Adding An Affiliate Income Stream To Your Business

affiliate affiliatemarketing visibility Sep 04, 2020

In a perfect world, our business would blow up in the first 2 days and we’ll never have to worry about money again.

Ha.

But I honestly do think, in our heart of hearts, we hope it will be true.

What usually happens is we’re at month 6, 12 or 24...and still not generating enough revue to offset our expenses. Definitely not enough to enjoy life in any, way, shape or form.

But what if it didn’t have to be that way?

In today’s blog, I’m going to break down how to build an affiliate revenue stream that can pay for your virtual assistant, ad spend or even a new vehicle!

And before we dive in, I highly recommend taking my Visibility Tools Masterclass so you can see my affiliate funnel in action!! Take the class here.

Decide On Your Affiliate Product

The first thing you'll need to do is decide which product you're going to advertise + be an affiliate for.

This can be a program, course, membership, service, software or item.

Personally, I recommend choosing something you don't mind talking about all day. Especially if it's helped YOU make progress.

That's what everybody wants :)

My #1 affiliate software I promote is Kajabi.

It's because it's what I use to run my business.
It's because it has a killer affiliate program.
And it's because I'm so familiar with it I can show people how to pretty much do anything with it.

So, if you haven't decided on a software to run your affiliate funnel yet, I do recommend Kajabi because you can build every step inside of the one software {plus, run everything in your online business}.

"Michelle, I can't afford Kajabi + I don't know what product I can promote that will actually make me money."

Totally. Let's find you one.

Take inventory of the courses you've purchased, memberships you've joined, templates you've bought or services you've enjoyed.

Here are some ideas:

Social media course
Business membership
Recipe templates
Social media scheduler
Email marketing platform
Facebook e-book
Products you use regularly. Coffee? Face products? Clothing?

Once you take a birds eye look on what you use, usually something will pop up.

I talked about Kajabi, but I'm also an affiliate for:

Tailwind {Pinterest scheduler}
Social Bee {Social Media Scheduler}
Buzzsprout {Podcast Management}
Viral Content Templates {Monthly Social Media Templates}

Of course you can be an affiliate for multiple things - check out my tool list here - but for the purpose of a specific high income stream, you'll need to choose one to focus on.

So choose one affiliate product.

Then sign up as an affiliate + store your affiliate link.

Build A Funnel

Now that you've decided on your affiliate product, it's time to build a path for it.

I like to call this a funnel.

And what that means is creating an opt in, email sequence + sales page for this product.

Whatever system you are using, you'll need to build a step by step way of getting people onto your email list.

Here are some ideas:

Masterclass
Webinar
Quiz
Video Training Series

This is where most people make their biggest mistake.

They just share their link to their Facebook page + call it a day.

Then they get frustrated when their income doesn't grow.

Which is the equivalent of expecting someone to walk into your store + buy without you even offering to help.

STEP ONE - CRYSTALLIZE YOUR OFFER

How are you going to support them with your decision?

Meaning - what is your free offer going to be about?

If your affiliate product is a social media scheduler, then maybe you'll offer a free 30 minute pre-recorded class showing them how to set up a month of social media content in 30 minutes.

So your opt in would be called, "How to schedule a month worth of content in 30 minutes".

Then at the end of the video you'll encourage them to sign up for, let's say, SocialBee. {Remember to have your affiliate link on the call to action button on your video page!}

Get my drift?

STEP TWO - BUILD IT OUT

Now that you've decided on your offer, it's time to build your opt in page + email sequence.

We want to not only get them to buy the product, but also to add them to our email list.

Because chances are, if they are a fan of our opt in, they'll eventually buy something else from us.

So create that powerful opt in page + then build out at least 5 emails in your sequence encouraging them to buy.

This is where you'll use your affiliate link!

I like to alternate between educational emails, a little bit of entertainment + then strong call to actions.

TEST THE FUNNEL!

Be sure to test it.

I can't tell you how many times I've accidentally forgotten a link or it doesn't re-direct correctly.

So be sure to give yourself at least a week to test the funnel + receive all the emails to give everything a final glance-over.

Now, you've completed all of the behind the scenes annoying steps for this process.

Great work! Time to focus on the fun part - getting signups!

Advertise The Funnel

Now that you've built your affiliate funnel, it's time to let the world know about it!

And no, it's unfortunately not as easy as just posting "sign up for this"!

*sigh* to be a 1990's marketer! lol

For this process to work, you need to look at this funnel as an extension of your business.

Which means focusing certain blogs, video, livestreams or podcast episodes to talking about it.

For me, I write a lot of blogs on membership creation or growth:

The ridiculously easy way to launch your membership site

I also schedule a good amount of social media posts giving education + then calls to action.

I treat my affiliate funnel just like any one of my products.

So it gets about 1/3 of my promotion time.

You can go as intensely with this as you'd like!

I even run Pinterest ads to my webinar funnel to increase signups sometimes.

Just remember, your affiliate income will grow if you treat this like any other product.

And that means advertising it to your email list, social media following + on your blog, podcast, video channel or livestreams.

Keeping Track Of Things

If you're wanting to make affiliate income a large focus, then the quickest way to see income growth is a product that pays out monthly.

Kind of like a membership.

This is why I tell my membership students to start with the Visibility Lounge!

It's the quickest way for them to make recurring revenue with something they already know about + love!

And it's great if you promote a product that has a custom affiliate login page so you can track your stats + payouts.

Mine looks like this:

So you can see I currently have 32 active affiliates with 3 trialing.

I can also see what I'll be paid out on the 25th.

And, since I'm only 18 people away from the next level bonus, I'm definitely pushing to hit it.

Not all affiliate dashboards are this fancy, but you get my drift.

This is how I was able to get a car last week.

Because I knew for sure, outside of my regular business income, that I could cover the payment with my affiliate income stream.

Now this stream of income could be used for anything.

Taxes, ad spend, hiring a VA.

The point here is giving you the FLEXIBILITY of an additional revenue stream.

LEARNING MORE

I know this is a more intense process.

And I have no plans to leave you hanging.

The best place to get the intensive training on this process step by step is inside of The Visibility Lounge.

I'll break down every step of the process + show you my affiliate funnel step by step.

I'll also give you example graphics, newsletters + ideas so you can implement this right away.

Feel free to join here, we'd love to have you!

To recap, adding an affiliate income stream to your business is extremely cost effective. And, if you focus on treating it as another leg of your business, you will see amazing results.

If you're ready for the next step of your career, join a community of 100+ entrepreneurs who are taking action with their visibility + seeing huge results! Join here.

Comment below: What affiliate product will you be promoting? ⤵️

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