
Now, the affiliate marketplace itself -- the affiliate network marketplace is a great way to find products because like I just said, you can do a search by the niche and you can see the recent performance history. In JVZoo you can see what the EPC is per product, you can see how many sales have been made, it doesn’t give you the exact number, let’s say it’s more than 10, more than 50, more than a 100 or more than 500. You can see in this increments and you can see if something is selling. You can see all kind of statistics on how that product has been doing. So if you know that if something’s been on the marketplace for two years and there’s only been ten copies sold you’re like “Oh boy! Not too much -- it’s not working.”
But, it’s not as how many have been sold but you can see how many clicks has been sent. What kind of conversion it is. We’re going to talk about EPC and conversion and stuff like that in the next slide. But, the thing that’s cool about the marketplace is you go in there, you can actually select products that are going to suit your particular audience so you can do a search by category, so you can go into the marketplace and say you’re into golf, you can type in the word “golf”, you can see a whole sports category and see how many golfing products there are. Then again, you can go now and communicate with that vendor, you can send them a message right within the marketplace itself.
There’s a lot of stuff that you can do just by going and browsing the marketplace. Good way to find products that you can promote. Now, I’m going to recommend that you pick products that are congruent. You’re going to want to pick products that actually appeal to your audience and I just made a reference to a golfing product. You’re not just going to pick a product that sells well, you’re going to pick a product that applies to your audience. If I have an audience of geeks, let’s say my list is comprised of computer repairmen and I don’t particularly have any subscribers that have demonstrated any interest in the past to golfing, then going and selecting a golfing product, just because it happens to be the product of the day that’s converting the best and making the most sales, that’s not going to do well for me, for my list. Because it’s not congruent.
It doesn’t have anything to do with my targeted audience.
Picking a product that is congruent with your audience and your traffic is of paramount importance. I mentioned earlier that yeah, it is important and it’s a good thing that you can go into the network, you can see statistics, you can see performances of a product but that should not be the sole thing that guides your decision on whether or not to promote. We treat the patient not the monitor.
Back in my old medical school days, if you saw a flatline on the monitor, the first thing you do is look at the patient. You don’t just grab the defibrillator thing, you gotta look at the patient. Because maybe the leads got disconnected (you know what I mean). You don’t want to shock somebody that doesn’t deserve to be shocked. You don’t shock it instantly anyway. But anyway, my point is, don’t promote just based on the numbers. Promote based on the numbers as well as the traffic that you can send. You want to send congruent traffic to an offer that will convert for them.
Consider the reputation of the vendor too. A lot of people make this mistake. They go and they promote for somebody that they don’t know, somebody that’s brand new in the marketplace, somebody that’s never launched a product or created a product before and go “Yeah okay, I’m going to support this guy, why not” and you go and you do that and you make a huge mistake. You promote somebody that ended-up not fulfilling, that did not give the product to people, that did not do any support. Basically pissed-off all the traffic that you sent there. Now you get stuck with the reputation and the guy that promote products that suck, that don’t work and lie (you know). You’ve gotta consider the reputation of the vendor. This is something that’s cool and you can do in the marketplace. You can check up on other products and things by that vendor. But you know what, I’d always just google the person. If somebody approaches me, “Hey Omar. I’d love for you to promote your product.” Okay, I’ll have a look.
First thing is I just take that guy’s name and I put in into google and learn a little bit about him. “Wow, there’s nothing in google about this person.” How could you be an internet marketer and there’s nothing on the search engines about you. Like you don’t come-up at all on page one, page two. You’re not there, something’s wrong. The next thing is I ask is “Do you do business under another name?” “Oh no no. We do business under my partner’s name.” Oh, okay. Let me get your partner’s name. So I google that guy then I find out like there’s twenty scam reports on this guy, there’s like a dozen complaints and stuff and I start to put together that “Huh, okay. So now maybe this might not be somebody that I am going to promoting for.
I don’t want to associate myself, my business, my brand with this kind thing. So again, selecting a product to promote it should be something that you put some time and some effort into. Use Google, use the network, use the actual marketplace for the affiliate network and check out what are the things they have, check out what the metrics are, check out what the statistics are. Check out what’s been going on with this product and this is when you’re actually promoting something that’s evergreen and even when somebody just approaches you.
I’m all about building JV relationships and building for people that want to promote for me as well but I have to know a little bit about the person. I’ve got a business to run and my business depends on my reputation and my brand. I’m not going to risk it just because some dude hit me up on Facebook, “Hey dude! Promote my thing!” No man, there’s a little more to it than that.
Let’s talk about those metrics.
Let’s talk about exactly what EPC means. First and foremost, EPC is the most important affiliate metric. EPC stands for Earnings Per Click and aside from the reputation of the product and reputation of the internet marketer which, obviously should be first and foremost; make sure that it’s congruent with your list, make sure it’s congruent with your brand and your ethics. Now when we’re looking at the numbers, when we’re looking at the math, when we’re looking at whether or not this is a worthwhile venture to promote. Earnings Per Click is the most important thing that you want to know -- and that is, How much money am I going to make for every person that I sent? Because generally speaking, as an affiliate marketer - as a marketer in general, you know how many clicks you can send. By past experience, you know over the course of a week, how many clicks you can send to an offer. You know by mailing your list, how many clicks you normally get by looking at your Aweber or your GetResponse whatever it is that you use. You can see the email I sent yesterday, it got 60 clicks or it got 600 clicks depending on what level you’re at. You can see.
So you’d know how many clicks you can send. And based on that, you can tell by the EPC that the network tells you and again, what the network is telling you isn’t always what the marketer’s telling you. The marketers might be giving you a perfect scenario sort of EPC that he got from a test or something like that. A very very small, focused group from friends and family that bought his product and that’s the metric he’s giving you. What you want to do is kinda look at the first few hours, if not the first 24 hours of statistics. Statistics after 2 or 3 days are usually the best coz you could see after there’s been thousand clicks, several hundred clicks sent to an offer. Now you have a big enough audience or big enough focus group to see what the earnings per clicks are. It’s not skewed by test purchases. When you’re looking at only 20 clicks and there’s 10 purchases, it’s skewed. A lot of that is test purchases.
A lot of that is hot traffic.
It’s important to know that there’s a number - we’re going to talk about that a little bit later. But, EPC is the total commission earned divided by the unique clicks that you sent to the offer. If I made $500 from an offer and I sent 500 clicks, I’m making $1 per click. Right because I sent $500 and I made $500. Now, that might be just four sales, maybe it $125 product.
If I make 4 sales of a $125 product, I’ve earned 500 bucks but I sent 500 clicks. Okay, so are you getting that? At the end of the day, my earnings per click is $1 however, the conversion of that page isn’t too good. Because I sent 500 clicks and out of 500, I only made 4 sales, so it’s a little less than 1% conversion. You see what I’m getting? 1% of the traffic, a little less than 1% of the traffic, bought the product and for everyone that bought, I ended up making $100 which works out to $1 per click. So, $1 for $500 for 500 clicks.
Now, you heard me refer to conversion. It’s the amount of people that convert from a visitor to a buyer. So if sent your sales page a thousand visitors and ten people bought, I'm converting at 10%. Does that make sense? No, it doesn't make sense. I'm converting at a fraction of 1%. If I send you a hundred visitor -- actually no, that is right. If I send you a thousand visitors and 10 people buy then I'm converting at %1. If I send you 100 visitors and one person buys, it's the same thing. Alright, now what will be different in that particular scenario is going to be my earnings. Let's say that I have a page that converts at one percent but the product only sells for $27, if I want to make the $500 that I made in the prior scenario, I'm going to send a lot more than just 500 clicks, right? So it really all comes down to the math.
However, it's important that you have a good mixture between the conversion - the amount of buyers that actually get converted from visitors into buyers and that's going to depend. It's going to depend a lot on the sales process. It's going to depend on the temperature of the traffic. What I mean by that is, sometimes you'll send somebody to a video sales letter. You'll send your traffic to a video sales letter and it will do much better than if you send them to just a long form sales letter which all just copy and it's just reading copy. Sometimes you'll send your traffic to a webinar and that converts even much better. So maybe that webinar converts at 30%. But that sales page only converted at 1%. Maybe that long form sales letter converted at 1% but the video sales letter converted at 3%.
So again, you want to pick the products that have the highest EPC and the highest conversion. Sometimes, these things balance out. But again, the highest EPC and the highest conversion - EPC being the most important. Whenever possible, refunds are also an important thing to look at and that is before you promote. Because, unfortunately, the EPC isn't a true earning if it gets -- a month from now or two weeks from now 50% of my people gets refund. In the example I made earlier, I send you 500 clicks and made $500. So my EPC was $1 per click at the point of sale. But now, two weeks after your launch, 50% of the buyers, refund. So now, I really - I had to give back 250 of those dollars. Now, I really only made $250 for that 500 people that I sent. Now, you really only converted at $0.50 per click, right? The EPC is only $0.50 per click, so a big difference.
This is why it's important to kinda understand the refund rate.
Refund rate is something that I ask before I promote. Usually, an experienced vendor will know his refund rate because he's tested the offer before he's promoting. Somebody who's never done this before and never launched they'll basically going to say "Well, I don't know." And I'm going to say "Why you don't know what our refund rate is?" "Because (like) I don't know." "Oh, so you're going to use me as a guinea pig? So you're going to test with me? You're going to find out how many people hate your product, with me? Using my list?" and they're like "Ah, ah.." and I then usually move on. Remember that EPCs only matter when you can keep the money that you earned. That's why it's so hard to really stand behind an EPC unless you follow it up with a refund rate. When Is ay to someone "Hey, look. Our product is converting at 3% or 4%, the earnings per click are $1.79 and we have a less than 2% refund rate." That person knows that "yeah, maybe my EPC is 1.79 but I have a 2% refund rate," A percentage of that, they're not going to be able to keep.
But I say that upfront as a vendor so that people know. And usually when somebody doesn't want to tell you what their refund rate is either they have no idea or it's really high. It's something that as an affiliate that you should consider asking. Now, vendors are often bragged about incredible conversions and EPCs. I mentioned this a minute ago immediately after their cart opens, meaning immediately after they go live and start selling (I'm talking minutes) they start saying "Oh my god, look at how high this is converting. This is like $79 per click and we're like converting at 57%" but, the reality is that, it's converting that high because the focus group that you're looking at to get that statistic is too small.
So maybe you've only had 20 or 30 clicks and 10 of them are your relatives and the other 10 are people that were testing for you or you yourself are testing. And maybe the other 10 were people that you told last night from your own list. So, it's all very hot traffic. Very warm traffic or test traffic. Because it's only been a few minutes since your product's been open for sale. So naturally, the people that have bought were the ones that were waiting. It's not a true testament to what a true affiliate traffic is going to convert at. It's not a true testament to what earnings per clicks are going to be at after 24 hours or within 48 hours or even a few hours. Once it's getting a significant number of hits, significant number of clicks, that's when you can actually see whether it's converting well and what a true EPC stands for. So just be wary of - remember, marketers, they market things.
So they're marketing you and trying to convince you to promote as an affiliate as well. Commission percentages. I never promote anything under 50% unless I know that it's a service. For example, if I am promoting a product or a service where I know the person that's rendering the service is actually going to have to invest their time, meaning it's not a digital product that they have zero expense in fulfilling. If I'm promoting a digital product which basically means they're selling a link. The product's already created and all of that vendor's doing is providing access. It's an automated process then I believe that I should get 50% of that sale. If it's not, if I'm not getting 50% of the sale then, I'm wondering why are you charging, why are you going to give me less than 50% where I can promote for anyone with hundreds and thousands of products that'll give me 50% or even more. As a matter of fact, I love promoting products with greater than 50% commission on the front end because that shows me that that is vendor that really wants to do business with me. He really wants me to promote his products.
Sometimes, like right now -- I am in the process of promoting a product that's 50% commissions, actually it's 100% commission across the entire funnel. So this vendor is very smart. He's actually using his entire product, the frontend and backend as a way to build his list. Because, when somebody buys from you, they join your list and he knows that by offering a 100% commission. Every affiliate on his mother, is going to jump on board and promote which means he's going to be able to build a huge list out of this. Then he's going to market to this list and he's going to promote other products to that list which affiliates
will not receive a commission from, which he'll get a 100% commission. So that's a very smart tactic and a very good way to build your list very very quickly. And it's enticing. I love promoting products that have greater than 50% commission.
Again, metrics and things that you look at that are important. Earnings per click by far the most important. The conversion rate also very very important. Usually the EPC and conversion rate go hand-in-hand. You want to find -- you want to stay away from ones that have a real high conversion and really low EPC and vice versa. EPC ultimately, is the way to go. If the conversion is low but the EPC is high, that again is going to be good. Now, also remember that you should keep a good eye on EPCs, not immediately after but rather a few hours to even 24 hours after. Don't just look at it when it happens the very - the few minutes after the launch. Keep an eye on refunds.
Refunds are important because even EPCs are only good as long as you can keep the money and keep an eye on your commission percentage. Pick products that give you 50% or more out of the total sale. Here's something that's very very important. This is going to be the last part of this whole Affiliate Marketing 101 part. You need to know the product and I don't mean know the metrics of the product and how it's performing and the performance history and how many buyers and how many refunds and all that. I mean the actual product itself.
As an affiliate, the best affiliates, the super affiliates, the best performing affiliates, the affiliates that win the sales contest all the times, are the ones that know the product. You should always ask the vendor for a review copy and actually check out the product before you promote it. You should make sure that everything that's supposed to be in the product is in the product. One of the things that always crack me up is when somebody approaches me and their launch is usually a few days away. And they always say, "Hey Omar, I've got this big launch coming up, things are awesome, everybody's going to love it. This thing's awesome it can make you so much money and I'm launching this monday." And I'm like "This monday? Like 3 days from now?" "Yeah man" Well, alright. "Can I see your sales page?" "Yeah man, I'm just wrapping it up right now" Okay. "Can I see the product?" "Yeah, yeah. I just gotta add a couple more links in there and I'm going to do a couple more video stuff. It's almost ready and I'm getting you the final copy tomorrow." "So that's it. You don't have a sales page yet. You don't have the product complete yet. You can't give me a review copy but your launch is on monday.
So really the only part of this launch that you've already completed is the JV page and you've already listed it in the marketplace. You've already got an affiliate link for me"?" Yeah, yeah. Don't worry, it's going to be awesome." Okay, so what's the conversion rate? "It's going to be high. "What's the EPC? "Well yeah, you know like a dollar" Ah, what's the refund rate? "Well, I've got no idea. "Why? "Because, I'm not ready yet. Okay, so you want me to promote something that doesn't exist? "No no, it exist man. I've got the domain and everything." So you can finish it all this weekend and I should risk my business on this solid product of yours. Why? You know again, you want to ask these questions because it's important.
You're not going to really run into a lot of these problems with established marketer, with somebody that you know, somebody that's been launching for a long time, somebody that has an established reputation. It's the newer guy. It's the newbie that's looking for the quick money who thinks that internet money falls from the sky. That he thinks he doesn't have to have all these ducks in a row. He doesn't care. He's looking for quick money. He's doesn't care if he pisses off every single person on your list and causes you to have a 50% unsubscribe rate. He doesn't care. He just wants you to promote because he needs the traffic because on his own he doesn't know how to drive traffic.
That's why he's approaching you. You should always ask the vendor for a review copy, open up the product, take a look at it. You know sometimes the content is great but the product just looks like crap. And it's going to make you look bad. It's a direct reflection on you. If it's broken, if there's images that are broken, if the links point to 404 error pages or the delivery process doesn't work right and it says "Click here to access the site" and you click that and it takes you to the wrong place. All these things are going to contribute to a poor experience for your customer, for the person that you're sending.
So when somebody asks me to promote, I look at these things and if I don't like it, I say, "Hey man, I would love to promote if it was a quality product but I can't even see if it's a quality product because it's not ready. And you know what, I clicked on this link and you know what happened? Absolutely nothing, it takes me to an error page. And actually, shame on you for asking me to put my--for wanting to put me in that position. Asking me to promote something that isn't ready. That's really a good way to build a relationship with someone. Because that's what they're doing. They're screwing you over. So again, make sure that the product is complete and ready for sale before you promote it. I'm very protective of my brand and you should be too.
Learn about the product so that you can also answer questions and create an informative marketing campaign. I like to create bonuses, I like to create my own custom emails and I like to do them in my own voice. My list is trained to respond to my style of writing, to my style of promotion. So, when I know a lot about the product that I am promoting, it makes it much easier for me to write copy that's going to convert, to write email subject lines that are going to get people to open, to write email body copy that's going to get people to click, to create videos that are going to engage people and make them want to buy the vendor's product. And I can't do that if I don't know deadly squad about the product.
You know why? Because people can sense when you're full of it. People can sense when you're being disingenuous about something that you're promoting. People can sense the sincerity in your voice. If you know what you're talking to or you're just baffling -- you can't bulshit a bulshiter. People can sense whether or not you're just baffling them with a bunch of bullcrap or whether or not you're giving them information about stuff that you truly know and believe in. And that's what's important. That's what you're going to gain from reviewing the product, from looking at the product, from understanding the process. You might be able to save a whole bunch of sales by letting people know what they're going to be facing.
So you might be able to say to somebody "Hey, this is an awesome, awesome product. You're about to watch a 12-minute video that might just change your life. At about minute number 6, I learned something myself that I didn't even know about. I bought the product and when I bought it, I realized that there was an amazing amazing offer at the backend. Some that truly compliments the initial purchase. You know what you're doing now, you're prefacing your audience so that they're not going to hit with any surprises. You're already hitting their apprehension head-on. It makes you a better affiliate the fact that you know the product. This is important, this is affiliate marketing 101. The affiliates that know the product usually outperform the ones that don't.
Subscribe to the JV blog and stay up to date with what's going on.
It's not just knowing about the product. Know about the promotion. Know about the launch. Look, there’s a lot of stuff going on during a product launch week and even before. You should know when there’s a spot contest going-on. Let’s say that there’s going to be an iPad giveaway going on today and it starts at 12 midnight. So anybody with the most sales between 12 midnight today and 12 in the afternoon tomorrow is going to win an iPad. But, I didn’t know about it, so I sent my email at 9PM instead of waiting for 12 midnight so that all my clicks and all my sales would count towards that contest.
So again, little things that you should stay up-to-date. If there’s a product launch going-on, there tends to be a JV blog that the vendor is keeping communication with all the JVs. If you’re not sure whether or not there’s a JV blog, you should ask the vendor, communicate with him and say “Hey, what kind of specials, what kind of launches, what kind of things you have going on, is there going to be a contest happening that I can take part in?” And the other thing is, things change during a product launch. Sometimes, maybe there’s a -- you know recently there was a big outage with a major email provider which was GetResponse and a lot of people that were doing a product launch that week, they decided to postpone their launches because they realized “Oh my goodness. If I hold this launch right now, more than 50% of my affiliates which use GetResponse, they’re not going to be able to mail. So, I’m going to really be shooting myself in the foot. So, I’m going to set my launch date back.”
If you were not subscribed to the JV list or that JV blog, you wouldn’t know that that launch isn’t happening and you would still send the email. It’s important that you keep up-to-date. Don’t just know about the product but know about the launch. Know what’s happening. You know sometimes mid-way through the launch there’s going to be a payment plan introduced and things like that. Know the launch details, know what’s happening and when it’s happening. You know mid-launch there’s usually a spike in sales and that spike is usually caused by something that the vendor does to trigger it or something that you do to trigger it. If you haven’t watched my video called “The Launch Sigma” you should. Because what happens is, in the middle of the launch, a vendor either adds some bonuses or they do introduce a payment plan.
Something that’s going to cause a spike in sales, ‘coz typically, there’s a huge spike in sales in the beginning of the launch and then things start to taper off. Then in the middle of the launch week, the vendor or even the affiliate can do something to stimulate some activity and actually add some bonuses or introduce a payment plan and now boom, there’s a spike in sales. Then it goes and trickles down until there’s that final spike which usually comes just before the countdown timer runs out. You would know what happening if you’re not in touch with what’s happening and you’re not staying up-to-date with the JV blog and the vendor. Know what’s going on. Know what you’re promoting. Know what’s happening the week of the launch. Know what’s happening after the launch too, that’s important - Is it going to be taken down, is the price increasing, is it doubling, is it going to be on a dime sale, is this going to be evergreen, are all my links are going to break the moment that this launch ends?
That’s really really important and once you know all these things, you’re going to be able to use this knowledge to craft compelling email copy ‘coz now you know when things end. You know what’s going to happen after the launch. So you can actually build impulse and you can actually create that fear of loss and impending doom feeling, “Hey,look at the end of this promotion when that countdown clock hits zero you may not know this, but the price is going to double. So you need to take action right now.” You can say things like that if you’re on the know. If you’re familiar. If you’ve communicated with the vendor. If you’ve gotten a review copy. If you’re subscribed to the JV blog. You can recreate a better blog posts. You can make better videos - videos are huge. When you know about a product, we’re going to talk about this in another training, but creating a review video or creating a case study or testimonial video about a product where you actually login to the member’s area, that’s a huge way to compel someone to buy because they’re literally seeing you using the product that you’re promoting. That’s an awesome way to do things.
In summary, everything becomes better in your promotion if you know the product. If you’re very good with everything that’s going on in the product. And if you’ve selected the product based on the metrics, based on the history, based on the integrity of the vendor and you’ve got a review copy, all you gotta do is ask. And you gotta remember there’s an abundant abundant amount of products out there that you can select from any number of networks. I love JVZoo. Those guys are great at JVZoo. They’ve got lots of products. They pay instantly, I love it. But, there’s a lot of networks out there. There’s launches going on all the time. There’s evergreen products out there as well. So many things, so many products that you can select from to actually go out to make money daily promoting them. And the most important thing that I want you to understand is that you should go out, you should do your research and fully understand the product and I should probably add here the process.
Understand the process.
A lot of product vendors do things differently. This launch may not be the same as the last product launch that you promoted. You know, some product vendors pay out prizes right away. Some product vendors want to wait for 30 days before they pay out prizes. And some product vendors do their launch a certain way where they introduce - they have a dime sale. So it’s not a fixed price, the price goes up with every purchase. Some product vendors close their launch completely and take the website down at the end of the launch week, some product vendors don’t. It’s important that you do your research and that you fully understand the product and the promotion. It’s important that you understand the process of how affiliate cookies are dropped and the fact that it’s the last cookie, it’s important that you know these things, that you cloak your link and you make sure that you tell your customers and your readers that they should clear their cookies before they click on your link in order for you to get credit for the sale. So that you can give them whatever bonus or incentive you’re promising them in exchange for that referral.
So again, before you embark on any promotion campaign, make sure you do your research, make sure that you fully understand the product and the process and this is how you’re going to have great success in affiliate marketing.
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