Why I Love Affiliate Marketing

Bonjour, bonsoir, hello, it's Mary Schiller. How are you today? I am really excited to be with you because in this video I'm going to tell you why I love affiliate marketing and why I am now making it the centerpiece of my business. As I am recording this, I have been a professional coach and course creator for several years. But I realized that affiliate marketing is something that I have done off and on throughout my entire business, and I really love it. I started to wonder, why am I not doing more of that? Because it's so much fun. So I have decided to dive in and make that the centerpiece of what I do in my business. If you're not familiar with affiliate marketing, let me explain it very simply. It's really so cool because— and I'll get into this in a second— because it means that you found something that you really love and you want to share it with other people. And you have an arrangement with the person who has provided the product or service or program that you'll receive a commission if someone buys their thing, their wonderful thing, through a special link that you give out. That's essentially what it is. So you can probably already tell that one of the biggest reasons that I love affiliate marketing and why I am going to be emphasizing it in my business going forward is because it is so much fun. It is so much fun to share something that I love with you and with anyone else in the world who might find benefit from it. It's almost like when you find something really cool and you can't wait to tell all your friends about it and you're like, oh my gosh, you have to see this really amazing thing. It's made a big difference to me. It's helped me in all of these different ways and I'd love to tell you about it and see if it's helpful to you too. And it's not like spammy or scammy or anything like that. It's not like one of these things where you're trying to recruit people into some business opportunity. It's not like that. It's really more about saying, I found something that's been valuable to me and I'd like to share it with you. And if it's valuable to you, that's amazing. And I will earn a commission if you decide to buy it. But there's no pressure. I'm just telling you about it. And that's what's so wonderful. It's not heavy-duty sales, which I know is hard for a lot of people, especially if you're new to online business. That whole sales aspect of things can be really tricky for a lot of people, and this isn't about selling, it's about sharing. Another thing that I love about affiliate marketing and why I want to do so much more of it is because it creates this place, this space of generosity and reciprocity. And so there's such a reputation in online business and internet marketing and all that stuff of, you know, we're trying to reel people in and we're trying to take something from them and, and all of this attitude. And that has just never been where I'm coming from. But affiliate marketing to me is the complete opposite of all of that. It's about really being able to cultivate this environment of generosity. I am sharing something with you that has been helpful to me, and in turn, someone is being generous with me by giving me a commission if someone invests in themselves and buys their program, product, or service. And so when you do affiliate marketing, it's like your whole life is now based on this beautiful notion of everyone being generous, everyone sharing, everyone being very open about what is going on here. Because when you're doing affiliate marketing, you need to be upfront and you need to say If you decide to buy through my link, I will earn a commission. So there is no sneakiness going on here. And I just find it to be a very refreshing and beautiful space to be in all the time. It's low pressure. As I said a moment ago, it's really fun. And I'm going to talk about this next. It's also really easy, especially if you're a beginner in the online business space. All right, so let's talk about another reason why I love affiliate marketing, which is the fact that it is an incredibly easy business to start for beginners. Why? Because you don't need to create anything to sell. In my many years of experience as a business coach, I've seen firsthand that for many people, it's really not so easy to create something to sell. As a coach. You may be struggling to put an offer together. You may believe that you need to create an online course in order to be successful. I'm all for those things. There's nothing wrong with all of that. But I also know that for many people, that is what stops them in their tracks is they don't know how to create these things. They don't know how to put offers together. They don't know how to do a launch of something, there's a lot of moving parts. Whereas in affiliate marketing, there aren't many moving parts at all. Not at all. Let me explain what the moving parts are. You find something that you want to promote. That's pretty easy. And I recommend that you promote something, as I said a moment ago, that has meant something to you, that you have really found valuable. That makes it really easy. Most of the time, people online have some sort of affiliate program. You can go to their website and you can see usually there's a link somewhere that says affiliates or something like that, and you can sign up. And if they don't have something like that, you can always write to them and ask. So first, find something to promote. The second thing is that you want to set up a way for people to hear about it. And I recommend doing a page on a website. You can do this very simply. I will share that in another video where people can opt in with their email address so that you can get in touch with them and see how they're doing and follow up and then direct them to the place where they can discover this wonderful thing that you're sharing with them. I'll show some examples here in just a moment of what this setup looks like for me. But before I show that to you, I want to make one more point here, which is that another reason I love affiliate marketing, especially for beginners, but even for me, is because it really requires just one skill. When you're trying to do all the things, when you're trying to do all the creating, when you're trying to do all the coaching, when you're trying to do all the marketing, all the selling, that is a whole lot of skills that you have to be developing. Whereas affiliate marketing only requires you to develop one skill, and that's marketing. And you can do this marketing in any way that you want to. You can make videos like this one. You can go on whatever social media platform you love. You can do it offline. You can do the marketing in any way that is really fun for you. And to me, that is so great because if we are focused on one skill set and developing that one skill set, we're going to get really good at it. And I recommend if you're just starting out and you want to use one platform, pick the one that is the easiest that seems the most interesting, that seems the most fun. From my experience, I know that video works well, but you may not want to be on video. You might want to write a blog, or you might want to write on Medium, or you might want to have a Patreon page. Whatever it is for you, start there. But I recommend keeping it simple and starting with just one platform to begin with because you don't want to diversify too much when you're just getting started. So let me show you really quickly what my setup looks like, and you won't believe how simple this actually is. Okay, we are at MaryShiller.com, and you'll see that this is a very simple page. Now I use a service called Leadpages, but you can use anything you want. If you already have a WordPress site, you can do that. If you have some sort of an email service like ConvertKit or MailChimp where you can create what's called a landing page with a form like this, whatever service you have, use that. And if you don't have a service, yet, I invite you to click the link in the description to come over into my Facebook group and I can answer your questions. So all I have here is a very simple page with a place for people to put in their name and email address to learn more about a step-by-step blueprint that's helping me to create a 6-figure online business the easier way. So once they do that, then they are redirected to a page where I have a short video welcome. And when they reach this page, they'll watch this short video welcome, and then they will click this button, which will take them over to the program that I am promoting as an affiliate. And that is it. Now, you may be asking yourself, why do I need 2 different pages? Why can't I just give people the direct link to the thing that I am promoting? And what I want to say there is that that's really not acceptable in most circumstances, especially on social media. Many of the social media platforms frown upon that. They don't want you to give out that direct affiliate link. So I recommend that you set up a very simple page as I just showed you here. And also that means that you're now connected to this person. I have a very simple follow-up email sequence so I can check in and see if people have taken advantage of what I shared with them, my program that I am promoting as an affiliate. And you can start to build a relationship with people. So don't necessarily just give out your direct affiliate link. You want to have just this very simple 2-page website setup and connect it to an email service. As I said, I use ConvertKit for this to follow up with them and see how they're doing. That's all I have for you today. Thank you so much for watching. Click the link in the description to discover the program that I am using to get my affiliate business off the ground and up and running fast. I know you'll love it. We can go on this journey together. Thank you so much. Talk to you again soon. Bye for now.