Start Making Money as an Affiliate with These 7 Steps Paige Brunton-min.jpg

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A lot of entrepreneurs have a massive untapped revenue potential at their fingertips just waiting to be noticed.

There's not a lot of legitimate "fast & easy" options to generate revenue in a business, but this one might be as close as it gets.

So often I meet entrepreneurs who have built up some audience, 500 subscribers, 1,000 subscribers even 8,000 subscribers and when I ask them how they've monetized it, they often list 1:1 services or extremely low-priced digital products.

What you should know is, that there's a range of methods to monetize an audience, and they fall on a spectrum:

⏳DIFFICULT & time-consuming <——————> Fairly easy & quick 😇

⏳ ⏳ ⏳ 1:1 services would fall at the harder end of the spectrum.

⏳⏳ Hosting in-person events & retreats too.

⏳ 😇 Then we have group coaching programs which are more towards the middle of the spectrum….

😇 😇 After that comes creating your own digital product and launching it yourself.

😇 😇 😇 Then, on the “fairly easy & quick” end of the spectrum, we get to affiliating for other aligned businesses’ digital products.

I remember when I launched my first digital product ( having come from just offering 1:1 services previously), I knew nothing about launching or selling via a sales page instead of on personalized consultation calls.

Everyone spoke about "launching" and how exhausting launching was, and I remember thinking…

"What does a launch actually consist of?"

"What am I supposed to do during a launch?"

“Why are they apparently so emotionally brutal & challenging?”

That's why affiliating for aligned digital products is such a beautiful, relatively fast & easy revenue stream.

Affiliating makes a ton of sense for you if you're in one of two situations:

1. You've never launched before and have no clue how to do it.

When you affiliate for someone else's digital product, you get to be a part of the launch. You get to watch it from the inside, see behind the curtain at what happens when, and how it's all set up and managed.

It's like being an apprentice or working for a company that’s in the same industry that you one day want your own company to be in.

You can't get a better education on how to do something than from the inside.

So if you're considering launching your own product one day but are confused as to what implementing that would actually look like, , I highly recommend affiliating for a product your audience would love and which is run by someone who knows how online sales & launching is done.

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2. You have empty spaces in your promotional calendar but don't want the work-load of running your own launch.

Running your own launches takes a LOT of work. Plus, you only have so many offers & products. You likely don't have one for every month of the year.

We affiliated for other businesses products this year for exactly this reason.

We launch 4 times a year, and each launch takes about a month in total. So that means that we had 8 months of unfilled space. These 8 months naturally be lower revenue months than the launch months.

My audience had also asked me to make a courses on branding and offering high-priced web design services, neither of which I felt like I was the right person to create.

So that's when the idea struck: I could find complimentary entrepreneurs who had programs in these areas and promote their launches in my otherwise "off" months from selling anything.

Affiliating for these things typically involved scheduling a handful of pre-written emails. So while it was some work, it was nowhere near the number of hours it takes to run a launch of our own or make our own product.

So no matter if you want to learn how to launch or if you just want to fill in months where you don't have a product of your own to sell, affiliating for others can be a beautiful, simple revenue booster.

Of course you’ll need to affiliate for the right product to make this a significant revenue generator.

Here’s a quick list of things that might NOT be a good use of your time because the commission is well…meh.

Affiliating for a few books or camera gear via Amazon.
Promoting software where the commission is $10 a month
Canva, Notion or website templates where the commission is also about $10 a month.

You need to find a product where the commission is genuinely fabulous.

We have an affiliate program for my courses, Square Secrets™ & Square Secrets Business™, and one affiliate last year added $50k to her revenue, just from our affiliate courses. And of course that's because, commission from a higher priced course like ours is a lot better than Amazon, softwares, Canva or website templates, etc.

Pssst… want more details on how to become an affiliate with us? Read all about it here!

But what does affiliating actually entail? And how do you do it correctly so it's the revenue generator you were hoping for?

Let’s break it down step by step.

Step 1. Pick the right thing to affiliate for.

Who is your audience?
What do they need?
What have they been asking for that you don't want to or don't have the skills or interest to create?

If they haven't been asking, get asking them, what they're up to, who they are, what their dreams are.

For me, my web designer audience had wanted to learn about brand design, coding, copywriting, and high-end designer services. So I knew if I chose to affiliate for anything in those areas, my audience would be thrilled!

Another factor is price.

As an affiliate, you're getting a percentage of the sale ( typically anywhere from 15% to 30% of a sale) but not the total revenue. So the thing you affiliate for NEEDS to be higher priced to make it worthwhile.

Now maybe you’re thinking:

"But Paige….My audience would never buy something for $1,000 or $5,000!"

But the second you DO sell something for that price you’ll realize you were telling yourself an untrue story the whole time which was actually just holding you back.

Tip: If you're afraid to create a higher-priced digital product, but want to test if your audience would buy it, doing so as an affiliate is an incredible method.

Now one mental hangup you might get stuck on is:

"Should I affiliate for something I haven't bought myself?"

I get your thought process there…that it could feel out of integrity.

But I have a LOT of thoughts on this one. Integrity is extremely important to me in life & business.

I absolutely require that everything I affiliate for has been evaluated by myself. But it doesn't necessarily mean I bought it as a consumer.

For example, my audience always wants to learn how to code and asks for a coding course recommendation.

The thing is, my brain is NOT wired for code. Every time I’ve tried to learn coding, I was just not into it.

So I never bought a full course on it because it just wasn't my cup of tea.

But my audience kept asking, so I considered what I could do. In that case, I chose the coding course that I had consistently heard great things about and inquired with the creator if I could take a look inside the course to ensure it's really up to snuff. Once I’d assessed its quality, I decided I would be open to affiliate for it.

That to me feels fully within integrity. I've made sure the product is legit and I can genuinely give it my recommendation while serving my audience, even if they have an interest that maybe isn't my thing.

I'm always extremely honest in my product recommendations. If I've taken it and bought it with my own money, I say it. If I am recommending it because my people kept asking for it but it's not my thing, I say that too.

Additionally, there might be things you're super into but you know your audience wouldn't be, and I can honestly say I just don't think it's worth the time & effort to affiliate for it.

Audience alignment is the #1 factor that determines success when affiliating for something.

Step 2. Apply to affiliate.

Often you'll see in a site footer a page called "affiliate". This then gives the details on the program and a short application. If not, you can always email the business to check if they're open to you affiliating!

Step 3: One-on-one call with the affiliate manager.

From here, if you apply to affiliate with us, we offer each approved affiliate the chance to get on a 1:1 call with our affiliate manager where we help educate the affiliate on our launches as well as what exactly their involvement & work in the affiliate program would look like.

We also share our best tips for being successful as an affiliate, ensuring you know our product backward & forwards so you can be confident promoting it to your audience.

Our affiliate manager also works with each affiliate to figure out the best angle & marketing message that will work for their audience.

For example, we have people who are virtual assistant course creators who affiliate for us. And so the marketing message there is:

"Have you been a VA for a while and are looking to up your income? Being a web designer is a natural next step..etc.."

Or we even have had military spouse influencers be our affiliate and their marketing message is totally different & tailored to their audience. It's going to look something like:

"Need a job which you don't need to rebuild all over again when you change bases every 3 years? Here's a look at some well-paid online jobs…”

(and one of those jobs is web design of course.)

We have had successful affiliates in a range of different industries (Some of which at first glance might not have appeared to make sense). So honestly, the way you message and lead into it is so key!

We have affiliates who are web designers themselves, as it seems aspiring designers always look to and follow successful designers. So if you're a designer, you might be surprised how many fellow aspiring designers are in your audience!

We also have course creators in "adjacent" industries affiliate for us.

For example course creators who teach:

Copywriting
VA skills
Brand design
Canva design

. Their students likely want to add on complimentary skills to increase their offerings, so these affiliates have done really well.

Also surprising: we didn't know how well it would work out before we tried it, but we have a lot of website template shops and even website software companies affiliate for us and they've done super well .

We also have the military spouse influencers & mom influencers affiliate for us too, as we find our students are often new moms or women who need flexible jobs (as military spouses do).

So while it's key to ensure the product perfectly aligns with your audience, I also encourage you to get creative in your thinking.

We tested out affiliates in some pretty random niches and some turned out to be really successful. So you might be surprised what your audience might be down for!

Step 4. Orientation call.

We always do a call a month out from the launch to basically give our affiliates a little launching masterclass and teach them what they need to know to successfully launch both with us, and for themselves when they're doing their own launches.

We also give updates on if anything has changed between this launch and the last one if affiliates are returning (which for us is honestly most affiliates!)

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Step 5. Launch time!

About a month or two out from the launch, we provide our affiliates with promo materials- the most important of which being email templates.

These pre-written emails are yours to do as much or as little customization with as you please.

We find our most successful affiliates are the ones who don't wait until launch to prep and send these, but instead to pre-schedule them.

We give affiliates our launch calendar which details when each email should go out so the email content aligns with what we're speaking about in that phase of the launch.

Honestly, if you want to do a simple launch, it legit can be as easy as that.

We have affiliates who just take a single work day to customize & schedule their emails, and that's legitimately all the work they need to do to make a handful of sales and $7k in revenue.

Our team is responsible for:

The launch tech.
Customer service
Hosting a live event..
Creating and updating our course.

Which again, is why I love to fill in non-launch months with affiliating. it's just so much easier than making & launching your own product!

We do have affiliates who get more ambitious on their promo.

Some will pre-record an episode for their YouTube channel or podcast. Others will do a live with us on Instagram during the launch, or create & post content on social.

No matter what extra steps they take, we always tell our affiliates that email is the most effective, so if you do nothing else, just schedule the emails!

Step 6. Attend the launch debrief.

For us at the PB Team, any affiliate who has brought in 20+ leads will be invited to our launch debrief call.

On the call, we share all of the stats, revenue numbers and lessons learned from our launch.

These things are invaluable and one of our affiliate’s favourite aspects of affiliating for us because there's so much gold in seeing what works for others.

Step 7. Track the stats & ROI.

When we affiliate for something, we ideally want our ROI to be around 1:20.

Basically, however much we spent internally on our team working at their hourly rates to prep for the affiliate launch, we want to 20x the return on that.

We also note:

How well our audience responded to this product?
What was the conversions like to the pre-launch event?
Were there any things we'd do differently next time?

As an affiliate, your job is basically to get leads into the launches free pre-launch event. After that, it’s up to the business owner to build the know-like-and-trust factor and ultimately convert the sale.

So make sure you're picking the right partner who has a track record of serving well, converting. And of course, has a high enough price point that if you made 15-30% commission, it still would be well worth your time.

Also please know: no matter if you are doing this to dip your toes into the launching water OR are trying to fill in some quiet month in your business revenue, this is genuinely one of the best & easiest revenue streams out there for you!

If you want to take a peek at my affiliate program and see if it might be aligned with your audience, head over to paigebrunton.com/affiliates to read all the details on mycourses, affiliate program, and student testimonials.

Definitely do apply if you think your audience would be the right fit for it! We’d love to hear from you! 🥰

Start Making Money as an Affiliate with These 7 Steps