Bear with me.... I am changing things up here, Hope you enjoy my interview with Chuck Anderson, Affiliate Marketing Expert.
Welcome to the Papaya Force Podcast, where we explore innovative strategies for entrprenuers to grow their businesses. In today's episode, we delve into the world of affiliate marketing and its potential to revolutionize your marketing. Our guest, Chuck Anderson, an affiliate management expert and investor, shares valuable insights and practical tips on how to harness the power of affiliate marketing to expand your reach, generate leads, and increase revenue.
Episode Highlights:
Conclusion:
In conclusion, affiliate marketing offers coaches and consultants a powerful tool to enhance their marketing efforts, expand their reach, and drive business growth. By prioritizing relationships, leveraging strategic partnerships, and hosting engaging events, coaches and consultants can unlock the full potential of affiliate marketing to achieve their business goals.
For more information about setting up your affiliate marketing program visit TrafficMatchAI.com
Subscribe to Transform Your Future Newsletter for personal development tips and information to Reinvent & Dominate your industry: http://transformyourfuture.com
Bear with me.... I am changing things up here, Hope you enjoy my interview with Chuck Anderson, Affiliate Marketing Expert.
Welcome to the Papaya Force Podcast, where we explore innovative strategies for entrprenuers to grow their businesses. In today's episode, we delve into the world of affiliate marketing and its potential to revolutionize your marketing. Our guest, Chuck Anderson, an affiliate management expert and investor, shares valuable insights and practical tips on how to harness the power of affiliate marketing to expand your reach, generate leads, and increase revenue.
Episode Highlights:
Conclusion:
In conclusion, affiliate marketing offers coaches and consultants a powerful tool to enhance their marketing efforts, expand their reach, and drive business growth. By prioritizing relationships, leveraging strategic partnerships, and hosting engaging events, coaches and consultants can unlock the full potential of affiliate marketing to achieve their business goals.
For more information about setting up your affiliate marketing program visit TrafficMatchAI.com
Subscribe to Transform Your Future Newsletter for personal development tips and information to Reinvent & Dominate your industry: http://transformyourfuture.com
We're all about relationships. We've always been a species that does business, but through relationships predating the internet, it was all about relationships, networking, handshakes, Then we go online and it's all like dots and websites and emails and it's like, yeah, but it's caught up because in our hearts we want to do business with other humans. We don't want to do business with websites and affiliate marketing. You asked me how it's evolved is it has caught up. It's about relationships. It's not about, I have 200 affiliates that are promoting me. I have these 20 that are my beloved partners. We would do anything for each other, they would promote me. Anything I ask, I would promote them. Anything that they ask, and it's really about building those relationships. There's a lot of loyalty there. Papaya! Welcome to the Papaya Force podcast where we interview successful entrepreneurs and home service business owners in the USA doing more than$500,000 annually in gross sales. Today we are talking about marketing and sales, specifically how we can create an affiliate marketing program starting with our own personal network. This show is sponsored by Traffic Match ai, the all-in-one AI software to get clients organically capture and nurture leads, and automate outreach, including a robust e-commerce and affiliate management platform. For more information, go to traffic match ai.com. Our guest today is Chuck Anderson, affiliate management expert and investor. Chuck is the founder of Fin Castle Media Inc. A firm that specializes in helping clients with their affiliate and brand ambassador programs. He offers three main services to his clients, affiliate acquisition, affiliate management, and event promotion. Chuck helps clients acquire more strategic partners to consistently send new client referrals. He provides clients with the tools and support they need to successfully nurture and manage their affiliates. Chuck helps clients fill their virtual or in-person events with affiliate partners by providing expert marketing and promotion support. In addition to his work at Fin Castle Media, Chuck is also the founder of blissful parenting.com and coach marketing lab.com, and he's a longtime coach and trainer with Ignited Academy. He was the former director of marketing and a managing partner at the internet marketing center where he helped the company grow to over$20 million in annual revenue. Welcome to Welcome, Chuck. I appreciate you taking your time out today to spend some time with me, talk about affiliates, affiliate marketing, and how to quickly go ahead and put on virtual events and in-person events by using your network and other people's networks by working together. I'm ready. Let's dive in. Let's do it. Great to be here. Tell me a little bit about how you ended up working in this space. I know you used to work with the internet marketing organization. Yeah, so I was director of marketing for Internet Marketing Center for a number of years until they were sold in 2010. But I mean, the story begins in 1998 when a good friend of mine invited me over to his house and after dinner he showed me on his computer this really ugly website that he had just made. Now, to be fair, in 1998, all websites were ugly, and so you had to plug in the phone line and you had to dial in and do all of that. But what really intrigued me was the check that was on his desk for just over $10,000 US that he had earned through this ugly website by promoting some long distance services and internet services where they paid him a dollar or two every time they acquired a new customer. And that was my very first introduction to affiliate marketing where you could earn money by being an affiliate. And I'm like, well, show me how to do this. So I built a couple of ugly websites and started promoting credit cards and financial services and long distance services, and I mean even kitchen appliances. I mean, there were so many different affiliate programs we could join at the time, and I was very quickly earning between 10 and 20 KA month just doing that. And so that's the one side of affiliate marketing is earning a commission. Then Internet Marketing Center recruits me as a trainer and we had an affiliate program at our peak. We were doing 20 million a year and almost 40% of that 20 million was being done by our affiliates. So I got to see the other side as well. That's a big number, which is, yeah, it's a huge number. Almost half of our sales, very significant, came from our partnerships with affiliates and our brand ambassadors and other people's lists, and I had the good fortune of seeing now the other side of affiliate marketing. And so now today I do both. I'm an affiliate for people and I earn commissions, but most of my work is helping people set up affiliate programs and having them recruit affiliates and 40% of 20 million is an impressive number, but I know coaches and other service providers who it's easily 80, 90% of their clients come from other people's lists and their affiliates. Wow. Yeah. That's something, it's interesting when we talk about the internet back in 1998, I was on the internet in the nineties before it was an internet of things, but it's interesting today people talk about the internet a lot and it's like they don't realize there's already a long history of 20 years of the internet being around and stuff. I remember back in the day in my agency in 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, trying to convince people to do pay per click advertising. It was like pulling teeth. They just didn't understand why would I advertise on the internet? I don't get it. People didn't really understand the internet and the opportunity in the internet, but today, obviously now everybody understands that and everybody wants to advertise and everybody wants to take advantage of everything. So it's interesting. Yeah, for sure. And mentioning those days, it was so new. We often look back and refer to those days as the wild, wild west of the internet because there was so much discovery. I mean, brick and mortar businesses coming on and doing business online for the first time. In fact, there still are, are today businesses that have not moved their businesses entirely online. Of course, there's fewer and fewer of those all the time, and that's what our business was, is educating them and then helping facilitate bringing that business online. And to your point, I mean pay-per-click advertising, especially back in those days was awesome. I mean, when you could get clicks for a penny that would convert into sales, I mean, you can't get that really today, but it was an amazing time. Yes, I had to create complicated case studies to prove the concept to people. And I remember one big one I put together was Walmart. I found some info about Walmart and Walmart found for pay-per-click, they made a dollar profit. And I would use these case studies to show this is really a profitable thing that really works, but it's interesting today. Now of course, everybody and their mother knows about that and everybody's involved and wants to be involved, and everybody's trying to figure out how to cut their cost in doing it, et cetera, et cetera, and figure out systems. But obviously we were talking earlier, and I believe that basically in every business, you have three main ways of creating revenue. You have your direct selling that you do to sell your product or service, you got referrals that you get of new people from the people you're already working with, and then you've got joint ventures and partnerships that brings in business. So I believe any business needs to cover all of those areas to be successful. So please tell me a little bit about from your perspective, how things have changed in the affiliate space. Yeah. Well, first of all, I agree with all three of those points. You absolutely have to be nailing all three of those things. And how have things changed? In some respects, a lot and in some respects not that much. I mean, I was doing a webinar about six months ago where I had a group of people on there and I was teaching them about this concept, and somebody asked, what's an affiliate program? And I have to remember sometimes, yeah, I learned about it since 1998 and have been living that in that world for so long that it's easy to assume that everybody knows what that is. And so first of all, for anyone who doesn't know what it is, it's that idea that you can earn a commission by sending and on the other side, you can get referrals by paying a commission to other people who will send you those referrals. And so there's really those two sides of affiliate marketing. So we're all clear on that now. Everybody here knows what we're talking about, an affiliate program and how has it changed? One of the things that I've seen in the industry that I think we all need to adapt to is, look, when we first came on in the end of the nineties and the early two thousands, it was very transactional, and we didn't have to convince people too hard to make those transactions. I mean, if you put a reasonable offer up, you could sell it without too much trouble. And so we used to measure things by the number of transactions that we did and the number of clicks that we would get and our revenue per click and all of these kinds of things. And those are still relevant KPIs and measurements in the affiliate space today. But now I measure my success by the number of relationships, and it's not enough now to just have affiliates and say, okay, guys, here's everything and we're having a contest and the person with the most sales wins, and here's the prize. That's very transactional. So yeah, that has its place. But where I see the internet has evolved is that especially with social media in the last decade or so, is that we're all about relationships. We've always been a species that does business, but relationships predating the internet, it was all about relationships, networking, handshakes, Then we go online and it's all dots and websites and emails, and it's like, yeah, but it's caught up because in our hearts, we want to do business with other humans. We don't want to do business with websites and affiliate marketing, you asked me how it's evolved is it has caught up. It's about relationships. It's not about I have 200 affiliates that are promoting me. I have these 20 that are my beloved partners. We would do anything for each other. They would promote me. Anything I ask, I would promote them. Anything that they ask. And it's really about building those relationships. There's a lot of loyalty there. We don't have to constantly look for those. We have a network that we can turn to anytime we want, and it's really nice. And when you have that, those relationships to rely on when you need something today, when you need something in a very, very short time, you can lean on that because it's the relationships. It's not always the dollars and cents. Sometimes we do campaigns where they don't earn a whole lot of money on that particular one, but we carry forward based upon the strength of the relationship. We all love each other, we all respect each other, and it's like through thick and thin, we're going forward to the next thing. And that is where in the last 20 years, it's really evolved. We don't look at it so much as earnings per click and all the metrics. It's like, how many people in my network do I have that we have those solid relationships with? When's the last time I talked to them? That's a good KPI to track. When was the last time you had a one-on-one conversation with your best partners? And we have to maintain those relationships. So for me, Elise, that's how it's evolved. Yeah, I think that it's interesting in teaching and training people about sales and growing your revenue and increasing your revenue. I always talk about the fact that sales is about relationships. There's not a trick. There's not some quick fancy way that you could send some message to somebody that they're going to click you and then they're going to buy. You actually have to build a relationship with other people. And I think that one of the things you're kind of talking about in there is how things have evolved on the internet because of all of the influence of things like social media and covid, how it's changed the way we communicate and how customers and clients want to be communicated in a different way, meaning our emails and our messaging. It needs to be more social interaction. These are my ideas, these my beliefs, and you like these ideas and beliefs. So let's talk a little bit more and continue the same things. And so selling is being influenced like that and growing your business. So yeah, I agree a hundred percent. It's kind of like full circle, like you were saying. It's back to shaking hands and meeting people, getting to know somebody, seeing what their problems are and seeing if I have a solution to fix their problems, how it can help. Yeah. Tell me about how, now that's all. Tell me a little bit about how you choose the right partners. So first and foremost, you really have to take a look at who is your target audience, who are the people that want to buy your product or that you are most successful selling your product to? Now, not everybody who has a list or is willing to sign up for your affiliate program is a best fit for your affiliate program. So it really comes down to who is your target audience and then who is their audience? Who do they have influence over? And it doesn't have to be a direct match, but there should be some relationship there. So at least you're not wasting everybody's time. That doesn't help anyone to just tick a box saying, oh, I got another affiliate to agree to promote me today. But then you find out they set email out to their list and nobody cares because it was not a good fit. So I think there has to be that good fit, and that's where even with the way we recruit, we are not out there going, join my affiliate program, join my affiliate program. It's a lot of networking, it's a lot of meanings, it's a lot of research who are influencers in this space, and we want to align in a way that we can partner with people who have influence over our target audience. We are not being perceived or seen as direct competition, but rather a way to add value to each other's audiences. And I would say thirdly, that they have a collaboration mindset. I mean, some people are just in their own world and they're just doing their thing, and that's cool, but I think they have to be open to a collaboration. And I actually use that. I use that to my advantage in recruiting. And that is I look for people who have these qualities and have this influence, and then I approach them not on promoting me, but how can I support them? How could we collaborate so that we both do better? And it's so much easier to get people's attention when you are coming from that place of benefiting them versus, Hey, will you be my affiliate and promote me and I'll earn these commissions? That's transactional. That's not relationship. Right? And this is something that we have to really work with the people in our program is to move away from that transaction towards the relationship and how can we collaborate? How can we benefit each other's business? And that's how you build a network, right? Yeah. I always like the ideas that you have and how you approach things. So if somebody's listening to this, and they're new to this idea, they don't have an affiliate program, they haven't really worked some joint ventures for their business. It just seems like a lot of times people wait for some period of time before they add this on. Would you say that the best way to start might be through the events? Yeah, we're very pro event, and one of the reasons why is they're very easy to create, especially the free events such as webinars and master classes and summits. They're very easy to create. And we find that affiliates really love to promote events. There's some other built-in things there as well. They have dates, which is a natural deadline and all that kind of thing. But when you, first of all comparing events to other ways of generating leads and other promotions you could do, a lot of people want to take the shortest path possible, and that is, well, I'm selling this $5,000 coaching program and I'll just ask my affiliates to send me referrals for my $5,000 coaching program. But that's not how people buy those kinds of services. Again, there's relationship. They're not going to just buy a $5,000 program off the shelf. They're not shopping for it that way. So their traffic bounces. And what we mean by that is that the affiliate will promote X, Y, Z offer, but nobody buys it. Nobody signs up. It could be a dollar, and that would still happen because anytime you put a price on something, you're going to be looking at a much smaller percentage of people who take the action. But our affiliates want to feel successful. And so we had a couple of choices while we could go with this downloadable ebook or some sort of a lead magnet, again, a free thing. A lot of affiliate programs run that way, and affiliates are more than happy to promote that. Problem is it can be promoted anytime. There's no dates to it. And so there's no deadline and humans being the way they are, they need deadlines, they need dates. Tell me when to promote this. Oh, you can promote it anytime. Well, anytime means no time because unless they're really self-motivated, right? And so we realized early on, we're having so much more success with our webinars and our events than we are with these downloadable lead magnets. We get to build our list, but the majority of our sales are coming from the event. So we're like, okay, well, when I host a webinar, it's happening let's say two weeks from now, and I can ask my affiliates to promote it when seven days prior, maybe again, three days prior. And if they can squeeze it in another one the day before now there's dates, we can say, can you email it on this date, this date, and this date? It's got a tremendous amount of clarity. The event is going to come and go. So there is a deadline. There is some pressure there that is going to cause them to act. And that is a huge piece. Just again, realizing that human nature is we need deadlines, we need dates. Sometimes we need a little pressure. It's hard to do that with other types of campaigns. And so when we ask affiliates to promote something with a price, we're losing out on a lot of leads when we're asking them to promote something that doesn't have a date, maybe they promote, most likely they don't. That's why we love free events such as webinars, masterclasses, summits, whatever name you give to 'em. It's a great way to get your affiliates to follow through. Yeah. And in the past, I know you taught me about the opportunity to have the partnerships being other individuals who can participate in a webinar workshop. And so this idea of putting on a workshop for the appropriate audience, but then it's three or four or five of us together, and then we're all using our networks to promote the event so that the people coming to the event, there's 10 of mine, 10 of yours, 10 of his, et cetera, et cetera, which I think is a genius. And so simple way to start, you couldn't make it easier. Well, exactly. This whole idea of summits where you get a group of well-aligned speakers who all agreed to promote, everybody shares in the success of that it, it's a very powerful way to create not only an affiliate relationship, but also some very powerful collaborations and partnerships with the people who are the speakers. And that's one of the, obviously we recruit affiliates to help to promote our events, and we're trying to build our relationships with our attendees. But I can tell you that our strongest and probably most profitable relationships that comes out of all of that are the other speakers that are collaborating with us on that event. So I love collaborative events. We host summits a few times a year. Some of my clients are doing it, some of them are doing it monthly. Some of them are doing it every couple of months because it's just a model that works. And it's a great way to get people to participate. See if I'm just asking you to promote me, either you want to do that or you don't. And there's some convincing sometimes that has to happen. If I say, Hey, we're doing this event, 10 of us are all going to speak at it and we're all going to promote it, and we all get to share in whatever happens there, that's not a tough sell, that's a pretty easy sell. Most people do want to do that, right? Yes, yes, yes, yes. So is there anything else about events and promoting the events that you want to touch on? Well, I touched on the most important part of it already, and that is there's a date. And so what you want to do is have a date there and really use those dates for leverage. It helps people decide to register for it is also supports your affiliates. The one other thing that I will say with the events is that I think everybody should have a signature event that they can run regularly. And one of the mistakes that even I was making just as early as a couple of years ago is I would host these webinars. I'd do a webinar on a topic, and then the next time I do a webinar, I would do a webinar on a completely different topic. And that may resonate with a part of my list and not another part, but my affiliates were like, okay, what are we promoting this month? And is it this email? Is it this? What's the link? And there was some confusion happening and we're like, it seems like we're just starting from the starting line every single time. What if we hosted the same event monthly? We still sometimes do other events, but we have one signature event that we host every single month. And then now when we do it, all we need to do is change the date and we're on to promoting the next one. Our affiliates no longer go, oh, well, is it this email or is it this link or whatever. They already have all of that, and they just simply say, what's the date of the next one? And it's taken it to another level that we didn't expect. And that is the level of integration. We're now integrated into people's newsletters, into their websites, into their membership programs, into whatever else they got going where we're a permanent part of what they're doing because of that consistency. Because it never changes other than the dates, everything else remains the same. The links, the landing page, the swipe copy, everything. And it's been a game changer. It's been so much easier to build a network of people promoting us simply by doing that. So to answer your question, I think everybody should have a signature event. It could be a one hour webinar that you just do every single month, train your affiliates on what it is, give them everything they need to succeed, and then just change the dates and ask them to promote the next one. And then every month just keep adding new affiliates to that and watch that network grow. So yet again, another reason why we're pro. Event, what I like about that, Chuck, is it kind of goes back to what we were saying earlier, that it's not transactional. It's about relationships. And so looking at the current studies for the last few years that have come out about a 7 11 4, the old news, there's some guys out there talking about the laws of diffusion and the diffusion of innovation and how the early majority and the late majority is like 60, 70% of the actual population. And that those individuals in the past used to need eight to 12 communications to move them forward to actually close the deal, so to speak. But now because of the way things are and the way social selling and the whole social networking has influenced everything people need maybe as much as 50 times that they need to see it, understand it, listen to it before they actually start engaging, realizing that these are cold people. These are cold people. They don't know me, they don't know what I'm doing. They don't understand anything about it. So I like that idea because then it's like, let's just say it's like how to create a hundred organic leads for your business every month if that's the name. And then doing that every month to get that out there for your specific audience to use, you build up like you're saying, you build up that momentum because you keep doing it over and over again. And also because you get better at it, right? Because you keep doing it. Yeah, I agree. There's too many people out there keep thinking about a new concept, a new idea, thinking like they're going to trick somebody. Well, maybe people are not responding because I need to change the words or I need to change the concept. But no, really, people are not responding because they need to see it, hear about it many, many times before they actually show up and sit their ass in the seat to listen to you for an hour, right? Yeah, absolutely. And I think to one of the points you just made, the more you repeat that same talk, you're going to get better and better and better at it all the time. That is certainly something that we've noticed with all of this. I do refresh my memory, I go through my slides every time, but it's muscle memory now. We know exactly what to say and exactly what to do and exactly how to interact with the audience when we're creating something new. I find that there's only a couple of reasons why we do that. One is may have hosted a webinar previously and maybe you didn't get enough people registered, or not enough people showed up, or not enough people bought. And we go, well, that didn't work, so I'm never doing that again. I'm going to go create this new thing. And sometimes that may be appropriate, but I'd say what would be more appropriate is to go back and unpack what happened and fix what was broken. And it usually starts with you didn't have enough people at that webinar to begin with. There was only eight people there, and you didn't make sales. You didn't make sales because there was only eight people there. And so how do we get your registration numbers up? Well, the way we do that is let's go get you some affiliates to let's get you 80 to 90 people registered for the next one, and now you're going to have some people to talk to. So then if you do that and they don't buy, well, then you probably need to fix something about your offer or your call to action. Maybe instead of selling directly from the webinar, you should just be booking calls and selling one-on-one, which is probably the best place for people to start. I always tell people, I said, don't sell anything directly from a webinar that you or more of in a one-on-one setting. You don't know how to sell it yet. And so you need to have the objections, you need to see what people's reactions are, and then you need to bring that learning into the webinar. But I think the big piece, and I am a big fan of Dr. Cialdini and his influence books, and I saw a webinar from him last week where he reminded us of something in his studies that anytime we call something new, we're to expect a 20 to 30% decrease in people taking us up on that offer because they don't want the new thing. They want the proven thing, they want the trusted thing. And so when we are consistent, when we're doing the same webinar every single month, and we're not always doing the new thing, we're providing confidence in the eyes of our audience. They can see the consistency. And I think to that point, most people who have joined my program in the last year or so have attended my webinar at least twice, if not more. Occasionally we get the one that was the right person at the right time, and they buy on the first visit to our webinar. But I always re-invite everyone, and I've had people who have attended my webinar five times before they bought, and that's great, keep coming, buy when you're ready, whatever it is. And it's that consistency. They're already looking forward to the next one. Some of them are already inviting friends to the next one. So when we get consistent, when we're not creating the new things all the time, we make it easier for our clients to choose us. We position ourselves as an expert in the marketplace, and it's so much easier to recruit partners and affiliates want to be part of that. Back to your point, I just want to mention, so I'm always training people that you were talking about selling five people before you host a webinar and everything. I agree with that a hundred percent. And to just get started, people sometimes just feel stuck and overwhelmed, and I just say, just do you know people? That's the appropriate market. You must know some people, if you're in a space and you're doing it, you must know some other people. Just have a conversation with somebody, talk about what you're thinking and what it works and see if they might be, I mean, all they have to do is ask, would you be interested in something like that? Would something like that help you? Do you think that I can help you with something like that? And then that's enough for you to know what's needed. It doesn't necessarily have to be that you hammer your network to make$5,000 just to get proof of concept that this is something valuable that people need and these are the important points. And being able to talk to your network and find out, so what problems are you having in this area? And if I have a way to solve those problems so that you know what kind of conversations to have and what kind of information you want to give in your webinar. So I think that's really key what you said there. Very much so. Yes, yes. I love it. I love everything you talk about. I love it. Yeah. Well, I mean definitely, and I've seen you at my webinars a few times as well, and here we are at relationships building, and that's the other thing that happens. We attract new partners, we attract new collaborators all the time. Just from putting out that consistency. One of the things you just said, that's I think important when you don't know, if you don't know what it takes to sell your program, if you don't know what people want. One of the powerful things that we did in conjunction with an event promotion just last year was we had problems with one of our offers and we thought, let's find out what's going on. We implemented something called the pre-event survey. So as people were registering for the webinar, we said, Hey, would you mind answering these five questions that experience for you? And we asked 'em a few questions about why they were there, what some of their challenges were, but most importantly, the fifth question, and that is, if you were to get outside help with this, what are some of the things that you want? And we listed out 12 different things that they might be able to buy, and I just said, check all that apply. Check the ones that you feel like resonate with you the most. What was interesting about that is when we got the results back, they didn't match our offer. And it's like, okay, this tells me that if I keep offering it the same way I'm offering it, we're going to have inconsistent sales. They're not really going to buy. It doesn't match what people say they want. So we took the top four answers. One of them became the name of the service, and the other three became the bonuses. So now our package is literally the top four answers that people told us they wanted that would help them the most. And we sell that thing. Every single time we do that webinar, we make sales. Let's unpack that a little bit just so that everybody understands. So let's just say that I'm selling my program is to help audience to get more business, and the way I'm packaging it is increase your sales by 20%. Right now. That's what the seminar is about. Then they do the pre-event survey and the things that they talk about in there in the choices that I give them are how to keep customers, how to keep customers happy, how to get more referrals out of customers. Maybe these are their answers. And so then you take that information and now you're going to change it. Instead of saying how to increase your sales by 20% every month to now how to get customers, keep them happy and get referrals out of them. That's what we're talking about, right? Yeah. And you pick the one that aligns because one of the other questions is going to be about their challenges, their struggles, the things that they feel are standing in the way of getting the result that they want. And so we're going to take a look at their answers of what they say that they do want. We're going to align it with the most common problems and challenges that they said they have that's going to become the lead of the offer. Everything else they said, the next most popular answers become the bonuses. You don't just make up bonuses. The bonuses have to align with something that they actually want. In fact, sometimes they even want the bonus more than the lead product, but they want all of it and they need all of it. And so that's the best. And that's how it's a good program, right? Because I've been involved in programs that I'm like, man, the bonus, that's what I really, wow, that's valuable. I want to get into that. The other service, it was okay, but wow, I really wanted that thing. So that's how, you know, have a program that's winning and working. Yeah. Well, and you can tell when people put their offers together where they didn't know what to do as bonuses, they'll say, okay, bonus number one is you get a 30 minute one-on-one call with me. I don't know that they want a 30 minute call with me. I'm just guessing. Or you get this downloadable check sheet checklist or whatever, and it's just something that they created two years ago that they're repurposing. If you're doing that, you're better off to have no bonuses at all because you don't know if they want it or not. And so it is important for all of us to really understand who our are and what their challenges are and what they want, not what they need, what they want, sell them what they want, give them what they need, but you got to give it the name and the packaging that echoes what they say that they want. And when you do that, so that includes the main offer, but it also includes the bonuses. And if you don't know, then get on some one-on-one calls or do a survey or something where you can find out what it is and then just use their words, not yours, just echo back word for word what they said and make that your offer. Yeah, I think I relate this also to the discovery process intelligence gathering. And typically when we do that in a kind of question based framework, we want to ask them not only what they want but want to also ask them what they're trying to avoid because you have the push and pull. So sometimes what are they trying to avoid or what they're trying to get. So it's interesting. It's good stuff, good stuff. So that's one part of the program we kind of talked about was these events and aligning with partners to put on these events that it's going to be a mutually exclusive kind of beneficial for both parties kind of system. What other things, because I know just setting up the affiliate program is something that you do for customers. You want to talk a little bit about that? So it all starts for us, our specialty is running affiliate programs. And first and foremost, we think that anybody who sells anything, whether it be a service or a product or a software or whatever it is, needs to have an affiliate program. You need to have that ability to go and find partners who can promote your stuff to their list. We always say we set up affiliate programs or fixed broken ones. And so if you don't have one, it's very simple. Let's set one up for you. We made it super, super accessible. So anyone can have an affiliate program for a very reasonable cost, and if you've tried it before, don't give up on it. There was just something that was missing. There was something that was broken. Maybe it was too transactional and not about relationship, or could be technical as well. We don't know. So we go in there and we make sure that you have everything you need to be successful. So everybody's now going forward from that. And then from there, you have a choice. You can either learn to go and recruit and train and manage these affiliates and develop these relationships on your own, or you can outsource it. We have clients who just hire us to just do it for them. We do all the outreach, we do all the meetings, we represent them. The relationship is with us, but we're doing it on behalf of our clients. And so once you have an affiliate program, you really have those two pathways. You can go the do it yourself route, or you can do the complete handoff and just have it done for you. And so this is how we support. And so when we're not setting up affiliate programs, we're out there every day, sometimes multiple times a day, attending networking meetings, outreaching. We use multiple podcasts as a way of recruiting new partners, and it's all about recruiting, training, and managing our affiliates, but more importantly, nurturing and building the relationships with a team of affiliates that will proponent us again and again and again. So did that answer the question? Yeah, no, absolutely. Absolutely. So what kind kind of things are the criteria that you look for in what are the important things that an affiliate program needs to have? Yeah, so first and foremost, you need a way of tracking. You need to be able to give somebody, here's a URL that you can trust. And when you send me your leads, I will know that it was you. That is the thing that they want to know. They also want to know is, okay, who's the target audience? I want to know that this is my target audience, and then what are you guys going to do with them? And so they want to know that if they're going to send me their best referrals, that we're going to treat them really, really well, and that also we're going to follow up because they also want to make money. It is a business for affiliates after all. And so not just sending to my free webinar, but are we making a great offer at that webinar? And then are we following them up really well? So maybe they didn't become a customer today, they have a good chance of becoming a customer down the road, and it helps to build a lot of confidence. And so that's the first thing in the recruiting. And we give them everything we need and get that relationship started. But we don't stop there. Most people do stop there and we go a step further. We train them, okay, we train them on exactly what they need to do. Here's your link, here's the swipe copy, here's the dates, and here's how it all works. And they're usually very grateful for that. And then we'll get a commitment from them saying, okay, now that you know the dates and now that you have everything, do you think that you can do these dates? Yes or no? And so when they give us a yes, then we manage them, we manage them, we cheer lead with them, and then we celebrate any attempt to promote us. Even if they sent us one lead, we're going to celebrate with them. If they sent us a hundred leads, we're going to celebrate with them. We're really going to shower them with gratitude of, because they didn't have to do that. They could have done anything that they want, but they chose to follow and trust us. It's like gratitude, gratitude, gratitude. And that leads us to the last thing, and that is to repeat. We want them to do this again and again and again. And we've turned that into a bit of a mantra in our campaigns, and that is that we recruit, we train, we manage, we celebrate, and we repeat. And those are the five keys to our affiliate program, and we do those consistently over and over and over again. Very good, very good. Yeah, Yeah. Encouraging them to keep up the good work. Absolutely. Not just, yeah. I mean, a lot of times people want to just set it and forget it and then they don't get the results that they really want and they wonder why. So yeah, it's like any relationship. You want to celebrate the wins and you want to encourage, let's keep doing this. Since it's mutually beneficial, we're both gaining from it. So in general, and the tracking and management, there's plenty of tools that I know you work with and you're very familiar with all the top tools out there to do all that. I don't know, is there anything else about your affiliate program? And how about this? When's your next affiliate workshop? Yeah. Well, they're happening twice a month, and so we knew our next one's coming up here on Thursday, and we usually do every other Thursday, and we'll give you the link to all that. And anyone who's looking at that link and going, oh man, I missed it by the time this was published. No, you didn't, because there's always a next one. And so the link is always the same. And if you miss this one coming up, there'll be another one in a couple of weeks. Go ahead and register for it and then come and attend a couple of times. You don't get everything just by attending one time, but the more that you attend, it really sinks in. And what I'm going to help you to do is I'm going to help you to identify parts of your business that you need to really understand. You're going to need to understand your target audience and your offer, and then the best way to create an affiliate program. Now I'm very pro event, so I'm going to suggest that you start that way because I think webinars and if you don't have the best lead generation tactic already dialed in a webinar is a great way to test an idea If it falls flat, you don't have to do anything, just change the name and try again. You don't have to create anything, you don't have to write anything. So we're going to help you to map that out. I'm going to teach you the steps, the technology you need, the marketing material you need, and then how to train and celebrate and rinse and repeat with them so that you leave there with a plan. I know when you leave there with a plan, you'll either, A, you'll go do it, or B, you'll say, I know what to do, I don't want to do that. I'll just get you to do it, and I'll give you an offer of where I'll just set the whole thing up for you and so that you can get onto the most profitable parts. And that is recruiting, training, managing affiliates. So you've got the link there. Just register for the next one and make sure you introduce yourself to me and let me know what you got going on. Yeah, and I think, I don't know exactly specifically what type of audience we've been talking about, but I mean, I see local businesses, brick and mortar businesses need to do this rather than just, it's a great referral program just by telling your customers, Hey, join here. You have your own page and you can have your own tracking, refer your people through this mechanism, and we're going to compensate you and keep track of all that. And having affiliate meetings or maybe affiliate workshops like you do, I think any business can benefit from all this. It's not just consultants. It does tend to be a lot of the people, coaches and consultants for sure, virtual businesses such as Shopify stores and software products and programs. But to your point, yes, absolutely a brick and mortar business can do this. My last workshop, I had three people from the same grocery store attend. Now, could a grocery store use this? Absolutely. Every single day you have customers that come into your business. An affiliate program is a great way to be able to capture some more information from them, their name, their email address, their phone number. Do they have a few friends that they might want to recommend? So how about an incentive program where they can earn commissions or discounts on their future grocery bill? And we tend to look at those kind of affiliate programs as brand ambassador programs. So we're fans of a certain brand. We are customers of a certain company. You can use this. You can turn your customers into affiliates and look at our events. We always say, look how many of one or two people who should have been here today. And we always get the yeses and go, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Say, well, here's a link. Go send this to them right now and invite them to next one and we'll help them out just the same way we helped you out. Well, any business could do that. The grocery store is a good example. We're talking to them right now and what is the best way to execute that? But your customers will go and share it with their friends, and you get that net increase that you're looking for, so turn your customers into your partners and your affiliates. So absolutely, it can work for the offline businesses as well. Absolutely. Yes, sir. So we've talked quite a bit about everything. Is there anything that we haven't touched on that I haven't asked you about that you want to talk about? We've covered a lot of ground, but my biggest thing, it's not even so much tactical, but it's really about in here, and it's more of an attitude than anything. And that is on my podcast, I always sign off with Keep moving forward. And what I mean by that is to go a little deeper is never give up moving forward. When you try something and it doesn't work, it doesn't mean that you should never do that thing again, but let's go and unpack it. Let's go and find out maybe 90% of that thing worked and you just need to fix one little thing, and now it does. Instead of throwing it all out, it just reminds me of a book that I read, or a story book or a story called Six Feet From Gold, and it just talks about that gold miner who for decades or years and years and years, they were digging, digging, digging, and they finally stopped six feet short of the mother load. Anytime I get down on myself, I set goals too that are stretch and that I don't always meet. And so it's good for me. I think it's good for everyone. Keep moving forward and the only way to fail is to quit. So just keep going. I love it. I love it. Hey, thank you for your time and everything today. I appreciate you and we'll keep doing business together because we help each other out. Absolutely. This has been a lot of fun. And now we got to turn around and have you on my show. Sure, absolutely. This show is sponsored by Traffic Match ai, the all-in-one AI software to get clients organically, capture and nurture leads, and automate outreach, including a robust e-commerce and affiliate management platform. For more information, go to Traffic Match ai.