Have you considered an affiliate program as a way to earn more passive income? I want to encourage you to consider creating one, if you haven’t already. Why?
Affiliates are individuals who actively market and sell other people’s products and services. This can work very well if your business offers something online that does NOT require your direct involvement (such as a fully automated online course, an ebook, etc). It can be a product for sale, or your lead magnet that takes subscribers through your sales funnel.
So if you sell even one product, book, or service, you can use an affiliate program to help bring in more clients automatically.
The benefit of working with affiliates is that it is no longer only YOU marketing your products and services—you have others out there doing it for you. That’s the magic of leverage.
Let’s say you have a product that is $20 and you need to sell 100 a month to reach your goal of $2,000, you can dedicate to selling all 100 yourself. However, if you had 10 affiliates that could promote your product for you, and they each sell 10 of your products a month, you would reach your goal without having to sell anything yourself!
Instead, you could spend your time working on creating new products/services and doing what you love instead of spending your time selling. Or, you can be out there selling too, in which case you sell 100, they sell 100 and you make $4,000 instead of $2,000. This is the magic of leveraging other people.
You can establish an affiliate system through your own website or through an official affiliate site.
1) Affiliate Program through Your Website: Many website platforms (places where you build a website), such as WordPress, have affiliate programming built in. They key to offering an affiliate program through your website is the ability for affiliates to have a unique link that tracks the people that they are sending to your site. The URL that they use keeps track of all the traffic and sales that the affiliate makes via your website or platform. This information is then available for you to see, and usually the affiliate can log-in to see it as well.
2) Alternative Method for Affiliates or Referrals to Your Website: If your website does not have the ability to set up affiliate accounts, you may be able to use coupon codes instead of affiliate links. You would need to have the ability to create discount or coupon codes through the payment processor for your website.
The good news is that even simple payment systems, such as the user-friendly website creation company Wix.com gives you the ability to create coupon codes. You can also use an affiliate plugin for a WordPress site, such as WP-Affiliate.
3) Through Affiliate Sites: There are websites specifically designed for affiliate programs. Many affiliates are already members of the site, and by adding your product to the site it becomes available for affiliates to choose to sell. ClickBank, CommissionJunction (now CJ Affiliate), Impact, and JVZoo are popular examples.
4) Coupon Codes: Here’s how you would use coupon codes instead of an affiliate program.
- For each affiliate or person referring to their site, create a coupon code they can use that offers whoever they refer a discount, such as 20% off.
- Then, each time you receive a purchase, you’ll be able to see which coupon code was used, and therefore you can track which affiliate referred the customer.
- Then, track sales and pay the person the commission. It’s not automated and easy like an affiliate program, but it’s a simple work-around.
If you want to create your own affiliate program, you’ll want to put some thought and planning into your affiliate promotions, so that you can provide your audience with relevant resources they need and want, and so that you can grow your passive income as well. I have a planner that can help you do this and it will save you time and money.
So, if affiliate marketing is overwhelming you, get the affiliate marketing planner and implement it.
Get the planner here: https://iaplifecoaches.org/the-affiliate-marketing-planner
(If you were a IAPLC Gold Member in 2021, you already have this planner)
