MBA1553 Guest Teacher – Nathan Hirsch – How to Build and Promote an Affiliate Program

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Hey, everybody, I'm Nathan Hirsch. Thank you for joining me today. Today I'll be teaching you how to build and use an affiliate program. For those of you that don't know, I founded freeup.com, that's freeup.com with three E's, and I founded that with $5,000, no outside investment. And we grew it to over eight figures selling it to a company called the Hoth. And a big part of selling that was our affiliate program. We gave out 50 cents for every hour Build Forever. That when sent a client or a freelancer to the site, whenever they use the site, either hiring people or offering services, you would get that kickback. And the last year of free up 2019, we paid out over $250,000 in affiliate money. And I'm going to walk you through the steps that I took and the steps that you can take to have a really good affiliate program for your business. Step one is figure out what percentage you want to give of future sales. A lot of people that are selling courses, it might be 30, 40, 50%.

50.

For me, it was 50 cents for every hour billed to a client, forever. Our fee or our profit was 15% with a $2 minimum per hour. So we were essentially giving up one fourth of that $2 minimum. But figure out a number and it went in doubt. I like to start on the smaller end. What that allows you to do is for bigger influencers, which we'll talk about later. You can increase it for certain partners, certain influencers, and have a little bit of wiggle room. If you're giving everyone your highest affiliate percentage, you can't, you don't really have any wiggle. Increase it. When you do land that special partner, once you figure out what your affiliate is or what your percentage is, step two is to put it on your site. You should have a page dedicated to your affiliate program. Not only that, but you should train everyone on your team, including yourself. To mention, at the end of every client and every partner call every time you talk to one of your clients. Oh, by the way, did you know we had this great affiliate program? This is what it is. It should really be a canned response that you can repeat in your sleep that you say at the end of every phone call. And that's important. We started doing that in the beginning of Free Up. Every single time we would talk to a client, we would mention the affiliate program. And soon enough people started talking about it. If you have a good service and obviously an affiliate program doesn't work unless people actually like working with you, like buying from your company, people will start talking to others. And I remember someone came to me and said, hey, I heard about Free up and I'm from China, or I was at a conference in China and I had never been to China and people were talking about it because they liked the service. And I told every single person about the affiliate program. Next is do research on other people in your industry that offer a service or product but are not competition and they have the same user base or the same ideal client as you do for free up. When we started, we went after Amazon sellers. So what did we do? We looked for Amazon software sellers. So am Amazon service providers that sold software because we didn't sell software and they didn't sell freelance services or VA services. So we would then set up content swaps every quarter, every six months, every year, depending on how often you want to do it and what kind of manpower that you have or woman power that you have to actually write that content. We would do a guest blog post. We would do a YouTube video together. We would promote them to our newsletter. We would get promoted in their newsletter. So they liked it because they would get in front of our audience. We liked it because we would get in front of their audience. Number four is network every day. So one of my tricks to being an entrepreneur is every day I reach out to three new entrepreneurs. I am not selling these entrepreneurs, but I am reaching out to them to learn about their business, see if I can add value in any way. And I always tell them, hey, I'd love to learn about your business. I'd love to tell you about mine. If there's a way to work together or help each other, I'm all about it. And if not, I just love knowing other entrepreneurs. And sometimes you'll be able to introduce them to someone, or sometimes you'll be able to help them with a business problem or add value in a different way. And other times they might be able to help you and give you advice. I like to network with entrepreneurs that are more advanced than me, that have bigger businesses, that have accomplished things that I haven't. And so you get to build that network. And you'll also sometimes mention that affiliate program. And if people like you as a person not being in a salesy way, not when you're trying to pitch them on your business all the time, your affiliate program will slowly start to spread. So all of these, once you've set up the affiliate program, are just layers to be able to spread that affiliate program to different networks. Lastly, and this is the one that everyone tries to jump, jump to, is influencers. And a lot of times when I say influencers, people are trying to go after Gary Vee or Russell Brunson or what I consider tier A influencers. You should really start off looking for micro influencers. Those are people that have communities in the thousands. Maybe they have a 30 per 30,000 person Facebook group, maybe they have a podcast with some with a good decent following. But you kind of want to work your way up. I almost think in my head, hey, I want to start at a tier six or a tier five influencer. And once I've established myself, let's say I'm in the Amazon space or I'm in the marketing space, once I'm working with a lot of Tier 6 influencers, then I'll move up to Tier 5. And once I'm working with a lot of Tier 5, I'll move up to Tier 4 instead of just jumping right to the top and trying to get with the biggest names as soon as possible. Now, when you're working with influencers, the thing to understand is they want to protect their community and they are usually very busy. They have their own business, their own services. So in order to get it in, I like to either start with a networking call. I like to either start with trying to show how I can add value to their community. Maybe I'll say, hey, here are some people that are already in your community that have used my service, that have used my product and they really like it. I'd love to get on a call to see if we can find a way to partner. And once you find a way to partner, that's that the affiliate program goes in there. So if they promote you to their community, they're going to get that kickback. And I always assure them that I'm going to take really good care of them. Now it's very easy to lose this relationship if they promote you to their community. And all of a sudden people are complaining and you're getting bad feedback. They're going to cut you off really quick and you're going to burn that relationship forever. So make sure that you can actually provide a good service. Make sure that you have integrity and you're going to treat their community at a very high level and work your way up the tiers, working with different micro influencers. Have them promote you on social media, have them promote you to their group, their podcast, whatever it is. I have one more, and that is podcasts. Now, there's two ways to go about podcasts. One is going on and being a guest on podcasts, telling your story, your ups, your downs, and at the end, you can tell the host about your affiliate program and get them an affiliate link to post in the show notes. And that's been a good source of growing my businesses. I'm doing it now with my new company, outsource School, going on podcasts and building relationships. And a lot of people go on podcasts. They show up, they give their story, they give their pitch at the end, and all of a sudden that they just sign off and that's it. And they kind of miss out on the networking part. I like to talk to the host ahead of time or afterwards and chat with them, see if I can add value to them, obviously, tell them about the affiliate program, because you're now going to tell everyone that you ever talk to about the affiliate program and build that relationship, and that could even turn into a content partnership, or maybe they could refer you to another podcast or another referral, or you could refer them to another good guest. So it kind of goes both ways and building those relationships and the other way and down the line. I didn't start a podcast until really year four of my business, but if you have a podcast, that's a great way to get with those micro influencers or get with those content partners or even big clients that you can tell about the affiliate program. So you're giving them an opportunity to come on your show, to promote to your audience, and in return, you're kind of, you're building that relationship. And I've had micro influencers, and the thing about influencers is they'll reject you a lot. You can't get frustrated, you can't get upset, you can't get angry. You stay respectful, you continue to show how you add value, and eventually, hopefully, they'll work with you. I've had influence influencers that have taken me years to get into their community, to finally work with them to build trust or even to get on their podcast or whatever it was. So having your own podcast is a quick way to get an in. Because if you're contacting influencers, they're getting contacted all the time. They might be quick to reject you, you might come across as salesy. But if you come in and you just say, hey, I think you'd be a great fit for my podcast and you're bringing them value by getting them in front of your community, that's an in right there. And I've had people that in that rejected me for the first four years and once I had a podcast, they wanted to come on the podcast and that led to relationships. So to review, you want to create an affiliate program, a good percentage that gives you some wiggle room. You want to put it on your site and mention it at the end of every call and train your team to mention every call. You want to build content partnerships with other businesses in the space that are not competitors but have the same audience. You want to network every day and build relationships, adding as much value as possible. You want to start reaching out to micro influencers and trying to build relationships and get in front of their community. And lastly, use podcasts. Either being guests on podcasts or having your own podcast is a great way to spread your affiliate program. Alright guys, that was how to build and promote an affiliate program. If you want to follow me and my other content, you can go to outsourceschool.com, we are launching an education program to help you use virtual assistants. We'd love for you to join our newsletter there. Thanks again for joining me today. Back to Omar.

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What a fantastic lesson by Nathan Hirsch. One of the biggest mistakes people make with Affiliate programs that I've seen in the past is they build out this affiliate program. They have the software in place, they have all the rules and regulations, and they have all the materials that they give their affiliates. But then they don't do anything to promote the affiliate program. They don't mention it to their customers. They don't mention it to their clients. They don't do any kind of webinars to train their affiliates. They don't do contests. They just let it sit there on their website and they don't do anything. You gotta promote it just like any piece of content on your website, like a blog post. If people don't know about it, it doesn't exist and you can't get the benefits from it. So make sure you promote your affiliate program. One of the things that we do as part of the onboarding email sequence that our new customers get is mentioned. Hey, did you know we have an affiliate program? If you love Web Ninja and you happen to share it with your friends and family and maybe some of your clients, why don't you share it with your affiliate link? Setting up an affiliate account takes two minutes. And you can earn commission on every sale, every recurring sale. So it's a great way for you to just introduce a benefit for being a member of your software, of your community, of being a customer of your business. Thank you so much for listening to the 100 RMBA show. If you love what you hear, leave us an iTunes rating and review. We would love to hear from you. Also, don't forget to hit subscribe. By hitting subscribe, you get the next episode automatically. No searching, no wondering what's the latest episode. And if you want to do a huge favor for me personally and for the whole team, share the show with your friends and family. Just share it on social right now, if you can. And let people know why you love the podcast. It's the biggest compliment you can give us. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. A lot of people think that affiliate programs are all about money and that affiliates just want to earn as much money as possible. But in my experience, I would say it's only half about the money. I think the other half is just being a part of an exclusive club. You know, our affiliates get sneak peeks about the latest updates on our software. They get to test things first. They get to have beta access, they get to shoot videos on features that are about to launch. They get an inside look. They get to be a part of a secret club, and it's kind of thrilling for people that are into tech, they're into new products, or they like new things. Gives them a chance to feel like, hey, I know how you know the sausage is made behind the curtain. You know how things kind of done and created before they're launched. So just that aspect alone helps you nurture your affiliates as well as keep them excited and engaged. It's also a great incentive to differentiate yourself from other affiliate programs for other products. Thank you so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

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