Ep#74 Elevate Your Influence: Mastering Affiliate Marketing Essentials

Join Kristen Werner and Mia Steel as they unlock the lucrative potential of affiliate marketing in this eye-opening episode. Learn how you can earn significant commissions by simply sharing products you love with Australia's pioneering User-Generated Content (UGC) affiliate program, offering an unprecedented 40% commission rate.

Key Highlights of This Episode:

• Understanding Affiliate Marketing: Dive into the basics of affiliate marketing and how it serves as a modern word-of-mouth advertising tool.
• Generous Commissions: Discover the potential financial benefits with a 40% commission structure, a game-changer for creators looking to monetize their influence.
• Building Trust and Credibility: Learn about the importance of authenticity and ethical practices in affiliate marketing to maintain trust and credibility with your audience.

Kristen and Mia discuss their journey in launching this unique affiliate program, emphasizing the critical role of genuine endorsements. They'll cover everything from generating unique affiliate links to understanding the technical side of tracking sales through cookies.

By the end of this episode, you'll understand why sincerity is vital in affiliate marketing and how inauthentic endorsements can negatively impact your reputation. Don't miss out on more episodes packed with strategies and insights designed to help you thrive in digital marketing.

Tune in now to start leveraging the power of ethical affiliate marketing and transform your financial future!

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Transcript

Understanding Affiliate Marketing for Creators

Speaker 2 0:00

Are you ready for it? Welcome to our snackable and delicious content to ease your weekly curiosity. I'm Kristen Werner, joined by Mia Steele, and, as always, we come to you on a Wednesday to give you some snackable, delicious yum, yum, yum, yum, yum, yum, yum, bite-sized pieces of information. So, mia, today I want to ask you a question that's going to turn into a bigger question that we can discuss. Ask away, Mia what is affiliate marketing?

Speaker 1 0:31

Affiliative marketing is when you promote or talk about a brand to someone else, whether it be in person or to an audience, or to your email list or what have you, and you have a unique link that is attached to you. When they click on that link and purchase said item, you get an itty bitty commission. Well, not always itty bitty, but a commission, and that's it no extra cost to the person buying. It is a way for brands to market their products, kind of for free, I guess, because you're not spending money on ads. It's basically word of mouth. They're you know, they're asking their users to share their product in return for a small commission. And it's beautiful and I love the business model and I will be forever grateful for it because it has served me well.

Speaker 2 1:31

And it's one of those things that I mean, if you've been around on TikTok maybe, or you've been around, I don't know, in the content space there's been some ickiness about it in the past, right where affiliate marketing got a bit of a bad rap, but it's been around since, I think, the 70s and I'm not gonna I'm not gonna nail this and I should research it before, but I have researched in the past. Apparently it was a um started by a guy that started a florist company, a flower company, and he was taking flowers to businesses and people were like, love this, how do I get this? And he was like, oh, we, this, how do I get this? And he was like, oh, we'll share this. And then he realized if he shared it and people bought it, then the word of mouth increased and that's when he added what is now affiliate marketing.

Speaker 2 2:14

So if you're on the Googles, google that. But I'm pretty sure that's like. I'm not going to claim that's the full story, but it was in the seventies and so basically, it was was pretty good. I remember reading it and I'm pretty sure that's it, um, but it's not uncommon. It's very, very common in marketing. It's very, very common in advertising because, like mia said, it is the easiest way, it's word of mouth and you get rewarded. So you know being a brand ambassador.

Speaker 1 2:41

80 to 90 percent of brands have an affiliate program because it just makes sense.

Speaker 2 2:49

Yeah, it's smart marketing because you've got people that are using your product, that genuinely like your product, and they're sharing it, and then they get a reward for sharing it Like it's a freaking no brainer.

Speaker 1 2:56

Yeah, yeah, and obviously there's some legalities around affiliate marketing and disclaiming that you're an affiliate.

Speaker 1 3:03

And yes, there is a yucky side of affiliate marketing where people plaster links everywhere brands, but also people who are creators and who are in the creative space because you're creating a lot of content, you're growing an email list and it feels almost natural to share with other people things that you use, programs that you take, um, you know places that you go with your audience when you genuinely love them. And why not make a small commission off that for creating that content and getting paid through it? And I really love the whole creative space because other content creators get it. So I'm always more than happy to use someone's affiliate link because I know they're going to get a little cut from it rather than just go straight to the website.

Speaker 2 4:03

And I think that's where you know, when we first started our community and started the membership, we had a discussion about you know what it was going to look like. And Mia was actually the one that said, well, why don't we do an affiliate program for our community? And I was like, oh, I hadn't actually thought about that. And so we're officially Australia's first and only UGC affiliate program. So we have a membership that has an affiliate program of 40% commission for our members. So we did that because, at the end of the day, we want our members to thrive, we want our members to get paid.

Speaker 2 4:35

And this was a way that we were like it helps us because it's marketing and it helps them because they get paid. So you know, that was, I think, a moment that I had never thought about doing it. I've done affiliate marketing before but I'd never thought like, oh yeah, that's, that makes a lot of sense. Because it does make sense, like we love paying our members every month. And so you know, I suppose for people to understand, I mean we kind of touched on it. But what does it mean? Like, how do people get paid through an affiliate?

Speaker 1 5:04

link.

Speaker 2 5:05

The kind of the backend bit for people that are like I don't really understand how I'd get paid.

Speaker 1 5:08

Yeah, so when you sign up for an affiliate program, usually they'll have a dashboard that you log into and you generate your unique link that is only linked to you. They use cookies in the techie world, but basically this link if you put it on your link in bio or in an email and someone clicks on it, they're cookied to your link. So if they purchase on that day, obviously you'll get paid. But if they go on their merry way and have a think about it and, you know, two weeks later then decide to buy it, those cookies are still attached. I don't know if this is technically right, but stay with me.

Speaker 2 5:47

It's right now.

Speaker 1 5:48

Those cookies are attached to that link and if they buy a few weeks later then you're still going to get that commission. So it makes it good because you know it's not like they have to buy it off you straight away. Now there's all different cookie lengths for these affiliate programs. Some affiliate programs have 30 days cookies, so people have to buy through your link within 30 days. Otherwise if it's 31 days, then you don't get the commission. I think Amazon is like only 24 or 48 hours, so they've got a really short cookie duration. And then there's other programs that have, you know, a year long cookie duration. So there's varying, you know, intricacies between each program. But basically in the computer world there's these little cookies and you're attached to whoever clicks on your link.

Speaker 2 6:41

And basically what it does like. If we think about it in the scheme of what we've decided to do with our program, it means that if you know, if our one of our content creators is having, you know, success or they're just having a really good time learning from our community learning UGC, learning how to kind of get paid for their content and somebody in their world says to them how are you doing that? That's amazing, I'd love to learn. They can say oh, I'm part of the Hive Hub Collective here. Go and check them out. They give them their unique link.

Speaker 2 7:07

That person comes to view what's going on and that person might be like that's amazing. Oh, it's not really for me now, cool off. They go. We've got a 90-day. We're doing on a Thursday but we do a workshop and that person comes along. They haven't re-clicked on that link, but they've come along and because they're cookie to you, they go yep, I want to become a lifetime member. I want to do yearly membership. I'm here for it, let's go. They click on it.

Speaker 2 7:34

You might be going along your merry way, doing what you do and all of a sudden you get an email like hey, somebody's just going to pay you $300 because they became an affiliate. Like that's amazing. And so like, oh, what a little pep in your step. That's the magic of it and that's why we chose to do it, because it allows you, as a content creator, to share with your community what you're doing. And if your community are like, wow, that's amazing, like we may never have seen, met or been able to help that person, but you've brought them into our world, which means now we get to help them, and so that's why we wanted to say, hey, creators, have some, have some money for what you've done, that's amazing.

Authentic Affiliate Marketing Strategies

Speaker 1 8:10

So that's, that's the cool side of it, yeah, and you can earn money while you're learning or while you're creating content and it's just. It's just a way of sharing and being rewarded for that. Um, but we always say of sharing and being rewarded for that, yeah. But we always say, no matter what, if you're referring or you're an affiliate for a program, just please make it that it's a product that you genuinely love, not because you just want the commissions, because people see through that, and that's when it sort of gives it a little bit of an icky feel if you're just saying, oh yeah, buy this, this is great, but really you don't use it, you don't love it, you're just not about it but it's got a good commission structure or what have you.

Speaker 2 8:53

Yeah, so that is just our little take on affiliate marketing and how we've kind of become Australia's first affiliate marketing UGC membership. So if you're interested about it it's all in the show notes Go, get around it, and that's us for another week. Okay, hooroo, bye, stop Shit podcast. I'm going to upload so many good ones too.