Affiliate Commissions & KSTs 👥

Welcome to the Hustle and Flowchart podcast with your hosts, Matt Wolf and Joe Fear.

Hey, welcome back. This is episode number two of the. What's the name of the podcast again?

The Muscle and Crow Fart.

Hey.

The Hustle and Flowchart podcast.

See, you thought you were on the wrong podcast for a second, didn't you? You almost turned this off. Don't turn this off. Yeah, so it's the Hustle and Flow Chart podcast. And this is Joe Fear.

Hustle.

Middle name Hustle.

Joe Hustle Fear. And I'm Matt Flowchart Wolf.

That's just so wrong. I don't know. Just sounds. Yep. So nickname Hustle Flowchart over there across the desk for me here. And, yeah, so this is second episode of this amazing podcast, and thank you very much for being here. And this is going to be another, what, 15, 20 minutes, what we're shooting for. Yeah, yeah, whatever. Somewhere around there, it's just the two of us. And as we said in the previous podcast, like, we're gonna have. We're gonna have interviewers, and we're going.

Interviewees.

Interviewees. We will be the interviewers.

Yes.

But we basically every. You know, we're gonna. Every episode will have someone who is very talented in their own skill set when it comes to systemizing what they do in a way that you can replicate it. We're gonna pretty much grind them to get some kind of templated approach. Come on, Matt, get your head out of the gutter. We're gonna get some really good templates out of them, so you can then pretty much swipe what they do and implement that for yourself. That's the whole process. That's the whole point of anything we do. That's what we, you know, we write our monthly printed newsletter that gets to you, called the evergreen profits letter.

Egpletter.com.

That'S right. Shameless promotion. But it's just all about exactly that. Systemizing what you have and also implementing systems in your business that you might not have so you can focus on what's working best and then make more money so you could take more time off, because that's a beautiful thing.

Well said. We're going to teach you how to automate shit.

That was not a script. That was amazing. Sorry if it sounds like I have a little in my throat, but I do, so get over it. I'm talking a lot. Matt, what's up with you over there?

Oh, not much. So today we're going to talk a little bit about a framework that we call A kst.

What's a kst, Matt?

KST stands for the Key Step Tutorial.

He had to read that and make sure he said that, right?

I did. I don't have anything in front of me. So yes, we're going to talk about the KST today. Each episode we're going to kind of focus on a different formula or process or aut or some sort of system you can do in your business so that you can start to back yourself out of the day to day business while your business runs for you. Today, the system we're talking about we call the kst and it's something that we go into great depth in our first ever issue of the Evergreen Profits Letter. If you actually go to evergreenprofits.com products you can find any of our back issues. So if you really, really enjoy this KST concept, it's something that we go super in depth. We show case studies, we show step by step processes, we give you templates for it, all that good stuff in issue number one of the Evergreen Profits Letter. All right, so yeah, this is the key Step tutorial.

So yeah, so what you'll hear me. I'm going to be basically the fly on the wall dude that kind of poses some questions to Matt. Because to be honest, Matt is the one that was the genius behind this whole process. And I'll just give you a little bit of background story on it. It's very quick. We basically use this in our business mainly right now to promote affiliate products. So of course affiliate products are something someone else's product or service, mainly a product that you can sell and then earn a commission on. So for us, we sell products online. Typically it's about 50% commission and sometimes those could be pretty fat commissions. For instance, up to like $300 per commission paid to us, which is very true with one of the products that we are promoting currently. And it's, we'll be completely honest, it's one of our biggest moneymakers in our business right now. And it all started from using this type of, this, this framework. Right. And it takes a little time to set up. But I will tell you, if you want some Evergreen, you know, revenue coming in, you obviously pay this up with some, with some paid traffic stuff or whatever traffic generation technique you, you have, maybe even email list, this stuff will pay its dividends for a very long time.

I mean I've got some KSTs in place right now on blogs four or five years ago that I'm still earning affiliate commissions on.

Yeah.

So I mean it's it's, it's, it is an evergreen formula, evergreen process that will continue to work sort of forever for as long as that product is around.

So, so, Matt. So, so what? Let's explain what is a kst?

So KST stands for Key Step Tutorial. And essentially the concept is you're going to create a piece of content. Usually it'll be a blog post, but you can do it in like, you know, a YouTube video or, or you know, on medium. Or heck, you can, you could write it into a book if you wanted. There's email, maybe an email too. Yeah, any. You can pretty much use any sort of medium for it. But the concept is you're going to create a tutorial around the product you're trying to sell. So if there's an online software product that you're trying to promote, you can create a tutorial around how to use this software product. Now, the kst, the Key Step Tutorial. The KS of that is a key step. One step from this tutorial. At least one step from this tutorial has to be something that requires them to purchase the product that you're promoting. So let's say, for example, I want to create a key step tutorial on how to plant the perfect tomato garden, for example. Okay. And I'm an affiliate of a shovel company. I want to sell a specific type of shovel. Well, I can create a tutorial on my blog that shows people, here's the type of soil you need, here's the type of seeds you should get, here's how deep to dig it. You go in real depth with a tutorial on how to plant this tomato garden. But one of the steps in this tutorial is you need this specific shovel. If you don't use this shovel, you're not going to be able to get the same results that I just showed you in this tutorial. So make sure you grab this specific shovel, of course, with a link to go buy that shovel, you know. So one step from your keystep tutorial needs to be get this product and this product is what makes the whole thing work. All right? So that is the concept of a keystep tutorial. Another example, we've done this a lot. We used to promote a product called Easy Video Suite by Josh Bartlett. So we, you know, we promoted that quite a bit back in the day. He's got a new video platform coming out soon. But, you know, let's say I wanted to do a tutorial about how to get a membership site online. Alright? So I'm Going to teach you a step by step tutorial on how to get your first membership site live. Well, step one might be, you know, go and install WordPress on your site. Step two might be install this specific theme on your site. Step three might be Grab Easy Video Suite. Step four might be embed the videos inside the members area with this Easy Video Suite tool that you just grabbed. Step five, use this plugin to protect the content. Notice there's a couple steps in there that require Easy Video Suite to make this whole process work and come together.

So you're basically saying name the specific offer, whatever thing that they need. Correct. So within that blog post or email, you kind of, you kind of assume and obviously you're not assuming that they have it, but you're assuming that they need to do some research and figure out, oh, what is this Easy Video Suite that you speak of?

Exactly. Exactly. Well, I don't assume that they have it, but I always write the tutorial as if they did. Right, right. So I'll write the tutorial. So kind of going back on what I just said a little bit, I'm going to sort of negate what I just said a little bit. But let's just say, you know, go and install WordPress. Go and install this theme. Go and install this plugin. Use Easy Video Suite to put your videos in the members area and you know, whatever the next step is. But I would just kind of assume they're already using Easy Video Suite. It's just like another step. But you know, psychologically they probably don't have Easy Video Suite and they're, you know, they need that piece of the puzzle. They're gonna probably grab it through my link.

Yeah, so you're pretty much like you're giving them this new idea that they might have before and they're like, but crap, I really need that thing.

Yeah, all of this seems really easy. I can do all that, but it looks like I need this tool to make it work.

Sure, yeah. Yeah, that's amazing. Now what kind of, I guess rattle off some, some, I know you said some examples, but like what kind of businesses can use this and how.

I mean really, you can. I can't think of a business that wouldn't be able to use it. Again, like you said, we use it a lot for affiliate products. So that is kind of our bread and butter of, our business of the moment is using this process for affiliate products. But there's no reason you can't use it for physical products. You know, I just, I gave you an example of a specific shovel brand. There's no reason you can't use it with your service business. For example, let's say I was going to create a tutorial about how to get your podcast online. Well, let's say you have a service that does podcast editing. Well, one of those steps would be, you know, go to, go to Joe's podcastediting.com and, you know, have them edit your podcast. And then I would just kind of move through the tutorial in that way. So, I mean, you could use it. To be honest, I can't think of any business you can't use it for.

Right. So it really doesn't matter. Yeah, affiliate products. It could be your own products. It could be, I would assume, even growing your email list. Like, if you have a sexy enough bribe over there that you're giving away, then of course people are going to want to sign up to your list, which is ultimately really what you want to. Ultimately. But the first thing that you should be doing.

Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, if you want to use a KST to grow your list, you can do that as well. You can, you can definitely have one of the steps be grab this freebie because you're going to grab this checklist because you're going to need it to. To finish this process.

And just, just to tell you too about that whole checklist thing, like for a service business that are in for a very long time, that was exactly how we got people in the door and then we started closing them for, you know, upwards to three to ten grand for animations. And it all started from a simple checklist.

Yeah, that's how you got them on the list. Yeah, I mean, checklists work great, but you know, make sure you're sticking with that KST framework where you. I like to actually list out steps. So if I was going to create a KST right now, I would grab a notepad and I would say, okay, I'm going to write a KST on how to build a membership site. And, and I would just list off every step that I can think of to create a membership site. Right. At this point, I'm not even thinking about where I'm going to insert my affiliate link. I'm just going to list out every step I can think of. And I can almost guarantee one of those steps is going to require the product you're trying to promote. So you'll figure out how to plug it in that way. But having a checklist that they need to opt in for to finish the KST is A great way to build a list as well as, you know, sell your products.

Yeah, it seems like you can go kind of broad with these things. So if you wanted to even like put in multiple affiliate links, you could.

Oh yeah, yeah. We do it all the time. Like going back to that membership example, I can create a kst and I don't like doing it as much with multiple products. I'll explain in a second. But let's just say with a kst.

If I was explaining a membership site, I can say, you know, make sure you go get your Hosting. We recommend HostGator link to HostGator.

Second step, go and install this theme. We really like this theme from ThemeForest. Link to that. Step three, install your videos with Easy Videos suite.

Link to that.

You need wishlist member plugin to protect it. Link to that. And I can have almost every step be an affiliate link to some sort of product. However, I kind of feel like the more products you require them to buy, the further removed they are from actually feeling like they can accomplish that thing.

Right. So the whole idea is give them, give them everything except for just like that. That little thing. Yeah, it makes it just complete and easy for them.

Right. I like to focus on one key step for the most part. If there's multiple key steps. If, let's say there's two key steps that they can't accomplish, usually those two key steps are going to require the same product.

That makes sense.

So I don't like to create a tutorial where they need to go buy five products to complete that tutorial. I want to create a tutorial that makes everything seem super simple except they're just missing this one little piece to finish it.

Okay, so I can see how this works for someone who already has a business. Now explain for someone who doesn't have any online traction, maybe not even a brand online, how could they implement this?

Okay, so that's a really good question. And if you don't have a business or brand online, definitely start with affiliate products. That's probably the lowest hanging fruit. Go find a product that you can get behind. You can even do this on a site like medium or LinkedIn pulse.

So those are like a third party off of your blog, off of your property. It's leveraging someone else's system.

They're external blogs, so it's not like evergreen profits.com it's, you know, medium.com your username. And it's a free blog that you can post stuff on. You can even do WordPress.com as another free blog, doesn't really matter where you host it. So you can create your tutorial on one of those sites and then the next step, if you have no traction at all, run some Google Ads.

You know, I was going to ask about traffic. That was, that was my second part of that question is how, how are we going to get some eyeballs to these key step tutorials?

I mean I would run Google Ads. I would try to think of what sort of questions people would ask in Google that would bring up that tutorial. You know, the tomato growing, you know the, that, that exact niche, man, it's a hot niche. People would be typing in how do I grow the best tomatoes? Or something like that. Target some of those keywords on Google.

Find influencers, leverage them on, on Facebook. Google.

Yeah, sure. I mean share it on whatever social media platforms you've already got out there. And you know, for the most part when we do this kind of stuff, we're, we're, we're paid traffic guys. We mostly run Facebook ads and Google Ads.

Yeah. And I wasn't going to sugarcoat that for anyone because let's be honest, like the affiliate products that we promote, it doesn't mean that we always have an email list or a big following that's in that niche. We're being very, it's not even that it's creative, but really we're leveraging an existing audience and in this case we're just leveraging paid audiences. And so we're, you know, we're, we're going after competitors, we're going after that actual.

The brand's name or maybe the topic of the brand. Whatever the solution they're trying to solve, like those are the types of things we're starting with and then doing stuff like retargeting, for instance. Yeah, absolutely. On Facebook.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean we'll probably do a full on episode in the future all about paid traffic strategies. But that's a pretty in depth topic. But I mean, ideally you're finding and promoting a product. Let's say you're doing an affiliate thing. You're going to want to find a product where you're getting a pretty healthy commission so you're not too scared to run ads to it. For example, our sort of core products that we promote, usually our commissions are somewhere in the range of 300 to $500 when we promote these products.

And that's for basically that margin.

Yeah. So we can, we can essentially run up to, you know, $499.99 in you know, in paid traffic for a five something we get $500 commissions on and.

Still be in profit technically.

Question. Because so really fast and then I think I don't know what we're at on time wise here. I didn't start my stopwatch. But.

So the structure of these posts. So an example, could you point them to an example of what this looks like?

Yeah. So there's. If you go to Evergreen, I think it's evergreenprofits.com sellingwithwebinars. There's an example of a key step tutorial. It actually promotes WebinarJam, which is a webinar software. But basically that tutorial will teach you how to set up your first webinar. And you know, one of the steps in that webinar, in that process is you need to have this, this webinar platform that we recommend. So that, that would be a good example. You know, I'll make sure there's a link in the show notes to that kind of stuff.

Well, I just wanted to say because and this is something we wrote in the letter, but excuse me, is like you, you did this back. What I think you wrote here in 2013 is the first time I think you experimented with this. That actually got some traction with GetResponse and AWeber. So comparing autoresponders.

Yeah, I mean that's not a kst. That's a completely different system.

But. Oh yeah, you're right.

Oh well.

But either way, like what you're doing, I mean it's an example, it's another similar example of an affiliate type of blog post.

Right, right.

That kind of you're doing in a crafty way that.

Yeah, I mean it's another type of blog post that promotes an affiliate product. That one I got a little excited. I'm sorry, that one, that one was more of an SEO play where we were driving a lot of, you know, we figured out how to rank for some, some good keywords for that one.

But the beautiful thing is that's what exactly what these things are. These things can be produced into. And this is what our specialty how Evergreen profits we really do our SEO is diversifying that content all over the place. Right, right. And taking what you created in this KST blog post and creating into a video or a slideshare deck or, or an email. You know, anything that you can recreate this thing into various of types of content types that you know, don't, don't keep doing work. But all that stuff's great for SEO and, and you know Just gets that KST out there and more eyeballs.

Yeah, definitely.

Awesome, man. Anything else that I should be asking you?

I think we, we pretty much covered it all. But if you want to really, really dive into this KST process and actually dive into that process that Joe was sort of hinting at with that other affiliate promotion, we really, really dive into this in issue number one of the Evergreen Profits letter. So if you go to evergreen profits.com products, you can find all of our back issues there. But the kst, that whole process is mapped out in issue number one with case studies, with a step by step action plan, with templates that you can actually use in your business, as well as the exact affiliate strategy that we use. Joe was sort of hinting at with getresponse versus Aweber. We made a blog post that I wrote it back in 2013. We're recording this in 2017 and as of today still generates good recurring commission sales. And we map out that whole process.

I think he said it's generating like good 600.

600 bucks a month.

Per month.

Yeah, yeah, that's what that process. So that, that whole thing is mapped out.

A couple car payments right there. Not too bad.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that whole process is mapped out in that issue number one. So if you grab issue number one, you'll get all the details about all that, plus a few other little affiliate marketing strategies that we really like to use in our business that can be applied in non affiliate businesses as well.

And that's the thing. Yeah. Then that's what I wanted to preface with this whole thing is like, even though we're talking about affiliate marketing here or big products or other stuff, but affiliate marketing can be used in any, any business, brick and mortar, anything. I mean, my CrossFit gym has affiliate marketing set up with Rogue, which they sell weights and all these other physical products, but they get a cut. So it's like, you know, you can just, just get a little crafty with this stuff and you can create a whole new income stream. And that's exactly what that EGP letter is all about. So for sure, check it out and we will talk to you in episode three coming out soon. Peace. Bye.

Hey, thanks so much for tuning into this episode of the Hustle and Flowchart podcast. Now if you don't know already, myself and my partner Joe Fear, and every single week we put together this killer weekly newsletter that's completely free. If you go to the Weekly Prophet.com you can get on this weekly newsletter. And what we do with this newsletter is we scour the Internet. We read every piece of content, listen to blog posts, check out new software and tools, and we distill down the best of the best into a weekly newsletter and deliver it directly to your inbox every single week. So head over to theweeklyprophet.com and make sure you're signed up to receive that weekly newsletter. You're going to love it. Thanks so much again for listening to the Hustle and Flowchart podcast. We'll see you in the next one.