Hey all. I'm building an software for local ads (https://marketingtech.io) and have a side-business selling a training on how to do affiliate marketing that makes 3-5m/year gross sales.
Ask me anything.
Heres a bit of my timeline:
2016 - Wrote a forum post in StackThatMoney (niche forum for affiliate marketing, 2k members) looking to hire people (I had a few people working for me as media buyers at the time). Got too many replies. Got affiliate software (HasOffers) for $99/m, then rebrokered a bunch of offers, and sold access to all my internal company trainings in a google drive for 5k. Most people paid without even a conversation (I had 'clout' in that forum at the time) and got our first 50 customers within a month.
2017 - Created a webinar and a funnel and started doing facebook ads. I copied a webinar I saw that was working well (Sam Ovens') and replaced a few words to make it more applicable to the business model I was teaching. 1.2m in sales on 360k in adspend (youtube ads). Initially sold at $47/m.
2018 - Increased price to $997. Started doing 5x Youtube videos (not ads) per week. Sales grew to 3m, on roughly 1m in adspend.
2019 - 5x yt videos per week. More focus on courting affiliates to send traffic to my training course funnel. Traffic moved up to 300k-1m uniques a month (about where it is now)
2020 - Shifted focus to doing tv infomercials (for my infoproducts) during the pandemic. Infoproduct business still brought in 7figs, tv infomercials did 2m.
2021 - Cut tv infomercials due to declining tv viewership (lockdown orders easing off). Stopped daily youtube videos because of personal life stuff. Shifted focus to youtube ads again. Infoproduct biz doing 300-500k/m. My focus is 80% on building our software.
Tech Stack:
Clickfunnels (funnels), Wordpress (course, wishlist member), Infusionsoft, Sendgrid, Zendesk, callloop.
Revenue: 1/3 youtube ads, 1/3 youtube organic, 1/3 affiliates.
Best,
Thanks for the AMA. Your results are impressive.
As I understand it, a lot of techniques (pop-ups, squeeze pages, lead magnets, etc.) have found their way from affiliate marketing into online marketing more broadly. So is there anything that affiliate marketers are doing today that the rest of us should learn from?
Yes, theres a ton of tactics affiliates use that might be helpful, but understand that every product/service is different and will do best with a slightly different funnel.
--- You might see a horrible CR if you just segment out users with a carrier connection. Maybe you have huge images or a video that autoloads, It may look great on your monster monitor and fast connection, but not so much on actual users' screens.
--- You might notice a lot of traffic from gov or education ISPs; this may mean you're getting some WOM in that sector and may want to double down there
--- you may notice your users using a certain device or browser version or screen size arent converting very well; another chance to increase conversion rates with zero added costs.
I hope that helps!
Best,
I appreciate your answer. A 50x increase in conversion rates is quite something, so kudos on that.
What you said about the technical parameters (carrier/wifi, TLDs, etc.) is interesting. I tend to discount those kinds of analyses in favor of focusing on targeted traffic and copywriting, but that probably translates to my leaving some money on the table, so I guess I should reconsider.