Today’s Quote: Affiliate marketing is an excellent opportunity if you truly believe in the value of the product you’re selling. Because many times, you can make money off of something you would probably recommend anyway. – Neil Patel
Welcome to another episode of the podcast that teaches you how to be a ridiculously good virtual assistant.
Today I am going to talk about affiliate marketing – or referral marketing if you prefer to call it that. If your motivation for doing it is right, it can be a very lucrative way to add some revenue in your VA business every month.
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Connect with Tracey D’Aviero, VA Coach and Trainer
Episode Notes:
Finding extra revenue streams for your VA business is a great way to augment your income every month without taking on more client work.
There are a lot of ways you can bring extra revenue in, but one of the simplest ways is affiliate marketing.
Today I’ll share what it is, how it works, and how you can start doing it today to create anew revenue stream.
Affiliate marketing isn’t complicated. Essentially you refer people to someone’s product or service, and if they buy it, you earn a commission.
That is as simple as it is.
You would be called their affiliate or their referral partner.
I actually prefer the term referral partner because it makes more sense – you are referring people to someone else’s product or service.
So you can earn money without doing anything but recommending something to others.
Why is it a good idea for VAs
It helps you earn income without doing more client work, as I’ve said
It’s obviously quite flexible – if you aren’t promoting a specific launch or event, then you can set it up to post automatically on your social media, leave a link in your newsletter or on your website, and be promoting it all the time.
It can even easily add to your revenue so that you have a cushion should you lose a client if you are promoting something that has a high affiliate commission.
You can also use it as a service for your clients – when you understand the ins and outs of affiliate marketing, you can help your clients get set up to do the same thing with their business.
As always, we should start with doing it ourselves and then move on to doing it for our clients.
How it works
The main piece of the referral is being able to track your referral, and that’s through your affiliate link
You need to use a unique link so that the tracking connects someone to you.
This usually requires getting set up in their affiliate system with a username and password.
You log in to their system and you can see your commission setup and percentage, your tracking reports and your commissions.
Most system have a unique URL for each product or service they offer, so it can get tricky to manage everything, but it’s not difficult if you are only an affiliate for a few people.
As I mentioned earlier, if you have a main or default affiliate link, that can be really handy to guide people to someone’s stuff anytime.
A tool I love to use is Pretty Link – which is a WordPress plugin that helps you make just that – pretty links A lot of affiliate links are really ugly, full of letters and numbers.
So what I tend to do is to create a pretty link like yourvamentor.com/tracey and then I put in the affiliate link that I want it to refer to. The nice thing about pretty link is you can redirect it to whatever you want at any time.
So if the person is doing a launch, you can redirect the pretty link to that URL for a few weeks and then back to your default link – and you don’t have to update any of your scheduled posts. It’s quite efficient and you can always remember the link if you use a naming convention for that person or company. yourvamentor.com/bluehost etc.
Commissions
And percentages can vary as well, anywhere from 10% to 50% is perfectly normal.
Usually the higher percentage comes when you are promoting a special event or launch and sending a lot of people their way.
Or maybe you are a speaker on their event, that’s when a 50% commission on an upgrade to VIP is common.
Whatever the commission, the system tracks it all so you can see what you are owed and how your referrals are doing.
Bluehost has a great commission payout of $65 per referral – I love it when people sign up using my affiliate link. I don’t have to promote it all over the place, but I earn money every time someone signs up with it. I use Bluehost as a server, so it’s authentic for me to promote them. More on that later.
Payouts
Payouts are most commonly issued via PayPal. Some people have minimum payouts, maybe $50 so they aren’t sending out $5 worth of commissions every month. If you want to get your commission, make a point of doing some active promoting to bump your numbers up!
People who have very active referral programs usually pay out on the 1st of the month, which is a nice bonus. It’s good motivation when you see commissions comes in, to do a bit more promotion for the coming month.
Promo Materials
The other thing you can usually find in the affiliate portal is promo copy and materials. Graphics, social media posts, promo paragraphs or emails to use to promote the product or service to your people.
Those who want referrals from others often provide everything you need to make it simple for you to promote for them.
The easier they make it, the better off you are.
Remember this if you are doing affiliate work for your clients as a service – the easier you make things for the affiliates, the more they will promote.
So those are the ins and outs of how it all works.
Now to get back to Neil Patel’s advice … you have to believe in what you are telling others about – and although you are earning money to refer it, it should be something you would promote anyway.
When you keep your audience in mind first, then you can refer with integrity. If they’ll love it, then recommend it!
Promote Stuff You Use
One thing that can not be overstated is to be sure that you only promote things that you use or have used.
Promoting services you have not used can come across as slimy or icky.
But if you have a good experience or good results from using something, by all means tell people about it, and use an affiliate link to do so.
And make sure that you are promoting things that are relevant to your own niche – if the people you reach with your content won’t use the service, then it will just be spam to them.
Here are a few samples that I have referred easily before:
Web hosts like Bluehost
Email programs like Mailchimp – note that you must be a Mailchimp user to be a referral partner, which I think is awesome
Trainers – like me! or Freelance University
Associations – like CAVA!
When you focus on things that you have used, you can even write your own content honestly and authentically which, if lots of people are promoting using the other person’s copy (like during a launch). When you know something about the person and the product or service, it comes across very well to write something personal from you.
One of the simplest things to set up is a Resources page on your website, and include all of your affiliate relationships there.
Disclose Affiliate Links
This is actually not just a suggestion, it’s often a requirement in a lot of places that you will be posting it.
Many people know an affiliate link is being used, even if you use a pretty link, but it’s good practice to indicate that you are using one so it’s transparent.
You just need to say (affiliate link), nothing more.
The easiest way to promote something is to write some content about it – reviews, demo, tutorial, tips, and that kind of thing, and then put your affiliate link in the content (disclosing of course).
Track Your Analytics
If you are promoting something because you want to earn commissions, it’s important to watch your analytics.
Watch the clickthroughs, the purchases. And make adjustments to your activities if the results aren’t there, just as if you were doing your own promotion.
If you are getting a lot of clicks but no purchases, your audience might not resonate with that product or service.
If you are not getting clicks, maybe the copy needs help.
There is strategy in everything and when you do something, you want to do it right as often as you can so it continues to work for you.
Affiliate marketing is really simple when you pick just a few good people to promote – and then you can always add on more once you get settled into a routine.
All you have to do is a little research, some setup, a bit of content creation, and then monitor. You can do it! Start with my stuff! 🙂 I’d love to pay you commission to recommend my services to other VAs like you.
Need Some Help?
This is exactly what I help VAs do. As a VA coach and trainer, I help you set yourself up for success, helping you fix the specific things that are going wrong in your business. When we work together either privately or in a group we talk specifically about your business and you – there is no one stop solution for everyone when it comes to service businesses like VA businesses.
I’ll help you get clarity around your issues, and cheer you on as you walk through the steps to fix them.
I’ve helped hundreds of VAs through their challenges and got them on their way to growing their business and the lifestyle that they dream of.
I’d love to do the same for you.
You can work with me privately, or you can join The Virtual Circle, my mastermind group for Virtual Assistants. Check it out at www.YourVAMentor.com/TVC (the virtual circle) – I bet it’s exactly what you need to start running the VA business you dreamed of.
Reach out to me if you are interested.
That’s all I’ve got for you this week, see you next time!