$10,000/Month Case Study for Affiliates AND Product Creators
I’m going to show you how one affiliate is KILLING it with a relatively small list…
…and then I’m going to flip this technique on its head and show how you – as a product creator – can use this technique to empower your affiliates to double and even TRIPLE the sales they make for you.
Melissa is an affiliate who is quietly making in excess of $10,000 a month after expenses by promoting affiliate products.
She works about 10 hours a week to do this.
And her list isn’t all that big, either.
What’s even more amazing is her technique can be copied by almost any affiliate, and it can also be turned upside down by product creators to double and even triple the sales they get from affiliates.
Here’s how it works:
Melissa builds her list by giving away great information to people via social media. She started out using only free, organic methods, and once she was earning in excess of $2,000 a month she started experimenting with highly targeted paid ads using small budgets to see what would work for her.
The key to her success is she writes short, highly targeted reports that she gives away.
She never calls them ‘reports,’ though, because for some people that word means low quality and even sales pitch.
Instead, she calls them things like, “publications,” “cheat sheets,” “manifestos,” “dispatches,” “digests,” “releases” or “bulletins” (for breaking information) or simply “PDFs”.
When she advertises these things, she always makes them sound like they are brand new and the finishing touches are being added right then and there. The PDF itself will be released within the week, and by giving their best email address, the person will be the first to receive updates as well as the PDF itself the moment it is released to the public.
This is a great twist that increases both subscribers and anticipation for the report. New subscribers then receive daily updates for approximately 5 days until the report is ‘released’ and sent to them. By then they are worked up to a fever pitch, anticipating reading what’s in the report.
It’s an awesome idea that for her works much better than immediately sending the report the moment people subscribe.
To increase the anticipation, the new subscribers get updates on ‘breaking information’ being added to the report in the form of teasers and bullets. Subscribers really feel like they are getting the inside scoop on the topic and they are encouraged to let a friend or two know about this so they can get in on it, too.
Of course, all of this is optional. If you use this technique, you can simply send the report with the first email as most people do and your results will still be good.
The report itself is generally short in length (5 to 15 pages of info) but it is specifically geared to do 3 things:
1: Show the benefits of achieving whatever goal this report is covering. It’s showing how to do something that the reader specifically wants to do. Melissa KNOWS her readers want to achieve this goal because she is very specific in targeting her audience.
She’s not allowing me to share her exact niche here, but I can tell you that Melissa targets a certain specific audience who wants to build a certain specific kind of business online. From what I’ve seen this will work in any niche, large or small, and not just the one Melissa has chosen for herself.
2: In the report Melissa gives outstanding information in short order and without fluff. It’s easy to read and provides steps to accomplishing a specific goal that are immediately actionable and generally unknown to most people.
3: She then sets up the reader to desperately want to BUY a solution rather than doing what the report says to do.
While the report details exactly how others have accomplished the goal (whatever it might be) it tells the reader what to do but doesn’t go into a great amount of detail on HOW to do it.
Most readers won’t even catch on to this fact right away. They’ll simply think this sounds great, but it also sounds like it’s beyond their immediate capabilities, and ‘gee wouldn’t it be nice if there were a shortcut?’
And of course there is – the product Melissa is promoting.
Ta-da!
I should note here that these reports of Melissa’s are evergreen. She’ll promote the same product using the exact same technique for months and sometimes even years. She does update the emails and report if needed, and occasionally she will swap out the product she is promoting for a newer, better product.
Every time she creates a new report, she also sends it out – complete with the preceding emails to ramp up desire – to her current list.
That’s about all there is to her system. Create great content in the form of reports that sell a product, target the right people for the report (and write the report for the right people), build massive anticipation for the report and reap the reward.
In a nutshell: Melissa chooses a product to promote that is a good fit for her list. She creates a report teaching what to do to get the result promised in the product, and then she shows how the product makes the entire process so much easier. She sends the report to both her list as well as to new subscribers she gets with cheap, targeted ads on social media.
And of course she also follows up with an email sequence that dives deeper into the topic and again promotes the product.
I almost wish I could make this sound more complicated, but it really is that easy.
Now then… let’s FLIP this system on its head and see what happens.
For Product Creators
You’ve got the product.
You’ve got affiliates.
But… are those affiliates doing everything they can to promote your product?
Probably not. But WHY not?
Because they don’t know how.
99.9% of affiliates are not Melissa.
They aren’t creating a dynamite report that sells the product.
Most affiliates are simply sending out an email or two or three and then moving on to the next product.
And that is why your sales aren’t half what they could be.
Should you encourage them to use Melissa’s system?
Yes! And no.
Yes, in that you should most definitely encourage them to use the free report to promote your product.
BUT… and it’s a very BIG but…
You simply cannot expect 99.9% of affiliates to take the time to write a report detailing the benefits of getting your product’s results, showing what needs to be done to get those results and then promoting your product as THE easier and faster solution.
They won’t do it because it’s too easy for them to simply bounce from product to product, getting as many sales as they can squeeze out in a day or two and then moving on to the next hot thing.
Most affiliates don’t have time to write reports, or they don’t know HOW to write reports that sell, or let’s be honest…
…they’re too lazy. And that’s okay. We’re all lazy when it comes to doing things we don’t really want to do.
But what if YOU create the report for them?
Most product owners slap together a small handful of emails for their affiliates and then call it good.
And then they wonder why they don’t get more sales.
But if you provide a complete copy and paste system for the emails and the report, giving affiliates the tools they need to properly promote your product, I guarantee 3 things will happen:
- You’ll get more affiliates
- Those affiliates will spend more time promoting your product
- You will get more sales
And here’s how you put the entire process on steroids:
You provide not just reports, but REBRANDABLE Reports that already contain the affiliate’s info and links, so that the report looks like it’s coming directly from the affiliate.
This method is a goldmine that has been working for 20 plus years.
The odd thing is, very few product creators do this. Which means there is a HUGE gap in the market that you can readily exploit to make more sales of YOUR products.
I think one of the reasons product creators haven’t been doing this is because they simply didn’t have the tools to make it happen without a lot of extra work.
And it’s understandable.
Because who wants to explain to affiliates over and over again how to rebrand a report by hand, inserting their info and links into it and then turning it into a PDF?
Or worse yet, what product owner wants to brand each report for each affiliate by hand while the affiliate waits? And then because the affiliate had to wait, they wound up promoting something else instead of your product because it took you too long to get to their request because you had a 100 others waiting for the same thing?
We all know what a pain it is to set up the affiliate page in the first place and to get all the affiliate tools on the same page in a coherent and usable fashion.
And affiliates don’t like to have to insert their link in every email and every promo tool, one by one. Having to do that only discourages them further.
Then they have to go get link shorteners if they don’t want their affiliate link to show, and it all just gets crazy complicated before you even get to the report which has to be rebranded for each affiliate.
So yes, I see why product owners haven’t been using reports, even though it can mean a lot more sales of their products.
Fortunately, there’s now a much easier solution that I’ll cover in just a moment.
First, a recap of what to do to help your affiliates make more (LOTS more) sales for you:
- You create a Rebrandable Report and emails for your affiliates to use in promoting your product. The emails build anticipation for the report to come, as well as encouraging them to revisit the report after they receive it.
- You find a way to automatically rebrand your reports and emails for your affiliates and JV Partners, as well as set up your ‘tools and resources page’ with as little hassle as possible.
- You profit.
Until now, #2 above has been the sticking point.
How do you set up your affiliate page without a lot of time and hassle, while also incorporating a rebrander for your reports and giving your affiliates one-click-ability to insert their links into all of your tools?
Fortunately I’ve got the solution.
It’s called WP Affiliate Surge, and it does everything a product creator needs to drag and drop affiliate tools, embed affiliate links with one click AND rebrand all of your reports with affiliate links for every single affiliate you have.
Bam!
Did you see what I just did there?
The second half of this article is a good example of how the entire report system works.
First, I talked about why it’s great to provide your affiliates with ALL the tools they need, including rebrandable reports.
Then I showed why product owners aren’t doing this – because until now it’s been a giant pain in the neck.
And finally, I gave you the easy solution – a new Word Press plugin called WP Affiliate Surge.
Ha!
Yes, I’m pretty proud of myself, but not half as proud as you’ll be when you start to see your affiliate sales DRAMATICALLY increase.
And I’ve left one of the best parts for last.
Because there is a HUMUNGOUS benefit for your affiliates that we haven’t even discussed yet, a benefit that will have them clamoring to get your rebranded reports and distribute them like CRAZY, and it’s this:
Affiliates aren’t dummies.
They KNOW the money is in the LIST.
And the bigger and better their list, the more money they can make not just on one sale, but long term.
Your rebrandable reports can act as the affiliates’ LEAD MAGNETS, helping them to build their list every time they give away a copy to someone new.
One of the biggest obstacles to list building is having a relevant, current, high value lead magnet that people want bad enough to hand over their email address to get it.
Your free rebrandable reports will be your affiliates lead magnets.
And better still, those reports will then help the affiliates to make sales of your products, thereby sending you new buyers for your own list.
This is truly a win-win-win situation all around, with customers getting great value in the free reports and your products, affiliates building their lists and making more sales, and you selling more of your products and growing your buyers list.
And getting started is as easy as going here and signing up: