Over the years, I’ve made enough affiliate-program mistakes to fill a small handbook… and a few of them were the kind you don’t forget because they come with real consequences. In this episode, I’m continuing the “killer mistakes” series with the stuff that can get you in trouble fast, including one lesson that involved the FTC. I’ll break down what went wrong, what I should’ve done instead, and how you can protect your program while still growing it aggressively.

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Links Mentioned in this Episode

Find Affiliates Now Program

PDF Report (Top Affiliate Program Mistakes and How to Avoid Them)

My #1 Affiliate Recruiting Email

How to Determine Commission Structure

How to Create Swipe Copy for Your Affiliates

Affiliate Promo Plan Template

Affiliate Activation Templates

Facebook Live on Getting Affiliates to Commit

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Previous Episodes of The Affiliate Guy

How to Avoid the Biggest Affiliate Program Mistakes (Part 1)

How to Decide Between an In-House Affiliate Manager and an Agency

How to Help Affiliates Write Emails That Convert

How to Fix the 7 Beliefs That Kill Affiliate Programs

How to Become an Affiliate Manager

How to Build a High-Converting Affiliate Webinar Funnel

How to Avoid the Biggest Affiliate Program Mistakes (Part 2)

Webinars are one of the best ways to get more leads, more sales, and more great affiliates. They’re also an easy way to promote something that benefits your audience. Today, I’ll, share how you can use affiliate webinars to grow your business.. So I did a promo back in the fall of 2001. I think that was a little bit different than what we usually promote. And, you know, it didn’t really like, kind of square up exactly with my niche, you know, And I wanted to do.We did some private content for a small group of our audience where we discussed that, you know, first of all, okay, promoting something that’s a little bit outside of your niche, how do you do that? But how do you tie it into your niche? And we talk about that in this episode. We also talk about webinars from both ways.

Why promoting JV webinars, affiliate webinars, one of the quickest ways to grow your list, how to use it to get affiliates to promote you.We also talk about in this episode what you should ask affiliate managers and what you should ask your partners for so that you can have the best promotion. And then we also talk about how to use encore webinars to quite frankly, double or triple your sales. We found some success with that. We’ve had issues with that in the past and so we cover a lot in this episode. This was originally a, private kind of behind the scenes lesson for some of our members, but we wanted to open it up to the public here on the podcast.

I’m super excited to, share this because I think there’s just a ton of lessons inside of this one big lesson. So again, ultimately, it’s all about how to use webinars to grow your business, how to use affiliate webinars to grow your business. And I mentioned before, I think it was like four or five episodes ago, I said, hey, if you want to know, kind of our framework for webinars, I’ve done two live webinars. Really small, intentionally really small. These are both brand new webinars.Well, not brand new like they’ve tweaked webinars, but we’ve made some tweaks. And the one we closed, 17% of live attendees. The most recent one we closed almost, we almost hit 25% if we’d had one less person on. We would have closed 25%. So we’re really killing it with these webinars.

Like, they’re converting extremely well. And if you want to know how we do it, then shoot me a text at 260-217-4619. And if I get enough people who text me, I’m going to do. It’s going to have to be at least a two episode, probably three episodes. Might even have to do an entire month.And it would be like next, March. It would be a while from now because we’ve got content planned through. Gosh, when do we have content planned through? Looks right now. Looks like we’ve got our content for the podcast planned through March 28th of next year.So it would be next April. So go in. Yeah, like almost a year from now. Just crazy to think about that. What is that?That’s, I don’t know when this one’s going to go live, but that’s like seven months from now. But either way, text me at 260-217-4619 and I’ll probably do a series. And plus, I’ll have a little bit more dialed in. Right. Then I’ll do a series on what we are doing in webinars.

That’s converting. So if you’re interested, let me know about that. With that, I’m going to cut to this private interview that I did with Robbie Miles, who’s our operations manager on our team, about this webinar promotion that we did. So we talked about it from all the different angles. Again, the angle of promoting something outside your niche, but also working with affiliates on your webinars and being an affiliate on your webinar.We share tons of tips in there. So listen up and learn, because I think this is some valuable stuff. There were some revelations for us that we share in this episode, so listen up and learn. And do me a favor. At the end of this episode, shoot me a text again.260-217-4619. We’ll put that in the show notes as well. And let me know your biggest takeaway. I’d love to hear from you. All right, let me cut to that interview now, and welcome back to another Backstage Pass.

We’re going to take you on a deep dive into a recent affiliate promo, unlike any other affiliate promo that we’ve ever done that we did just, about a month ago or so. And, well, we’re going to be doing it again soon, and we’ll talk about that at the end. So I Want to welcome Robbie Miles on our team, who is our head of operations and the guy who. Well, quite frankly, anytime we do one of these backstage fasts and we look back at, you know, here’s what we learned and here’s what we did, he’s the guy that remembers it all. And then I just stand here and talk about it.So, Robbie, welcome, man.  Hey, you know, it’s easy to remember things when you have pen and paper around, so.  Well, that’s Robbie’s. That’s Robbie’s skill set. For those who don’t know, we did a Facebook Live recently, and I think somebody said, oh, so the business secret is I need a robby.

I was like, yeah. And I think you said, yes, you do. Yes, you do.  Yes, you do.  You know, just not this one.And so. But it is true, you know, that’s not my skill set, the organizational side of things. And so we have a Robbie, whose name, ironically, is Robbie, and he, he keeps us on track. So, Robbie, I’m excited about today because we’re talking about affiliate program that we did recently. So as we’re recording this in December, and I believe it’ll go live for you guys in December.This is a promo we did a little bit over a month ago, so it’s still really fresh in our minds, and it’s really outside of, my niche. That’s actually the cool thing about it, makes me really excited to talk about this. And there’s some things that we did that we’ve never had to do before that are lessons for you. Things that we did that we had to do before that are lessons for you guys. And I’m just really excited to share this.

So I’m going to jump right in and explain the promo real quick and kind of the backstory to it. So, as you may notice, if you watch some of the original AIM backstage passes, I look a little bit different than I did in the original ones. And I think we launched aim, if I’m not mistaken. We launched AIM when I was a wee bit into my weight loss journey, but not way into it.  Yeah, just a couple months, if I remember.I think because we pre recorded some of the content, some of the content would have been about two and a half months in, so I’d probably lost about 20ish pounds at that point. But it’s still come a long, long way since then. In total, my doctor says, you know, about 88 pounds of fat is roughly probably about 91, 92 by now. And, the reason I say of fat is because I actually have only, I say only, I’ve only lost £56 or something. But I’ve also put on some muscle.

And so, you know, that’s why he says about 80 something pounds of fat that there. And you know, the revelation that I had earlier this year was just, you know, we, we teach so much about marketing techniques and marketing strategies and marketing, you know, affiliate marketing, how to make more money, how to monetize, how to have more influence and impact in the world. Those are all great things. But for many people, their weight is holding them back. I can teach you all the best marketing strategies.I can teach you all the best email copy. I can teach you how to be confident on camera. There’s one for you. How to be confident. Newsflash.

I was never confident on camera before I did them. I produced videos, some really good videos, some impactful and life changing videos for people. I was never confident on camera, I am now. And so I realized, like, you can have all the best stuff, but if you’re just not confident in just who you are. And appearance is just appearances and everything, but it’s just a part of who we are, you know, I mean, the example I’ve always have used when I talk to people about this is there’s the old joke or thing, you know, you picture the audience naked, you know, right.If you’re nervous, how about what if you were naked? Like, I don’t care. It’s not about looking good or anything. You want to tell me? Okay, we’ll go like your boxers, right?

Who’s my friend? Skibbies. Your skibvies. Skibbies, yeah. If you had to go up on ste.I don’t care if you look amazing, right? And you had to go up on stage and deliver a talk about marketing or gardening or productivity or high performance or, being a real estate agent in your underwear, would you be comfortable? It’s just your appearance. I mean, all that matters, right, is the content. No, your appearance does matter.If you had to go up, you’re going to deliver a presentation to a group full of, you know, professional real estate agents, for an example. And you went up there and you had a green mohawk, you know, one of those green and like, you know, piercings all over your face and you’re covered in tattoos and you’re going to talk about generating more real estate leads. Your appearance is going to distract, detract and distract from the message. So appearance does matter. And I said to Alan Thomas, my friend and now a coach, you know, my weight Loss coach said, this is holding me back this way to swing back.

And the revelation I had a few months ago, Robbie, was. Is affecting other people. And so I asked Alan. Alan’s in our Start Mastermind, and he’s just getting started with this platform. He’s been at it for about a year.He’s coaching, you know, people just like me and helping them. He’s helped men lose literally thousands of pounds now. He himself lost like £130 a while back. And I said, we need to teach this stuff. We need to help people.So I invited him to do a webinar with me. And so today, what we’re talking about is a few things. Number one, we’re going to talk about promoting outside your niche, because this is definitely outside my core content. But we were able to tighten.  You mean, this isn’t just, you know, marketing and affiliates and, you know, growing affiliates programs and.

Yeah, I mean, it’s. Gosh, it’s just so far out there. So we’ll talk about that. We’re going to talk about promoting new JV partners. You know, this was Alan’s first ever JV webinar, and he did it with us, and he was terrified.and he didn’t know anything. Like, he didn’t know what to give us or what to do. So we’re going to talk about that. We’re going to talk about things to ask for when you’re promoting a JV webinar. We’re going to talk about that from our perspective.And then lastly, we’re going to talk about how to do it again, how to do an encore, which is what we’re doing with Allen in January. So, Robby, let’s start with kind of the outside your niche thing. I think this is important. And I sort of said this when I was introing this and giving the backstory is there’s two places your audience can be. They can be past your core content, or they can be before your core content, or they can just.

Actually three places they can be parallel to your core content. I think in your world, you know, you’re the productivity guy, and yet you have a new thing out called the Better Men or Better Man. I keep forgetting.  Yeah, the Better Men Project.  Better Men Project.Okay. Yeah, I was pretty confident, but I didn’t, you know, And you have this thing called the Betterment. Now. This is your own thing, but it’s not in, like, core productivity lane.  It’s not on the side of it, though.We would not dispute that if you have better family Relations. If you get in less fights with your wife, if your children are more obedient and just you have more peace in the home, then you’re going to be more productive. I mean, I don’t think anybody would go, no, I think that’s too far.  Yeah, exactly. Or vice versa.

If you’re more productive at work, you know, you have more time to focus on family at home. Like it goes both ways, but they’re not the same thing.So I think first of all we can look at those areas where they’re tangential, they are related. There’s maybe something that’s keeping them from getting to the level that you’re teaching at with your products or the products that maybe you have a physical product or a coaching service or something and there are things that need to get them to that point. The same thing is true.Maybe they’ve progressed a little bit past your core content. Well, what are you going to do? You know, you have two options. You can be like, hey, bye, farewell, Avita Z. You know, you can let them go and just whatever you lost, a really enthusiastic person.

Or you can make offers to them and not only serve them, that’s definitely the most important part. But also Instead of making $0 going forward, you make lots of dollars going forward. I don’t know, which one would you rather have? And so we looked at it from the perspective more of, we’re getting people to build a business. We’re getting people to build a platform to learn again how to do videos, do podcasts and write emails, build an affiliate marketing business, build side income, make their first thousand dollars or first ten thousand dollars to go full time, start an affiliate program and all those things.

It can’t happen if you’re not confident until you are. So we do talk a lot about personal growth and this was a part of personal growth. The other thing that we were talking about this before we started recording is there’s an opportunity, no matter what niche you’re in, to tell your audience, here’s a product that has completely transformed my business. I think you should, I think you should check it out. One of the good examples we were talking about was Kathy Hay.Kathy is in the. I don’t even know what they call the niche. It’s like the period costumes. Yeah, that’s specifically with like, what are those things called? Corsets.

Corsets, yeah. So corsets from the, like I don’t know, 100 and some odd years ago. Right. I mean, I literally know nothing about the industry. And quite frankly don’t care.you know, it’s like a very niche thing. And yet she was like the number six or seven, I believe, affiliate partner for Jeff Walker’s product launch formula, which you could not find a course that would define Internet marketing as it is today. More than PLF.  Right.  She was the 6 or 7th affiliate.Her audience against some of the biggest people in the Internet marketing space and teaching corsets with all, women who.  Want to know how to make period piece corsets. How do you make that leap? Very simple. She said, hey, I know some people in my audience.

I mean, by definition, most niches, no matter what niche you’re in, you’re in the productivity niche, Robbie. You have people who are entrepreneurs, you have people who are middle managers, people who are CEOs, people who are low level people who are students and they want to be more productive. You know, like about the Better Men project, how do you pitch that? Well, because I’m going to guess roughly half your audience is male and half your audience is. Now, it might be skewed.It might be 60, 40. I’m just saying. But just, you want to know people who want to be more productive and you just go pull over 100 random people. Guess what? About 51 of them are going to be men or women, and the other 49 or 51 are going to be the other.

You know, that’s. Duh. right, but you said. I know at least half my audience is men. And I also know that a large percentage of my audience is married and, or with children.And that’s just statistically probable. You wouldn’t even have to show me a survey, Robbie. And I can probably guess that of your audience, 39% of them are married men with children. And, probably right into about 6 to 7%. You know, actually according to the survey, it’s higher.Married men with children. Wow. Okay. Yeah, yeah, but she.Because who follows you?Who follows anybody? Somebody who is usually striving to be or to get to where that person is. I don’t do a great job of attracting 27 year old single dudes. Yeah. And I’m cool, you know, because that’s not my audience.

You know, I. Right.I’ve said this many times, like I have no desire to be the marketing guy who’s holding up the big check from Google that doesn’t cast a shadow. Yeah. I may or may not be talking about a very specific famous marketer out there who got caught doing that years ago.He was like, look, at me. This is my $100,000 plus check from Google. Yeah, there’s no shadow, dude. You have to look that up. there’s like him by his, like, you know, Lambo that he got from Hertz, right? Yeah, you know, but yeah, so like Kathy, like, she teaches corsets and like, that’s specifically what I know most of her product is about.  And somehow that’s literally all she talks about.Yeah.  But if you think about this, in.  This Internet marketing space, boom.

Some percentage of her audience is entrepreneurs. Some percentage of her audience is aspiring entrepreneurs. And from the get go. And I’m assuming she did this because, you know, I know she does some of the stuff that we teach, which is when you promote something like this, you say up front, hey, I’m gonna be talking about this thing. It’s not what I normally talk about.If you’re not interested, click here and I’m not gonna say anything else about it to you.  Yeah.  And then you create an opt out for them. In our system, ConvertKit. We highly recommend, if you’re not on ConvertKit, that you switch to ConvertKit.We’ll put a link. Robbie’s making a note right now to link. I can tell he’s making a note right now to link. You know, below the video to ConvertKit. You can get a free trial of up to like a thousand subscribers, I think.

Is that right?  It is, yeah.  Yeah. So you can get a thousand subscribers for free. Even if you’re well above that.It’s super affordable. It’s probably the most affordable for the bells and whistles it has. It’s quite frankly, I think it’s cheap and I hate that word. It’s inexpensive. That’s probably a better word.Very inexpensive. And so in ConvertKit you can literally just, when they click this link, it just tags them like, not interested in plf. Not gonna email them about that anymore. Cool. So she did that on the front end.Probably knocked out 10% of her list right away. That’s awesome because now she doesn’t have to worry about them. And she talked about a product that impacted her. That was the big thing with me. I was talking about something that I, you know, I said this genuinely, of course, but I said this.

Like I realized up front, half the people, I mean, you look at statistics, you know, we look at them and go, man, half the country’s obese. Guess what? Half the country’s not. You know, so right there I met. No, my audience is probably a cross section of, the population, maybe even slightly Skewed towards less obese because, you know, they’re high performers.So I know 50 to 60% of my audience doesn’t care about this at all. And that’s totally fine. They can click the link. I’m never going to email them about Alan’s stuff again. And I, like, I’m glad when people click that because first of all, it means they don’t need it or that other end, not denial.That could be the other issue. But I don’t have to worry about sending more emails and more emails and more emails promoting this. So that’s number one. And then number two, I just, you know, I was just open and honest. And, hey, this made a big difference for me.

You were doing a free webinar with Alan. He’s going to teach you some of these things. You know, if this sounds interesting to you, I think you should attend. And I think, you know, and some people attended, so it was kind of awesome. Yeah. And that’s interesting. You know, this isn’t. We didn’t have this in the bullet points or anything, but, you know, you presented it really. It was genuine. Like, you just wanted to help people.You said, hey, this drastically changed my life. It changed my life, it changed my business, it changed my relationships. And I think that it’ll help you, too. And that was really neat to see. There wasn’t a huge push like, get to this webinar, make your $10,000 now, or, you know, whatever else.

All that kind of in your face Internet marketing. And, you know, sometimes we push that when we’re in a big launch or something like that. But this was just like, it felt more like what we talk about asks and gives. This felt more like a give in the marketing. It was, hey, we want to help you. Yeah, man, I think, you know, well, you just kind of reminded me that, like, the way that we were able to market this was just telling my story. All I did was just tell the story. That’s all. I’m assuming, again, I didn’t watch her campaign, but I’m assuming that’s all that Kathy did. Or literally, you look at anything where people are promoting things that are, quote, unquote, outside of their niche, and they’re just telling their story about how this thing helped them or why they might need this thing.

I think the other important thing is, again, when you care about your audience, like, I cared more about serving my audience and saying, like, no, I get that this isn’t the norm. This is not the norm. And I, again, you acknowledge that when you’re promoting stuff. The lesson years. When you’re promoting things that are outside of your niche or they’re out to the size of more, you know, you gotta acknowledge the fact that it is.I didn’t come out and say, you know, this is right on par with. I didn’t come out and I forgot. I mean, to view that. I never sent an email, like, hey, this is my normal thing today. No, I never sent.I didn’t send an email going, like, just out of left field, like, where people are going, wait, why is he talking about this? You have to explain why you’re talking about things. When I send an email and say, hey, I just did a new podcast and we’re talking about how to find affiliates, nobody goes, why would he send me that? And that’s what you signed up for, you know, but when you are sending something that’s not that, you have to explain it. There has to be that backstory.

So we started off. The very first email, if I remember correctly, is, hey, this was me 15 months ago. Yeah, this is me now. You know, like, very visual, but also, okay, he’s going somewhere with this. And here’s how I did it.And then we positioned Alan and we told Alan’s story. We said, hey, you know, if this sounds like it might be helpful to you, then it’s going to be helpful to you. If you believe that your voice holding you back, you need to come to this. If you believe that this could potentially transform your life, then come to this. That story is what is super important now.If I didn’t have that story. But I knew Alan because now he’s reaching out to know. I. We’re encouraging him. He’s in our mastermind.

So one of the things that we talked about is like, dude, you got to be. You know, I told him, I want you to spend 20 hours a week reaching out to potential JV partners. All these other people who aren’t affected by him. He’s not coached them, but they know his story. And so they can say, hey, my friend Alan lost £129 in whatever.It’s like 300 days or something. You know, he went from being obese for two decades to being a very, you know, fit man in, less than a year. And he said to me that, you know, his weight was holding him back. Well, if it’s holding you back. And now you can basically tell the exact same.The marketing could be the exact same. From that point forward, it was a little bit easier because I had the personal story and so look for those products where if they’re outside of your niche, but you believe that they have transformed something that you’ve done. I think of like Cara Andretta teaches cake decorating. She was a top 20 partner for Michael Hyatt’s goal setting course. You know, it makes sense.

When you did really well in that, you know, a few years ago. That makes sense. You’re the productivity guy. Goal setting, you know, two peas and a pod. Right?no idea why I did that voice.  Butter pain, but a poop, you know.  They go together like peanut butter and tuna fish, you know, and that makes sense. But cake decorating in goal setting, like, well, who again, who’s her audience? Entrepreneurs who are cake decorators.Entrepreneurs need to what, set goals. It’s off to the side. But it definitely makes sense if she explains. If she just came out right away and said, hey, Michael Hyatt released a new thing all about goal setting. I’m sorry, what?

But if she explains it in the context and introduces it softly, then transitions into the quote, unquote, normal marketing, very effective. So we talked about at the beginning, and we talked about how Alan had never promoted a JV offer before, and we’ve never really promoted anything that was this far outside of our lane. So one, of the cool things that this can apply both ways. You know, we really try to focus on being an affiliate inside of aim. But I’ll just give you this tip that one of the best ways to find affiliates to be an affiliate, you know, and to basically do webinar swaps.Now, we’re not doing that with Alan. I did this, you know, on some level for him, you know, to be perfectly transparent again, he’s in our mastermind, he’s a dear friend, and he’s changed my life. So there’s no, like, Ellen, you got to promote our affiliate marketing stuff to your audience now. Like, that’s not on the table at all. If he chooses too great.

But I never once asked him to do that. But finding those people who maybe where you’re both doing it for the first time, you know, finding those people where you both have a small list. Maybe you both have a list of 700, 800, 900 people. I think Alan’s list before this was under 800. I think it was like 750 people.Typically, we partner when we promote people. There are people with list of 200,000, you know, 100,000, maybe 35,000 on the small end. But we. There is an opportunity when you’re first starting out to look for partners both ways that are much smaller. For one, when you’re doing these webinars, like, if this had been, you know, let’s just say this was our very first affiliate promo, did I want to do it where I’m, doing it with, you know, somebody who’s got a certain level of expectation?

You know, let’s say we had 800 people on our list. The reality is, if you have 800 people on your list, we’re probably going to get like 10 people to show up for the webinar. Maybe 15. I don’t want to have 15 people on somebody’s list who’s used to having a thousand, you know, and so there’s a certain level there. The other thing for him is he doesn’t want to be on a webinar where there’s a thousand people.And you don’t either if you’ve never done one before. You know, you want to be on where there’s 10 or 15 or 20 people. And so it’s an opportunity for you to work your way in, I was going to say.  And you talk about this all the time within start. And a lot of that’s getting in your reps.

And how do you get in your reps is you do that at a smaller level, a, practice level. And not that it wasn’t professional, what you got, the webinar that you guys did, but because it was a smaller audience, it’s a great opportunity to practice your professionalism at that smaller level.  So.  And now as he does this again and again and again, that webinar is just going to get better and better and better and better and.  And so are the products that he puts together for you. Yeah. And if you’re doing a webinar, again, we’re speaking more from the, you know, finding affiliates out here. But just think about this way. Like, I see so many times I just got to go out and I got to get that one. If I could just get that one person.

It’s like the author saying, if I can just get on Oprah. Right. What if Tim Ferriss had just waited to get on Oprah or J. K. rowling had waited to get on Oprah?Like, we would never have heard of either one of them. So rather than get on Oprah, what if you’re on, you know, WKCL in Denton, Texas? You know, I’m just trying to pick a random place. Then you’re on W. You know, ABC on.And I think that’s in New York. City. So that’s a bad example. But you’re on some poodle, you know, in Bowling Green, Kentucky, and you’re going, you know, one by one, and people are like, well, that’s just harder than getting the one. Well, do you have the one?You know, did you get on Oprah? How much longer is it going to take you to get on Oprah? And why would Oprah have somebody on who hasn’t even. Like, you get on. You’re like, I don’t even know what to say because I’ve never done it before.

Then you go on Oprah after You’ve been on 300 radio interviews, and you’re like, boom. Got. Yep, got my talking points. I’m in. You know, you got your stories down, all that stuff.And that’s what we talking about with the reps. It’s like, do the smaller ones. You want. You want to get in front of, Everybody wants to do the one webinar with 4,000 people. Oh, man, I just want to do a webinar with 4,000 people on it.How about just do 40 webinars with a hundred people? Here’s the deal. You’re much more likely to get one with 4,000 people if you’ve done 40 with a hundred or even 80 with 50 or 120 with 33. 3 people, you know, or 200 with 20 people, and you’ll be a million times better. So I’m gonna tell you guys, again, getting a little bit off track here, but here’s what I told Alan afterwards.

I said, go do it again and again and again. I said, dude, if I were you initially, I told him I was like, every Thursday, I would be doing a webinar. I don’t care if it’s for your internal audience and you have six people on, or if it’s a JV webinar and you have two people on or 30 people on or whatever. Just get in the reps. Get in the reps.Get in the reps. Then I was like, you know what? Thursday’s not enough. I said, you got to get this, like, really cranked up. I said, I would be doing an internal webinar every Tuesday, come hell or high water.

I would probably be doing one on Wednesday to your paid traffic, and then I’d be doing one on Thursday with the jv. And I said, I don’t care if you’re JV ing with, like, one of your clients who does nothing but post it on his personal Facebook page. Nine people show up Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Every single week. I said, it only takes about 10 weeks before you got 30 reps in and you started to refine those stories. And then you, you know, like, I was sharing with him, and I’ll share with you guys, like, the little things, like, we’ve done this where, I don’t know, I was doing a presentation that I’ve done five times, and then suddenly I said something.

And, when I said it, I leaned in like this, and we went, ooh, that was good. So now what does it say in the script? Lean in. Because if I don’t put it in the script, I’m never going to personally remember to do that again. I might do it randomly just thinking about.I just go like that. But the only reason I did that was, like, just that morning, I’d been watching Zig Ziglar, and he does that move when he asks a deep, question. And it’s the same thing. Puts the arm over and he leans in like that and asks the question. If he was speaking on a stage, he would get down on one knee, always the same way.And it was the same move. So I had it somewhere in m. My subconscious. But when I deliver it two weeks later, I might not even think about that. So now it says in the script.

Now, when we studied what I did, we noticed there were parts where suddenly I started talking a little bit faster because I was really excited, but I actually needed to pause between sentences and give the audience some time to think about what I was saying. Like, even just there, you know, I slowed down. You don’t know those things until you’ve just gotten in the reps and observed and studied and watched your own presentations. And so that’s the beauty of working with small partners both ways. The cool thing is, it’s also a heck of a lot easier to get somebody who’s got a thousand people on their list to say, yeah, I’ll host a webinar with you, and you can host one with me.

And it’s a lot easier to get them to switch. And then, you know, you get your reps in, but also they host a webinar with you. And you grow your list by 50 people. Like that. When you’re starting out, there’s very little you can do in an hour of your time to get 50 people on your list, because even if they don’t show up, they’re on your list.I don’t know what most of you, when you’re starting out, can do with an hour of your time to get 50 people on your list? Please tell me. I’m asking for a friend.  We’ll add it to list launch challenge.  Dude. Here’s the deal. You know, eight hours a day, that’s 400 subscribers a day. There are not many people out there adding 400 qualified people to their list every single day.  Exactly.  So even you say, oh, only I had 50 people in my loan.

I want to work with the big boys. Well, work with the small, and then, you know, do 10 of those, and then go up to people with 2,000 people, and then 3,000 work your way up. Because here’s the thing. If you do 10 of those, let’s say you have 500 people on your list and you do 10 with, and you get 50 subscribers. Now you have a thousand subscribers.A little bit of attrition. But just work with me here. Now you can go after people who’ve got slightly bigger lists because you’ve got something to offer. Now they’re sending 80. You do 10 of those, you’ve got 1800 subscribers.Even with attrition, you got 1500. Now you’ve got more to offer somebody with 2000, they’re sending 100. You do 10 of those. Now you got 2,500. You got something to offer somebody with 3000, they’ll send you 125 and so on.

And now, now you’re only having to do eight of them to get to another thousand, and then so on and so forth.  And on the affiliate side there, it’s important to remember that, you know, you’re getting your reps in, too. You know, if they bring you on at all, you’re getting in front of, you know, your audience in a way that serves them. Plus, you are practicing that webinar thing. That way, when you grow your business to that point, you will know how to do it, how to host the webinars, how to, you know, use the training.

You will have seen the webinars enough that especially the more different programs that you can work with, you’ll start to understand what you like and what connects with you and what you can put into your webinars in the future. Which, you know, that’s a really good point.  I mean, you’re attending webinars and learning from them and seeing how your audience, like, it’s not just. It’s different when you attend a webinar, right, as an attendee, because you’re trying to, like, learn stuff, right when you’re on there and you’re watching how your audience responds to them and the things that they do and you’re making notes like, oh, when he did that, my audience really. Oh, that’s good.

You know, it also, you’re in the chat with them.  yeah.  Like, you can have that conversation. And some of that material is gold because it’s you connecting straight with your audience.  Yeah.And then when with the smaller ones too, man, I didn’t even think about this. But the smaller ones, like, there’s something about, you know, now he’s blown up, you know, our friend Jonathan Milligan. I mean, we started promoting Jonathan when he definitely didn’t have a list of more than a few thousand people, you know, and yet we introduced tons of people in our audience. Like, we still hear about it from, like, Phil and Gwen and Mary. I’m trying to think of a few others that we introduced him that we actually, I think that was probably it.

Jim M. Folsom. We introduced all them. They still follow Jonathan. And to them, it was like we introduced them to a hidden gem.If we promote Jeff Walker, it’s like, yeah, they’ve all heard of Jeff Walker. If we promote Ryan Leveque, I mean, yeah, the product’s great. We sell a lot of them, we make a lot of money, but it’s like, yeah, I already know who that guy is, you know. Yeah, I bought through your link map because I wanted you to get the commission and I wanted your bonuses, but it wasn’t like a, Man, thank you so much for introducing me to Stu McLaren. You know, it’s like, I heard of him.

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I’ve been listening to his podcast for three years. Dude, you know, there’s this, like, I’m introducing them to, like, underground heroes, you know, and like, these people that they’ve never heard of, and it’s really, really cool. These subject matter experts. And then we’re growing our list together. A lot of times we end up in, you know, masterminds together.We have a certain connection together. You know, the marketing is a lot easier sometimes. And there’s just, I don’t know, it’s just. It’s a really cool experience to kind of do that together. So look for people who, you know, they’re at your level or one level above.

You know, certainly the one level above can still be like, the, you know, they’re not bunt singles, but you can hit some doubles with those people. Stop trying to go for the home runs initially. Again, you do enough of these and eventually you wake up one day and you have a list of 45,000 people and you can, you know, so there’s probably a lesson for us, Robbie. let’s do more, let’s do more of these with, you know, some people. The third thing that we talked about was, I think, what you called it, a list of demands to make.

I called it things to ask for. One of us was being polite. You know, the cool thing about this is like with somebody doing a first time webinar, or even if they’ve done a couple, they don’t know necessarily what to give you as an affiliate. So you as the affiliate get to set the rules. And we basically said, alan, okay, here’s what we need, right?And he had to give it to us. You know, and that’s the cool thing about this is like, you get to say those things and. But he feels like, oh my gosh, you guys did such a service. Like, he told me the other day that because we forced him to do it, it’s like now he has everything ready for all these other JV partners, right? All these people he’s doing webinars with.

He’s like, well, here’s the file. It’s already done. Like, I know. Here’s your link, here’s the file, here’s all the images. Bada boom, bada bing. Here’s what the landing page looks like. Like, he’s done now, I would say 90 to 95% of the work. And it’s just plug and play going forward for him.  And so when you’re approaching somebody, the lesson there is, you know, don’t be afraid to hold their hand. Robbie, you were super helpful.Alan. I mean, he. I don’t know if I told you this, maybe I did, but he, he and I were talking afterward and we were just talking about like, you know, how things went. He’s like, I gotta tell you, Robbie is. He’s got a little bit of a certain action.

He’s like, Robbie is just the nicest. He might be the nicest person I’ve ever talked to. Huh? Did I tell you that?  He didn’t say that. well, yeah, he was super complimentary. And I mean, you spent what, half hour, maybe more?  I probably spent, yeah, half hour to an hour with him because walking him through landing page setup and different types of emails that he would want to send, what his introduction automation should look like, just, you know, some of the stuff that as an affiliate we would expect because part of what we were doing was trying to set him up to do his future webinars.  Yeah, exactly.  And so giving him the tools and kind of the marketing ideas of.

Okay, here’s what an affiliate’s looking for. You know, it’s the same things that anybody watching this is looking for. What do you want? You want to have some swipe copy, right? You don’t want to have to write everything that goes into all your emails.You want to have your landing page that’s set up. You want to hope that when you’re sharing, you know, a webinar with your audience that they have some sort of welcome sequence instead of just show up, show up, show up, show up. Because that gets really boring. So, you know, he had a whole welcome sequence with his story and, you know, phase that in over a couple of days. So everything that you’re looking for as an affiliate, you can share that with somebody if they haven’t done a JV promo before.

And it’s just an opportunity to kind of work with each other to build both of your platforms.  Yeah, I mean, I, I didn’t even like, this is not why we did this with Alan, but we did it with Alan because he’s in Start, so he’s in our mastermind. And we just, like, we wanted to help him. You know, I don’t know that I ever would have done it for anybody else, but I’m glad that we did because it showed that, like, we can help him. And then, of course, we succeed more because he has better marketing.And he’s going to remember that, like, he’s. I mean, that was just over a month ago, and he just brought you up on the call the other day. Like, he still remembers. He still, when we talked the other day was like, oh, my gosh, you guys, that email that you sent, you know, as an affiliate, because he’s on our list, like, that email that you sent, I’m totally having, you know, JV partners send that. It’s like, we might want to edit a little bit.

You know, I mean, that was a good email, man. Don’t copy it exactly. No, I’m just kidding. But, like, I think for. He’s learning.Here’s the thing, Robbie. When, you do this for your partners, they will remember it, which means they will want to promote you more and they will want to tell other people to do JV webinars with you. And again, you know, you end up expanding your list and expanding your influence, and possibly they might even tell somebody. You know, this is the thing I found is, like, Alan’s really good friends. He has 700 people in his.

Actually, it’s now in the 800s, because you know, doing with us, but, like, he has a friend. One particular friend that would be a really good partner for us that he’s really, really tight with is another friend that actually is already one of our top partners. But that’s not the point. But he has another one that would be a really good partner. And there’s a certain level of influence there that, you know, could mean good things for us.So, anyway, yeah, I was going to.  Say the other thing that I thought was really cool about this is it kind of put us in that beginner mindset again. Like, sometimes it’s really easy to get really far out there and be like, we know what we’re doing and we’re going to run these promos. And it was so good for us to step back and be like, okay, as a beginner affiliate, essentially, what do we need? What’s the minimum swipe copy we need?

What are the minimum tools that we need in order to promote this? And so having that beginner mind is just a wonderful way for you to check what you’re doing and make sure that you’re really connecting with your audience and doing that serving like we were talking about before.  Yeah, there’s just a lot you can learn. That really is the ultimate lesson, is you’re going to learn so much from each other, and that’s super powerful. The last thing, and you brought this up.You’ve added this to the list. We’re promoting Alan again at the beginning of the year because beginning of the year, New Year’s resolutions. I know you and I both agree. I think New Year’s resolutions are total garbage. I think.

What is it about January 1st? Oh, that’s a good time to set a goal. I set a goal just the other day and it expires in middle of February. I don’t need a new year.  But for 80% of the population out there, perception is fresh start. And they just think there’s something magical about New Year’s Day. And so they’re going to settle these goals. And we know that the most common one is to lose some weight. So we have to do this. Like, it makes total sense for us to do this.And here’s the cool thing is, I mean, we’ll probably New Year’s eyes it just a little bit, but 90 on both ends collectively, 93% of the work’s already done. The 7% is me making it something New Year’s related. You know, you’re not going to have to talk to Alan again, you know, about this. You know, he’s a great guy. I know.

I’m just saying you don’t have to, you know. Right. You don’t have to talk to him. I don’t have to do anything, you know, I mean, there’s nothing to be done. And then he and I both just.Instead of like him being like, hey, can we get on Zoom 20 minutes early? Because I don’t know if, you know, you know, we’ll both show up five minutes early and do our thing, you know, and we already know because we’ve already debriefed about it. And so we’ve learned the lessons, we’re going to apply them next time. And I personally think it’s. I think it’s going to do three times better.You know, that’s just my personal belief. So as an affiliate do these things.  Can I ask you. I’m going to ask you a question, put you on the spot as an affiliate. Like saying within a couple months of each other, two months.

How are, yeah, how are you going to promote this to the same audience? You know, is it. Do you have a different angle? Is it. Yeah, they’re like, hey, wait, I’ve seen these emails before. I mean, number one, because that’s a.  I’m thinking it’s important because you can, as an affiliate, you can promote the similar or the same offer repeatedly. You can do that several times a year. And maybe that should be, you know, for those of you setting your New Year’s resolutions, maybe there’s a resolution for you or a goal is to promote the same thing, you know, once a quarter and see how that impacts your business.  Yeah, I think it depends a lot on the offer.

When something opens up once a year, like Pharmacolons formula, like we’re talking about, well, promote it once a year, we found. And I know I was talking with an entrepreneur, I won’t mention Stu McLaren’s name, but I was talking with Stu McLaren. Yeah. And what we realized is about 20% of And we found this to be true with. Are actually a little bit higher with some of our stuff, but he found about 20%.We found us about one third of all affiliate sales in a given year were referrals from the year before. That means they opted in. Maybe they came to Sue’s webinar or they came to, you know, Michael Hyatt’s webinar, or they came to whatever, you know, they opted in for the free video series or the ebook or the quiz or the assessment. Doesn’t matter.  Then they bought a year Later.

Part of that is, you know, in a launch, it’s 14, 17 days on average. You know, 17. 2 days is actually the average. It’s probably a bit shorter today. We haven’t run that average in a couple years.Launches are getting a little bit shorter. That’s a pretty quick amount of time to be like, oh, I like this person. I feel that I can trust them. And, oh, yeah, I’m going to give them thousands of dollars, potentially. Well, then they go a whole year of being on that list and they attend some of their Facebook lives and they laugh at a few of their emails and they read one of their books and they’re like, yep, when that thing opens up, next time I’m in.

Yeah. And you get that effect of, like, literally when the workshop starts. For example, for Tribe, the first question that, like, a thousand people have is, when. When does registration open up for the course? And you’re going, a thousand people times $2,000.That means, you know, there’s $2 million on day one if we don’t get a single new person, you know, you just know you’re getting 2 million like that. It’s a cool feeling as the, you know, as the product owner. but I say that to say that that’s kind of shows you what happens over the course of a year. And so year to year, we’ll promote things very similarly. You know, of course, the difference, you know, we’re looking at 2020.

When we promoted Tribe in 2020, we rewrote the emails from scratch. I literally didn’t even look at the emails from 2019. Why? Global pandemic, maybe. You know, we were six weeks into a global pandemic.Not even that much. Like, it was like four weeks when it started. Literally a month almost to the day. Kind of needed to tweak things. We needed to talk about the value of this from that perspective.Now, two months later, of course, we would not have done two months later if it was April to June. Let’s think about what two months later was. We not do April to June, but it made sense to do it at the beginning of the year. So, yeah, the big difference will be that it’s New Year’s. Sounds like a George.His New Year’s attacks. I need to get my friend. Sorry. Oh, boy. Wow.

We’ll link to that.  I’ve got a good friend named John Morgan who’s a George W. Bush impersonator. He’s like, the other guy died. There were two big George W.Bush impersonators and one Guy Steve passed away and John’s the other one. And anyway, I should get him New Year’s entire. We want to promote this for New Year’s so it makes sense. We’ll tweak it and I know he will too. And we’ll probably, he’ll encourage him to like tweak the title and a little bit of his marketing to fit that, you know, like New Year, new you type thing.But otherwise pretty much the same messaging. The one thing just from a practical standpoint of, course we remove buyers. So we will remove people who bought who signed up for his offer. You know, that makes total sense. Like when we promote PLF every year, we remove the buyers.

There’s no point, you know, we might even, you know, this is something we’ll talk about. Robbie. We might segment, not segment out, but segment to the side. People who clicked. We don’t look at people who clicked because we want to include people not only who registered but people who clicked over to the replay because that didn’t require registration.And so we’ll look at like, okay, these people probably watched some of it or register they got his follow up emails, blah, blah, blah. They know what’s coming. We, we’ll probably take those and segment them over. You know, I don’t know, It’ll be like 500 people, 400 people, whatever. We’ll take those 400 and they’ll kind of have a slightly different path where we’ll use.

I’ll probably address the fact that, hey, you know this webinar that you registered for back in, you know, November. Well, he’s, you know, he’s doing it again and now’s your opportunity, it’s a new year, blah, blah, blah. And that’s about it. That’ll be the extent of the difference. Nice.There’s things you can do like that. If you have people, I think that’s, that’ll be helpful for our audience to see that. How, you know, you can just change a couple of things and all of a sudden you have a whole new perspective on promotion.  Yep. so here’s what I’ll say.For AIM members only. We’re going to tell you at the beginning, click here if you want to opt out of this campaign. Basically, you know, this isn’t for you. Don’t ever do that with our emails or anyone else’s emails because you want to watch the marketing. We talk about this so often in aim.

Become a student of marketing. Fall in love with marketing. There’s a reason why I don’t unsubscribe from very many marketers emails. Even though I get a lot of emails, it’s because I want to study them. So I recommend not clicking there.You could be 6ft tall, 181 pounds, you know. And you, you’re as fit as a fiddle. I don’t even know what that means. Literally no clue. But whatever.You could be fit as a fiddle as they’d say down in some parts of somewhere. And this isn’t for you. Still watch the marketing, watch how we do it. That’s my advice to you. So I hope you got a ton out of that talk with Robby there.I just think that it’s interesting to talk about some different things here. Speaking of different things, we got an episode, a couple of episodes coming up that I am particularly excited about. I want to let you know about. We’ve got one with Richie Norton. All about time management is dead.

You know how to reclaim your time and get bigger results with my friend Richie Norton. He and I go back. Oh my gosh. So far, he’s been one of our top affiliates over the years. Just meant so much to me.Sent me a text the other day that like made my week. got another one all about how a first time affiliate finished in second place in a big launch with Tasha Shore. And then guys, it’s the holiday time. Can you believe it? Like when we hit mid October, it’s time to start thinking about Black Friday and Cyber Monday.So we’re going to start our annual holiday series this year. We’ve got five episodes planned from mid October through mid November with some of the best tips. All new tips this year. Not a. I mean I’m sure I’ll say something that I’ve said before, but all new stuff for 2022 that I can, I can’t wait to share with you.

So make sure you hit subscribe so you don’t miss any of those episodes coming up. And again, as I mentioned earlier, if you got questions about this or anything else, you can text me anytime. 260-217-4619 I’d also love to hear your biggest takeaway from today. With that, we’ll wrap up and I’ll see you in the next episode. Thank you so much for listening today.Remember to check out all of our deep dives into affiliate marketing at TheAffiliateGuide TV. And if you have a question, ask it at AskTheAffiliateGuide.com who knows, maybe you even be featured on an upcoming episode. And lastly, if you haven’t yet. Make sure to leave a rating and review wherever you’re listening to this episode.

The post How to Avoid the Biggest Affiliate Program Mistakes (Part 2) appeared first on The Affiliate Guy Matt McWilliams - Advice for Affiliate Program Managers.

Affiliate marketing is one of the few channels where e-commerce brands pay only for results. No impressions, no clicks that go nowhere, no wasted ad spend. Just commissions on actual sales, paid after the revenue lands in your account.

What affiliate marketing means for e-commerce brands

Affiliate marketing for e-commerce is a performance-based channel where independent promoters, called affiliates, drive traffic and sales to your store in exchange for a commission on each sale they generate. You pay nothing until a sale is confirmed. The affiliate gets a percentage of that sale. That’s the whole model.

The mechanics are simple. You provide each affiliate with a unique tracking link pointing to your store or a specific product page. When a customer clicks that link and buys, your affiliate software records the sale and attributes it to that affiliate. You pay the commission, usually on a set schedule, and the affiliate earns from every sale they sent your way.

According to Statista, affiliate marketing spending in the U.S. hit $9.56 billion in 2023, and e-commerce is the category driving the bulk of that growth. Brands selling physical products, digital goods, subscriptions, and courses all use this channel because the economics are hard to argue with: you know exactly what you paid per sale before you write a single check.

For e-commerce specifically, affiliates typically include bloggers who write product reviews, comparison sites that rank products in a category, coupon and deal sites that drive purchase-ready traffic, content creators on YouTube and social media, and email list owners who recommend products to their subscribers. The right mix depends on what you sell and where your customers spend time before they buy.

How affiliate tracking works in practice

Every affiliate sale is tracked through a cookie, a small file dropped on the visitor’s browser when they click an affiliate link. If that visitor buys within the cookie window, the sale is attributed to the affiliate. Standard cookie duration for e-commerce programs ranges from 30 to 90 days, though some categories go shorter or longer depending on the typical purchase decision timeline.

The tracking lives inside your affiliate software, which is separate from your e-commerce platform. Tools like Tapfiliate, which integrates directly with Shopify and WooCommerce, handle link generation, click tracking, conversion attribution, commission calculations, and payouts. You can also run your program through an affiliate network like ShareASale or CJ Affiliate, which gives you access to a marketplace of existing affiliates but charges additional fees on top of your commissions, usually 20 to 30 percent of whatever you pay out.

One detail that matters more than most new program managers expect: link integrity. If your site has phone numbers that aren’t tracked, checkout flows that bypass the attribution window, or third-party cart tools that break the cookie chain, affiliates don’t get credited for sales they genuinely drove. That kills trust fast. Before launching, audit your full purchase path to make sure the tracking holds from click to confirmed order.

Most e-commerce affiliate software also supports deep linking, which lets affiliates send traffic to specific product pages rather than your homepage. This matters because a reviewer writing about a specific product converts dramatically better when their link goes directly to that product’s page. A generic homepage link loses people.

Commission structures that work for e-commerce

The most common commission model in e-commerce is pay-per-sale: the affiliate earns a percentage of each order they generate. Percentage-based commissions align incentives perfectly because affiliates earn more when they drive higher-value orders. Flat-fee-per-sale structures are less common but work well for products with consistent pricing.

What affiliate commission percentage should you pay? The right answer depends on your margins, your average order value, and what competitors in your category are offering. Affiliates compare programs. If your commission is meaningfully lower than alternatives in your niche, you’ll struggle to recruit good ones. In most physical product e-commerce categories, commissions range from 5 to 15 percent. Digital products typically support 25 to 50 percent because there’s no cost of goods. Subscription e-commerce often uses a hybrid: a larger commission on the first month to attract affiliates, then a smaller recurring commission to keep them engaged long-term.

The metric that serious affiliates actually care about is EPC, or earnings per click. EPC measures how much money an affiliate earns on average for each click they send to your store. A 10 percent commission on a $200 product that converts at 3 percent produces an EPC of $0.60. A 15 percent commission on a $100 product that converts at 1.5 percent produces an EPC of $0.225. Affiliates running comparison sites or large email lists will pick the first program every time, even though the headline commission looks lower. Make it easy for affiliates to calculate EPC from your program stats before they commit to promoting you.

One practical tip: offer a higher commission to top-performing affiliates on a tiered basis. If your standard rate is 10 percent, a top affiliate driving $10,000 a month in revenue might earn 13 percent. This rewards your best partners and gives mid-tier affiliates a concrete goal to aim for.

Types of affiliates that drive the most e-commerce sales

Not all affiliates produce the same kind of traffic. Understanding the differences helps you recruit the right partners and set realistic expectations for each type.

Content affiliates are bloggers, YouTubers, and creators who publish reviews, tutorials, or comparison posts. They drive high-intent traffic from people already researching a purchase. A buyer who just read a 2,000-word review of your product and clicked through is significantly more likely to convert than someone who saw a banner ad. Content affiliates are harder to recruit because they’re selective about what they promote, but they tend to be your most reliable long-term partners.

Coupon and deal sites drive volume, but they attract price-sensitive buyers. If you run regular discounts or have a loyalty program, coupon affiliates can move significant order volume. The risk is training your customers to wait for discount codes. Use this category selectively and set parameters around what discount codes affiliates can offer.

Email affiliates are list owners who send dedicated promotions or feature your product in their newsletter. When an email affiliate with a relevant, engaged audience sends a recommendation, conversion rates can be remarkably high. These are the partners worth investing time in, both because they drive real revenue and because their recommendation carries genuine trust with their audience.

Comparison and aggregator sites appear high in search results for “best ” queries. Getting listed on these sites puts your product in front of buyers actively comparing options. Some work on a purely affiliate basis, others charge a listing fee, and some do both. If your category has a dominant comparison site, it’s worth understanding how they work and what it takes to get a strong placement.

For most e-commerce brands, the highest-value affiliates are content creators and email list owners in your specific niche. Recruiting these affiliates takes more effort than joining a network and hoping they find you, but the payoff is disproportionate. A single email affiliate with 50,000 engaged subscribers in your target market can generate more revenue in a single send than a dozen coupon sites do in a month.

How to recruit affiliates for your e-commerce program

Affiliate recruitment is an active process. Waiting for affiliates to find you through a network listing is a passive strategy that works slowly. The brands with the strongest affiliate programs go out and build relationships with specific people.

Start with your existing customers. People who already bought from you, love your product, and have an audience are your warmest prospects. They don’t need to be convinced the product is good. They already know. Reach out personally, explain the program, and make it easy to get started. Your first affiliates are almost always in this group.

Next, search for people already creating content about your product category. Search Google and YouTube for reviews of products similar to yours. The people ranking for “best ” or “top ” are already doing the work. They’re talking to your potential customers. All they need is a reason to include you. An email explaining your program, your commission, and why your product stands out in your category is often enough to start a conversation.

Your competitors’ affiliate programs are also worth studying. Many affiliates promote multiple brands in the same category. If you can offer better commissions, better creative assets, better support, or just a product that’s genuinely better, affiliates already active in your space will often add you to their rotation. The affiliate marketing world is smaller than it looks. People talk.

When you do reach out, be specific. Don’t send a generic “join our affiliate program” mass email. Reference what the person does, why their audience aligns with your product, and what you’re offering. A well-structured affiliate program with clear commission details, a strong product, and prompt support closes most of the recruiting work before the conversation even starts.

Setting up your e-commerce affiliate program

The infrastructure behind your affiliate program matters more than most e-commerce owners expect when they’re starting out. A program with unclear terms, slow payments, broken tracking, or poor communication loses affiliates even if the product is great. Here’s what the setup actually requires.

First, choose your tracking software. For most e-commerce brands starting out, a standalone platform like Tapfiliate integrates directly with Shopify and WooCommerce, costs a fraction of what affiliate networks charge in fees, and gives you full control over the affiliate experience. Networks have their place, especially if you want immediate access to a pool of affiliates and don’t want to do your own recruiting, but the fees add up. A 20 to 30 percent override on every commission you pay is significant at scale.

Second, write your program terms. This document governs what affiliates can and can’t do. It needs to cover how commissions are calculated, when and how affiliates get paid, what promotional methods are allowed, whether affiliates can bid on your brand name in paid search, and what happens if they violate the terms. A clear affiliate agreement protects both you and your affiliates, and it prevents a lot of headaches later.

Make sure that your affiliate program has a solid agreement (AKA Terms & Conditions). To make things simple, use Affiliate Terms Wizard. It will write your terms in minutes and save you $100s in attorney’s fees.

Third, build your affiliate resource center. Affiliates need product images, approved copy, key selling points, discount codes if you’re offering them, and clear instructions for how to get their link and track their performance. The easier you make it for affiliates to promote your product, the more of them actually will. Most don’t get started because the friction is too high, not because they’re unmotivated.

Fourth, set a payment schedule and stick to it. Weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly payouts are all workable, but whatever you choose, be consistent. Late or missed payments kill affiliate relationships faster than almost anything else. Most affiliate software handles payment calculations automatically. Automate the payments too, through PayPal, direct deposit, or whichever method works for your affiliates, so this never becomes a bottleneck.

If you want the complete picture on affiliate program management, including how to recruit your first 30 affiliates, The Book on Affiliate Management at affiliatemanagementbook.com walks through the full system. It’s the most detailed resource available on building and running programs that actually scale.

How affiliates promote e-commerce products

Understanding how your affiliates actually promote your products helps you support them better and gives you realistic expectations about what assets they need from you.

Product reviews are the most common and most effective format. A detailed review post or video answers every question a buyer has before they decide to purchase. Good affiliates go deep: they cover what the product does well, what it doesn’t, who it’s best for, how it compares to alternatives, and exactly how to buy it. This content ranks in Google, shows up in YouTube searches, and drives traffic long after it’s published. A well-written review from a trusted creator continues generating commissions months or years after the initial promotion.

Comparison posts put your product head-to-head with alternatives. “Brand A vs. Brand B” or “Best for ” posts capture buyers who are down to their final two or three options. These convert at very high rates because the reader is ready to buy; they just need a final recommendation. Getting your product featured favorably in comparison content is one of the most valuable placements you can earn.

Email promotions deliver a different kind of impact. A dedicated email from a trusted list owner to their subscribers is essentially a personal recommendation at scale. A well-written promotional email from an affiliate with a relevant, engaged list can drive a weekend’s worth of revenue in 48 hours. Most e-commerce brands who’ve built strong affiliate email relationships report that email affiliates consistently outperform social media and paid traffic on a per-sale basis.

Social media and short-form video work for products with high visual appeal or that benefit from demonstration. An affiliate showing your product in use on Instagram or TikTok reaches an audience that responds well to discovery-style content. These promotions work best when the affiliate has genuine enthusiasm for the product rather than just reading from swipe copy. Give affiliates your product for free if they’re the right fit. The investment is almost always worth it.

Managing affiliates and keeping them active

Most e-commerce brands underestimate how active affiliate management needs to be. Sign-up rates look great. Actual promotion rates are often 5 to 15 percent of affiliates who joined. The gap between signed up and actively promoting is where most programs stall out.

The solution is consistent, helpful communication. Not spam. Actual value. A monthly affiliate newsletter with upcoming promotions, new products, seasonal campaigns, and selling tips keeps your program top of mind. Affiliates promote what they remember and what they think will perform. Regular communication addresses both.

Be proactive about giving affiliates what they need before they have to ask. If you have a new product launching in six weeks, email your affiliates four weeks out with details, assets, and a calendar of key dates. If you’re running a holiday promotion, let affiliates know in advance so they can plan their content calendar. The best-performing e-commerce affiliate programs treat affiliates like partners in the campaign, not order-takers waiting for a link.

One tactic that works well for e-commerce specifically: periodic affiliate contests with prizes tied to sales volume over a short window. A 30-day contest with cash prizes or product bundles for the top three affiliates creates urgency and gives mid-tier affiliates a reason to push harder than usual. The contest itself generates as much value through the promotional activity it creates as through the prize you give away.

For affiliates who’ve gone quiet, a direct reactivation message works better than you’d expect. Reference their past performance specifically, show them a current opportunity that aligns with their audience, and make it easy to say yes. The basics of great affiliate management come down to treating affiliates like people, communicating clearly, and giving them real reasons to keep promoting.

My Affiliate Activation Templates include the exact emails used to reactivate dormant affiliates across multiple e-commerce programs. Free download, immediately usable.

What results to expect and when

Affiliate marketing for e-commerce is not a fast channel. It’s a compounding one. In the first 90 days, you’re mostly building infrastructure and recruiting. Expect a small number of active affiliates, modest revenue, and a learning curve around what’s working and what’s not. That’s normal.

By month six, a program with active recruitment and consistent communication should have a core group of producing affiliates and a clearer picture of which types are generating the best ROI. By month twelve, the best programs start to see real compounding: affiliates who published content six months ago continue driving sales from organic search, and the relationships you’ve built lead to warmer referrals when you recruit new partners.

The programs that scale to meaningful revenue share a few characteristics. They have a product that affiliates can genuinely recommend without feeling like they’re pushing something mediocre. They pay well enough to attract quality partners. They communicate regularly and respond quickly when affiliates have questions. And they actively support their best affiliates rather than setting the program on autopilot and hoping commissions roll in.

One benchmark worth knowing: the Awin 2023 Affiliate Marketing Industry Report found that affiliate programs consistently achieve customer acquisition costs 40 to 50 percent lower than paid search for e-commerce brands. The performance-based payment model is the reason. You only pay when a sale happens, which means your ROI floor is much higher than with any impression-based or click-based channel. The full upside of running a strong affiliate channel goes beyond direct commissions and includes the SEO value of affiliate content, the brand exposure from affiliate audiences, and the compounding effect of relationships that grow stronger over time.

For e-commerce brands that want to go beyond the basics and build a program designed to scale, this free training covers how to turn affiliate marketing into your largest, most profitable acquisition channel, including a specific framework for recruiting your first 100 affiliates.

Frequently asked questions about affiliate marketing for e-commerce

Do I need a large product catalog to run an affiliate program?
No. Some of the highest-performing affiliate programs are built around a single hero product. Affiliates can write in-depth reviews, comparisons, and tutorial content around one well-differentiated product more easily than they can cover a sprawling catalog. What matters more than catalog size is whether the product is worth recommending and whether your commission is competitive.

How is affiliate marketing different from influencer marketing?
Influencer marketing typically involves paying a flat fee upfront for a post or endorsement, regardless of how many sales it generates. Affiliate marketing pays only on performance. The two approaches attract different types of creators. Influencers are often more focused on reach and brand awareness. Affiliates are focused on conversion. Many brands use both, using influencer partnerships for discovery and affiliate programs for acquisition.

Should I join an affiliate network or run my own program?
Networks give you access to established affiliates immediately, which helps if you’re starting from zero relationships. But network fees, typically 20 to 30 percent on top of your commissions, are significant at scale. Running an in-house program gives you more control, lower costs, and a direct relationship with your affiliates. Many mature e-commerce brands start with a network and migrate in-house once they have traction.

How do I prevent affiliate fraud?
Set clear terms and conditions that define what affiliates can and can’t do. Monitor your traffic for patterns that don’t make sense, such as click-to-conversion ratios that are abnormally high or traffic from sources that don’t match your affiliate’s stated audience. Most reputable affiliate software flags suspicious activity automatically. For most e-commerce programs, fraud is less common than new managers fear, but having clear policies and monitoring in place is essential from day one.

What’s a realistic affiliate commission rate for an e-commerce brand?
For physical products, 5 to 15 percent covers most categories, with commodity products at the lower end and specialty or premium products at the higher end. For digital products and subscriptions, 20 to 50 percent is common. The right number is one that attracts quality affiliates while keeping the program profitable for you. Research what competitors in your category are paying, then aim to match or slightly exceed it for your first recruits.

How long before my affiliate program generates meaningful revenue?
Most programs take 6 to 12 months to reach meaningful, consistent revenue. The first 90 days are largely infrastructure and early recruitment. Months three through six are when active promotion picks up. By month twelve, programs with consistent management typically have a stable core of producing affiliates and compounding content driving ongoing sales.

Need help activating your affiliates? Use my proven email templates for getting inactive affiliates in the game and making sales! Get them here!

The post How Affiliate Marketing Works for E-Commerce Brands appeared first on The Affiliate Guy Matt McWilliams - Advice for Affiliate Program Managers.

Most affiliates sign up with good intentions and then go completely silent. It’s one of the most frustrating parts of running an affiliate program, and if you’re dealing with it right now, you’re not alone. Here’s how to actually fix it.

The stat that stops most affiliate managers cold: in a typical affiliate program, around 95% of affiliates who sign up never make a single sale. Some never even log in after joining.

That’s not because they’re lazy or because your product isn’t good. Most of the time, it’s because nobody told them what to do, when to do it, or why they should bother. They signed up, got a confirmation email, maybe a link, and then… silence. So they moved on to something else.

The good news is that those quiet affiliates aren’t lost. With the right sequence of moves, you can wake a large percentage of them up. I’ve seen programs activate 20-30% of their inactive list in a single campaign. That’s real money sitting there waiting to be unlocked.

This post covers the specific strategies that work, in the order you should use them, and the common mistakes that keep affiliate managers spinning their wheels.

Why affiliates go quiet after signing up

Before you can fix the problem, it helps to understand what actually caused it. Affiliates go quiet for a handful of reasons, and they’re almost never the ones affiliate managers assume.

The most common reason: they didn’t know what to do next. This sounds almost too simple, but it’s true. You gave them a link. You maybe sent a welcome email. And then you assumed they’d figure it out. They didn’t.

The second reason is timing. They signed up during a period when they weren’t ready to promote anything. Maybe they were between launches. Maybe they had personal stuff going on. Maybe your program just wasn’t the right fit at that moment — but six months later, it might be.

The third reason is that they forgot. This one stings, but it’s reality. Affiliates are exposed to hundreds of marketing messages a day. If you signed them up and went quiet for 60 days, you’ve lost the top-of-mind position. You’re not on their radar anymore. That doesn’t mean they’re gone forever — it just means you have to earn your way back.

The fourth reason is that they tried once and it didn’t work. Maybe they sent one email, got no sales, and concluded your offer wasn’t worth promoting. This is fixable, but it requires more than a nudge. You have to show them a better path.

Understanding which of these is driving your inactivity tells you which tool to reach for first.

The first move: segment before you message

The biggest mistake in affiliate reactivation is blasting the same message to every inactive affiliate. A new affiliate who signed up two weeks ago and hasn’t promoted yet is completely different from someone who joined three years ago, ran one promotion, and disappeared. They need different messages.

Before you write a single email, segment your inactive affiliates into at least three buckets:

• New and never promoted — signed up in the last 60-90 days, never sent traffic
• Previously active, now quiet — have promoted before but haven’t in 90+ days
• Long-term dormant — signed up more than a year ago, little or no activity

Each group gets a different message and a different offer. The new-and-never-promoted group needs clarity and a quick win. The previously-active group needs a reason to come back and a reminder of what they already know how to do. The long-term dormant group needs a real reason to re-engage — a new product, a strong contest, something that didn’t exist when they last paid attention.

Most affiliate software lets you pull these segments easily. If yours doesn’t, export your data and sort by last-click or last-sale date. It’s worth the 20 minutes.

How to reactivate new affiliates who haven’t promoted yet

New affiliates who never promoted are your lowest-hanging fruit. They were interested enough to apply and get approved. The momentum just died before it turned into action.

The fix here is almost always the same: give them a specific, low-friction first step.

Send them a short email that does three things. First, acknowledge the gap without making it weird. Something like: “Hey, you joined our program a few weeks ago and I want to make sure you have everything you need to get started.” Second, give them one concrete action to take — not a list of resources, not a welcome portal tour, just one thing. “Send this email to your list this week.” Or “Post this to your Instagram Stories using these three images.” Third, tell them exactly what to expect if they do it. A specific number helps: “Last month, affiliates who sent this email averaged $340 in commissions in the first week.”

Don’t overwhelm them with options. The reason they haven’t promoted yet is almost always decision paralysis or a lack of clarity. You solve that by removing decisions, not adding them.

If you want a head start on the actual emails, the Affiliate Activation Templates give you the exact emails I use to get new and inactive affiliates moving — written and ready to customize. They cover both short-term and long-term reactivation situations.

How to win back affiliates who used to promote

Previously-active affiliates who’ve gone quiet are a different situation. They know how to promote. They’ve made sales before. Something caused them to stop, and your job is to figure out what and address it directly.

The most effective approach here is a personal outreach, not a broadcast. Pick up the phone or send a one-to-one email — not a mass campaign — to your top previously-active affiliates. Ask a genuine question: “Hey, I noticed you haven’t promoted recently. Is everything okay? Is there anything we could do differently to make it easier to promote?” You’ll get real answers, and those answers will tell you what’s actually going on.

Common responses you’ll hear: the commissions aren’t competitive anymore, the product has changed and they’re not sure it’s still a good fit for their audience, they’ve been busy and just need a nudge, or they had a bad experience with a promotion that didn’t convert. Each of those has a specific fix.

For the group as a whole, a win-back campaign works well. This is a short 2-3 email sequence sent specifically to previously-active affiliates with a compelling reason to come back. That reason should be one of three things: a new product or offer, a meaningful commission increase or bonus, or a specific upcoming promotion with a concrete opportunity window. Vague “we miss you” emails don’t move people. Specific, time-bound opportunities do.

I go deep on how to activate inactive affiliates in a full post if you want the longer playbook. The short version: make it easy, make it urgent, and make the upside concrete.

What actually motivates affiliates long-term

Reactivation campaigns are great, but if you have to run one every six months, you have a retention problem, not a reactivation problem. Long-term affiliate motivation comes from a different set of things.

Communication consistency is the biggest factor. Affiliates who hear from you regularly — not just during promotions — stay warm. They feel like they’re part of something, not just a sales channel you turn on and off. A monthly affiliate newsletter, even a short one, does more for long-term retention than any single reactivation campaign. Most programs don’t send one. That’s a big gap you can fill.

Early wins matter more than big commissions. When a new affiliate makes their first sale, especially in the first 30 days, they’re dramatically more likely to become long-term promoters. Structure your program to make that first win as easy as possible. That might mean enhanced commissions for a new affiliate’s first sale, a specific “quick win” promotion you run for new partners, or a simple welcome sequence that walks them through their first promotion step by step.

Recognition drives behavior. Affiliate leaderboards, shout-outs in newsletters, personal notes from you when someone hits a milestone — all of it signals that you’re paying attention and that their effort matters. This costs almost nothing and has a real impact on how often affiliates prioritize your program over competing offers.

The right content, delivered at the right time. Affiliates who know they’re going to receive the resources they need — good copy, strong images, a promo plan — before they need them are far more likely to actually promote. If they have to ask for stuff or hunt it down, they won’t bother. Set a standard of delivering everything early and proactively, and your active rate goes up. The Sample Affiliate Promo Plan is something I’ve shared with affiliates for years to show them exactly how to structure a full promotion and why it’s worth going all-in.

Get the EXACT Template We Give to Our Affiliates to Get Them to Promote More and Generate More Sales! Click Here to Download it Now!

Contests and incentives that actually work

Affiliate contests can be genuinely powerful motivators — but most programs run them wrong. They set up a leaderboard, offer a cash prize to whoever sells the most, and then wonder why only their top three affiliates are competing and everyone else is ignoring it.

The problem with winner-takes-all contests is that they only motivate people who think they can win. If someone is sitting at number 15 on your leaderboard looking up at the top three, they have no reason to push harder. The gap feels too big.

The contests that actually move the needle have multiple tiers and multiple ways to win. Here are the structures that work best:

• Tiered milestones: everyone who hits 10 sales gets $X, everyone who hits 25 gets $Y, everyone who hits 50 gets $Z. This gives every affiliate a reachable goal, not just the top performers.
• First-sale contests: the first affiliate to make a sale on day one wins a bonus. This is great for activating your dormant partners who’ve never promoted before — because for the first time, they have a shot.
• Activity contests: reward affiliates for sending emails, sharing social posts, or driving optins, not just sales. This is especially useful during a launch pre-sell period when you want everyone warmed up.

On prizes: tangible, specific prizes outperform cash almost every time. Cash is easy to mentally file under “bills.” A Porsche Boxster, a $1,000 gift card to Ruth’s Chris, a trip for two — those things you can picture. You can tell your spouse about them. They stick in your brain differently. If you can tie the prize to something you know a specific high-value affiliate wants, even better.

For a deeper look at building a reactivation system for evergreen programs, the post on activating inactive affiliates in evergreen programs covers the full sequence.

The role of communication in keeping affiliates active

Here’s a pattern I’ve seen hundreds of times: an affiliate manager works hard to recruit great partners, runs a successful launch, and then goes quiet. Two months later, they want to run another promotion and email their affiliate list — and barely anyone responds. The list has gone cold because there was no in-between communication.

Affiliates are exposed to 500 to 1,000 marketing messages per day. If you disappear for two months and then show up asking them to promote something, you’re competing with everything else fighting for their attention. You haven’t maintained the relationship. You’re essentially starting over.

The fix is a regular communication cadence that runs between promotions, not just during them. That means:

• A monthly affiliate newsletter with tips, results from the last promotion, and a preview of what’s coming
• Occasional personal emails to your top 20-30 affiliates, not templates — actual notes
• Social media engagement with your affiliates: comment on their posts, share their content, respond when they tag you
• A pre-promotion warm-up sequence that starts 6-8 weeks before a launch, not one week before

The affiliates who stay consistently active aren’t the ones with the best programs or the highest commissions. They’re usually the ones whose affiliate manager makes them feel like partners, not just distribution channels.

Writing all those emails takes time, which is why my team uses Affiliate Email Pro for every piece of affiliate communication we produce. It’s trained on 2,000+ high-performing affiliate emails and generates drafts in minutes. For affiliate managers running ongoing programs, it saves three to ten hours a week.

When to cut your losses and remove an affiliate

Not every inactive affiliate is worth reactivating. At some point, a decision about program hygiene matters as much as reactivation effort.

Here’s a reasonable framework: if an affiliate has been in your program for more than 12 months with zero sales and zero clicks, send a re-engagement email. Give them one specific, easy opportunity to participate. If they don’t respond or promote, remove them from active status. You can keep them in your system — but stop spending time and newsletter slots on people who aren’t engaged.

This isn’t about being harsh. It’s about focusing your energy where it’s going to produce a return. The 10 commandments of great affiliate managers include one that most people skip: make hard decisions about your affiliate roster rather than letting dead weight dilute your program metrics and your attention.

Pruning your list also has a side benefit: your email open rates and click-through rates improve, which gives you a cleaner read on what’s actually working in your communications.

Building a reactivation system, not a one-time campaign

The best affiliate managers don’t scramble to reactivate affiliates every time they want to run a promotion. They have a system running in the background all the time.

A simple version looks like this:

Day 0-7 (new affiliate onboarding): Welcome email with one specific action, follow-up on day 3 with a quick-win promotion opportunity, follow-up on day 7 with a check-in.

Day 30 (no activity check): Automated or manual email to any affiliate who hasn’t sent a click yet. Short, direct, with one ask: “Have you had a chance to promote yet? Here’s the simplest way to get started.”

Day 90 (reactivation trigger): Any affiliate with no activity in 90 days gets flagged. A brief, personal-feeling email goes out: not a newsletter, a direct note. Offer something specific — a bonus commission for their next sale, access to a new resource, a heads-up about an upcoming promotion.

Day 365 (annual cleanup): Anyone with no sales in 12 months gets one last re-engagement attempt. If no response, they move to inactive status or get removed.

Between all of those touchpoints, your monthly newsletter is doing the ongoing relationship maintenance. Combined, this system means no affiliate ever goes 90 days without hearing from you, and you’re catching the drop-offs early rather than trying to recover them a year later.

If you want to see how the most successful programs put all of this together, The Book on Affiliate Management walks through the full system — from recruiting to activation to long-term retention. It’s the complete playbook for building a program that doesn’t rely on constantly recruiting new affiliates to replace the ones who went quiet.

What to do this week

Don’t try to overhaul your entire affiliate program in one sitting. Here’s the simplest version of where to start:

Pull your affiliate list and sort it by last-click or last-sale date. Identify everyone who joined in the last 90 days and hasn’t promoted yet. Send them a short, direct email with one specific action to take this week. Then pull the list of affiliates who were active 6-12 months ago and have gone quiet. Write them a personal note — not a newsletter, an actual email — and ask what’s going on.

Those two moves alone will move the needle in the next 30 days. The system comes after you’ve proven to yourself that reactivation works for your specific program and audience. Start simple, learn what works, then build it into a repeatable process.

For more on how to motivate affiliates leading up to a promotion specifically, that post covers the pre-launch warm-up sequence in depth. And if you’re thinking about hiring an affiliate manager to own this process, that post walks through exactly what to look for and when it makes sense to bring someone on.

The affiliates you need are already in your program. They just need someone to show up and give them a reason to promote.

Questions?

Text me anytime at (260) 217-4619.

Or…check out some of my free reports to help you get on the right track:

Find Your First 100 Affiliates

Affiliate Program Terms & Conditions Template

Get My #1 Affiliate Recruiting Email

Avoid The Top 20 Affiliate Program Mistakes

Turn Inactive Affiliates into Your Best Affiliates

Get My Template for Writing Affiliate Emails

Affiliate Marketing Sales Secrets

Learn How to Create a Resources Page

Learn How to Write a Product Review

The post How to Motivate Affiliates Who Signed Up but Stopped Promoting appeared first on The Affiliate Guy Matt McWilliams - Advice for Affiliate Program Managers.

Most business owners who ask “am I ready for an affiliate program?” are actually asking the wrong question. The right question is whether your business can support one right now, and the answer depends on five specific things you can check today.

Why launching too early kills affiliate programs

Affiliate marketing looks simple from the outside. You recruit people to promote your product, they send you buyers, you pay them a commission. What’s not to love?

The reality is that most affiliate programs that fail don’t fail because of bad recruiting or low commissions. They fail because the business wasn’t ready when they launched. Affiliates show up, send traffic, and get terrible results. Then they stop promoting. Word spreads. Recruiting gets harder. The program quietly dies.

I’ve seen this happen with businesses that had hundreds of thousands in revenue. The size of your company doesn’t protect you if the fundamentals aren’t in place. What does protect you is being honest about where you are before you open the doors to affiliates.

Here’s what “ready” actually looks like.

Your product needs to be proven before affiliates touch it

The single most important readiness signal is whether your product converts. Not whether you think it will, not whether your beta testers loved it. Whether real strangers, who don’t know you, have found it and bought it.

Before you launch an affiliate program, you need a baseline conversion rate from cold traffic. This matters because affiliates aren’t your customers. Their audiences are strangers to you. If your sales page converts at 4% when your own warm email list visits it, that’s not the number affiliates will see. They’ll likely see something closer to 1-2%.

If you haven’t driven any cold traffic to your offer yet, do that first. Run a small paid ad campaign, swap promotions with someone in your niche, or find another way to send people who’ve never heard of you to your sales page. See what converts. If the number is reasonable, you’re ready to involve affiliates. If it’s essentially zero, fix the product or the page before you ask someone else to stake their reputation on it.

A good rule of thumb: if you’ve made at least 50-100 sales to people outside your immediate audience and the conversion rate is holding up, you have enough data to build on. You don’t need a massive track record. You need enough to know the offer works.

This is one of the points covered in starting an affiliate program for free — the software costs almost nothing, but the readiness work is what actually determines success.

Your sales infrastructure has to handle traffic spikes

A slow-loading website is a conversion killer. Studies have shown that even a one-second delay in page load time can reduce conversions by up to 7%. When you run your own traffic, a bad day on your site costs you some sales. When affiliates are sending traffic, a bad day costs you their trust.

Before you recruit affiliates, check these things:

• Does your checkout process work on mobile? In most niches, 50-70% of traffic is mobile. If your cart breaks or looks terrible on a phone, you’re burning affiliate commissions.
• Can your hosting handle a traffic surge? If a big affiliate sends 5,000 visitors in a day, will your site stay up?
• Is your payment processor set up and tested? Have you successfully processed refunds? Do you know your chargeback threshold?
• Is your delivery system automatic? If someone buys, do they get access immediately, or is there a manual step involved?

None of this needs to be perfect. But it needs to work reliably. The minute an affiliate’s buyer has a bad checkout experience, that affiliate hears about it. And they remember.

It’s also worth knowing what tools you need to run an affiliate program before you go live — tracking, payments, and communications are all part of the infrastructure that needs to work before affiliates start sending traffic.

You need a commission structure affiliates will actually say yes to

This is where a lot of first-time affiliate program managers guess wrong. They set commissions based on what feels comfortable to them, not what’s competitive in their market.

Here’s how to think about it: affiliates are making a decision every time they decide to promote something. They’re choosing to spend their time, their list, their credibility on your offer instead of someone else’s. They need a reason to choose you.

For digital products, 25-50% commissions are standard. Some markets go higher. For physical products, margins are tighter and 5-15% is more typical. What matters most isn’t the percentage — it’s the earnings per click (EPC). If your product converts well and the average order value is high, even a modest commission rate produces strong EPC. Strong EPC attracts and keeps affiliates.

Before you launch, calculate what you can afford to pay and what number makes the program attractive. If you’re selling a $97 product and can only afford to pay $5 per sale, you’re going to struggle to recruit anyone worth having. On the other hand, if you’re selling a $497 course and can pay $150 per sale, you’ve got something to work with.

You should also decide on cookie duration before you go live. A 30-day cookie is a minimum. Lifetime cookies are better and there’s a strong case for why your affiliate program should have a lifetime cookie if your business model supports it.

You need enough bandwidth to actually manage affiliates

This one surprises people. They assume the affiliate program runs itself after setup. It doesn’t.

Affiliates need onboarding. They need promotional materials — emails, graphics, copy they can use or adapt. They need someone to answer questions when a link breaks or their tracking looks wrong. They need communication during promotions, not just a welcome email when they sign up and silence afterward.

One of the most common mistakes I see with new affiliate programs is a total communication blackout. The owner recruits a handful of affiliates, everyone agrees to promote, and then nothing happens. No updates, no swipe copy, no check-ins. Affiliates get busy with other things. The launch comes and goes with a whimper.

Ask yourself honestly: do you have 3-5 hours a week to manage your affiliate program, especially during a launch window? If you’re already stretched thin running the rest of your business, that’s a real issue. The program won’t fail because of lack of interest. It’ll fail because of lack of attention.

If time is the constraint, the answer isn’t to delay the program. It’s to be realistic about starting small. Recruit 10-20 affiliates you can actually support before you try to recruit 200. Get the communication rhythm down before you scale. This also ties directly into knowing what system to use to manage your affiliate program — having the right setup makes the time commitment much more manageable.

If you want to save 3-10 hours a week on affiliate communications, Affiliate Email Pro handles the writing side. It’s trained on 2,000+ high-performing affiliate emails and walks you through every scenario — launches, reactivation, contests, routine updates — in minutes instead of hours.

You need a small audience before recruiting starts

You don’t need a massive platform to attract affiliates. But you need something.

When an affiliate considers promoting your product, they’ll look at you. They’ll check your site, your social presence, maybe your email list size if they know it. What they’re trying to gauge is whether you’re a real, serious business with staying power. A one-page website with no content and no social presence sends the wrong signal, regardless of how good your product is.

Here’s what “enough” looks like for a first affiliate program:

• A functional, professional-looking website with real content on it
• Some kind of existing audience — even 500-1,000 email subscribers tells affiliates you know how to build an audience
• A track record of customer results you can point to
• Responsive communication — if an affiliate emails you and you take two weeks to reply, that’s a red flag

You don’t need 50,000 subscribers or a massive social following. But you need to look like someone affiliates can trust to follow through. And critically, you need something to say when an affiliate asks “why should I promote you?” — ideally with a number attached, like conversion rate, average order value, or results your customers have seen.

Understanding the top affiliate recruiting mistakes is useful here too, because some of them come back to exactly this — approaching potential affiliates before you have anything compelling to show them.

The readiness checklist

Before you launch, run through these five questions honestly:

1. Has your product converted cold traffic? If yes, you know the offer works. If no, get that data first.
2. Does your checkout and delivery system work reliably? Test it. Fix any broken steps before affiliates send traffic.
3. Can you afford to pay competitive commissions? If the math doesn’t work, restructure the offer before recruiting.
4. Do you have time to manage the program? If not, decide how many affiliates you can realistically support and start there.
5. Do you have something compelling to show potential affiliates? Results, conversion data, audience size — some proof that this is worth their time.

If you can answer yes to all five, you’re ready. If you’re missing one or two, you’ll know exactly what to fix before you open the program.

One more thing worth mentioning: getting the legal foundation right before launch protects you from problems that are much harder to fix after the fact. The Affiliate Terms Wizard creates rock-solid affiliate terms and conditions in 4-15 minutes, trained on 1,000+ attorney-written agreements. It’s $49 and saves you $300-$1,000 in legal fees. Do it before affiliates start promoting, not after.

Make sure that your affiliate program has a solid agreement (AKA Terms & Conditions). To make things simple, use Affiliate Terms Wizard. It will write your terms in minutes and save you $100s in attorney’s fees.

What to do if you’re not quite ready yet

If you went through that checklist and hit a few “not yet” answers, don’t treat that as bad news. Treat it as a prioritized to-do list.

If your product hasn’t converted cold traffic yet, that’s the first thing to solve. Run a small paid campaign or do a joint venture with someone in your niche to test the offer.

If your commission math doesn’t work at current prices, look at whether you can increase your price, add an upsell that improves the average order value, or restructure the offer in a way that makes the commissions viable.

If you don’t have time to manage affiliates, either wait until you do or plan to start with a very small group — five or ten affiliates you can actually support well.

The goal is a program that works, not a program that launches. Plenty of businesses launch affiliate programs and get nothing out of them because they moved too fast. A little patience on the front end makes an enormous difference in what you’re able to build.

When you’re ready to build it the right way, The Book on Affiliate Management walks through the entire system, from launch through scaling. It’s the same approach used with Tony Robbins, Michael Hyatt, Stu McLaren, and Adidas — available on Amazon in print and Kindle with $1,000+ in bonuses.

Frequently asked questions

How much revenue do I need before starting an affiliate program?
There’s no hard revenue threshold. What matters more is whether your product converts. Some businesses launch successful affiliate programs with under $10,000 in total sales. Others have $500,000 in revenue and still aren’t ready because their sales page doesn’t convert cold traffic. Focus on conversion data, not revenue numbers.

Can I start an affiliate program before I have an email list?
You can, but it’s harder. Affiliates want to see that you’re building an audience and know how to communicate with them. Even a small list of 300-500 engaged subscribers tells affiliates you understand audience-building. If you have no list at all, focus on building one alongside your affiliate program launch prep.

What if I don’t know my conversion rate yet?
Run traffic to find out. A small paid ad campaign sending 500-1,000 people to your sales page gives you enough data to calculate a conversion rate. Google Ads, Facebook Ads, or a newsletter swap with a peer in your niche all work for this. Don’t skip this step — it’s too important.

Do I need affiliate tracking software before I launch?
Yes. You can’t run an affiliate program on handshakes and spreadsheets. You need software that tracks clicks, conversions, and commissions accurately. Several solid options start under $50/month. Get this set up and tested before affiliates start promoting — tracking problems after launch destroy trust fast.

How do I know if my commission rate is competitive?
Join a few affiliate programs in your niche as an affiliate and see what they pay. Check affiliate networks in your market. Ask a few potential affiliates what they typically expect. If you’re in a digital product space, 25-40% is a reasonable starting benchmark. If you’re in physical products, 8-12% is more typical. The key metric affiliates actually care about is EPC, so a higher conversion rate can compensate for a lower percentage.

Is it better to launch with a small number of affiliates or go big right away?
Start small, especially if this is your first program. Ten to twenty affiliates you can support well will outperform a hundred affiliates you’re ignoring. You’ll learn what your affiliates need, work out the communication rhythm, and fix any problems before they affect a larger group. Scale once the system is running smoothly.

The post Is My Business Ready for an Affiliate Program? appeared first on The Affiliate Guy Matt McWilliams - Advice for Affiliate Program Managers.

Influencer marketing and affiliate marketing both use other people to promote your product. But they’re built on completely different payment models, risk profiles, and use cases. Knowing which one fits your situation can save you thousands of dollars and months of wasted effort.

What’s the actual difference between influencer marketing and affiliate marketing?

Influencer marketing pays people upfront for exposure. You agree to a fee, they post about your product, and you pay regardless of whether anyone buys. Affiliate marketing works the opposite way: you only pay when a sale happens. No sale, no commission.

That’s the core distinction. Everything else, including who’s involved, how you track results, and what kind of relationships you build, flows from that one difference.

With influencer marketing, you’re buying audience access. You’re paying for reach, impressions, and brand awareness. The influencer isn’t motivated to drive conversions; they’re motivated to create content their audience engages with. That’s not a criticism. It’s just how the model works.

With affiliate marketing, you’re paying for performance. Affiliates earn commission on sales they drive, so their incentive is aligned with yours: more revenue means more commission. They don’t get paid just for posting. They get paid for results.

How does the payment structure compare?

Influencer fees vary wildly based on follower count and engagement. A micro-influencer with 20,000 followers might charge $200-$500 per post. A mid-tier influencer with 500,000 followers might charge $5,000-$25,000. A celebrity influencer can run $100,000 or more for a single piece of content. You pay all of this before a single customer clicks a link.

Affiliate commissions are only paid after a sale occurs. Typical rates range from 5% to 50% depending on your industry and profit margins. A $100 product with a 30% commission means you pay $30 per sale. If no one buys, you owe nothing. Your cost is directly tied to revenue generated.

This matters enormously for cash flow. A $10,000 influencer campaign might produce 50 sales or zero. An affiliate program that generates $10,000 in commissions means you paid only on proven revenue. The risk profile is completely different.

The caveat: building an affiliate program isn’t free. You need tracking software, onboarding systems, and ongoing communication infrastructure. Those are real costs. But they’re fixed costs that scale with your program’s success, not a gamble on exposure.

Which model is better for brand awareness?

Influencer marketing wins for pure brand awareness. A well-placed post from a trusted voice in your space can introduce your brand to tens of thousands of people who’ve never heard of you. It’s especially useful when you’re entering a new market, launching a product with no existing audience, or trying to shift brand perception.

Affiliate marketing is less effective for awareness on its own, but it builds something more durable: a network of people actively promoting you over time. An affiliate who earns consistent commission from your program doesn’t run one campaign and disappear. They integrate your product into their content, email lists, and social presence for months or years.

One of the hidden benefits of affiliate marketing is the SEO and long-tail traffic you get from affiliates who publish review posts, comparison articles, and tutorials. That content lives on the internet and keeps driving traffic long after the promotion ends. An influencer post disappears from feeds within 48 hours.

If awareness is the goal right now, influencer marketing gets you there faster. If you want sustained traffic and sales over time, affiliate marketing is the better investment.

What kind of tracking comes with each?

Affiliate marketing has tracking built into its DNA. Every sale is tracked through a unique affiliate link, so you know exactly which affiliate drove which sale. You can measure conversion rates, earnings per click, average order value, and commission costs in real time. The data is clean and actionable.

Influencer marketing tracking is murkier. You can track link clicks if the influencer uses a tracked URL or a promo code. But attributing sales to awareness is hard. Someone might see an influencer post, wait three weeks, then Google your product and buy directly. That sale doesn’t show up in your influencer report. This isn’t a reason to avoid influencer marketing, but it’s why ROI comparisons between the two models are rarely apples-to-apples.

Some brands add affiliate tracking on top of influencer relationships. They give influencers a unique link or promo code and pay them a base fee plus commission on sales. This hybrid approach gives you better data and aligns the influencer’s incentive slightly more toward conversion.

Which is easier to scale?

Affiliate marketing scales dramatically better. Once your program is running, adding affiliates is relatively straightforward. You can recruit 10 affiliates or 10,000 using the same infrastructure. With affiliates, you’re essentially only paying for performance, so scaling doesn’t require a proportional increase in upfront spending.

Influencer marketing doesn’t scale the same way. Each relationship has to be negotiated, managed, and paid individually. Running 50 influencer campaigns simultaneously requires 50 contracts, 50 payments, and significant management bandwidth. The cost and complexity grow linearly with the number of partners.

That said, influencer programs can scale through affiliate structures. Platforms like LTK (formerly LikeToKnowIt) and Amazon Associates essentially turn influencers into affiliates with commission-based pay. If you’re working with influencers at scale, moving toward commission structures reduces your upfront risk and aligns everyone’s incentives.

If you’re considering starting or expanding an affiliate program, the free How to 10X Your Sales Training covers exactly how to build a program that grows quickly and scales long-term, including how to find affiliates in your niche and recruit them effectively.

Who are the right partners for each?

Influencer marketing tends to work with content creators who have an existing audience but aren’t necessarily in the business of driving sales. They’re usually paid for their reach and creative output, not their conversion performance.

Affiliate marketing works best with partners who have an engaged audience and are motivated to drive results. This includes bloggers, email list owners, YouTubers, podcast hosts, and, yes, some influencers. The #1 secret to building relationships with VIPs and influencers applies here too: you need to think about what they get out of the partnership, not just what you get.

The overlap between influencers and affiliates is real. An Instagram creator with 100,000 followers might operate as an influencer with some brands (flat fee) and as an affiliate with others (commission-based). The difference is the agreement you structure with them. FTC disclosure requirements apply to both, so either way, partners need to disclose the relationship to their audience.

When does it make sense to use both?

A lot of successful brands run both in parallel. Influencer campaigns generate awareness and social proof. Affiliate programs convert that awareness into revenue and sustain promotion over time.

A common approach: run influencer campaigns at launch to build buzz, then recruit top-performing influencers into your affiliate program for ongoing commission-based promotion. The influencers who actually drove sales during the campaign are your best affiliate recruits. They’ve already proven they can convert their audience.

For subscription-based businesses, the affiliate model is particularly powerful because affiliates can earn recurring commissions on retained subscribers, which makes them highly motivated to refer quality customers rather than anyone who’ll cancel in month two.

If you’re ready to go deeper on building a program that actually produces, The Book on Affiliate Management is the most detailed roadmap available for going from zero to a functioning affiliate program that scales.

What are the biggest mistakes businesses make when choosing between them?

The most common mistake is treating influencer marketing like a guaranteed sales channel. It isn’t. It’s a brand channel. If you spend $5,000 on an influencer campaign expecting to recoup that in direct sales, you’re likely going to be disappointed. If you spend it expecting brand lift, content assets, and potential long-term affiliate recruits, you might be very happy with the result.

The second mistake is assuming affiliate marketing is passive. It’s not. You need to recruit, onboard, train, and communicate with your affiliates consistently. Communicating with brand new affiliates, who aren’t used to getting your emails and aren’t familiar with you, is VERY time-consuming. Affiliate marketing is a low-cost acquisition model, not a no-effort one.

The third mistake is not trying affiliate marketing because it feels complicated. It’s not as complicated as people think, especially with modern affiliate tracking software. The basics, setting up tracking, recruiting your first affiliates, and sending regular communications, can be handled in a few hours a week once the program is running. Affiliate marketing for influencers is a good entry point if you’re already working with creators and want to shift toward a performance model.

One piece of the setup most people underestimate is the legal side. The Affiliate Terms Wizard walks you through creating rock-solid affiliate terms and conditions in minutes, without paying a lawyer, so you’re protected before you recruit anyone.

Influencer marketing vs. affiliate marketing: the bottom line

Use influencer marketing when you need awareness, want content assets, or are entering a market with no existing audience. Accept that the ROI will be harder to measure and the results will vary.

Use affiliate marketing when you want a scalable, performance-based acquisition channel where you only pay for results. Invest in the setup, recruit the right partners, and give it enough time to build momentum.

And if you can do both, start with affiliate marketing as your foundation. It’s lower risk, more measurable, and builds a network of motivated partners who have skin in the game. Layer influencer campaigns on top when you’re ready to invest in brand building.

FAQ: influencer marketing vs. affiliate marketing

Can an influencer also be an affiliate?
Yes. Many influencers work as affiliates with some brands while taking flat fees from others. You can recruit influencers into your affiliate program, especially ones who’ve already promoted your product. If they proved they can drive sales, they’re worth bringing in on commission.

Which one is better for a new business with a small budget?
Affiliate marketing is almost always the better fit for small budgets. You don’t pay until a sale happens, so your risk is minimal. Influencer marketing requires upfront spend with no guarantee of return, which is a tough bet when cash is tight.

How do I track sales from influencer campaigns?
The most reliable method is unique promo codes or tracked URLs. Give each influencer a specific discount code or a custom link with UTM parameters. This won’t capture every influenced sale (some people buy later through other channels), but it gives you a reasonable baseline for evaluating performance.

What commission rate should I offer affiliates?
It depends on your margins and industry. Digital products often pay 30-50%. Physical products typically pay 5-15%. Subscription businesses often pay a flat fee per signup or a recurring percentage. A good starting point: figure out your customer acquisition cost from other channels and offer affiliates something competitive with that number.

Do I need a large product catalog to run an affiliate program?
No. Some of the most effective affiliate programs sell a single product. What matters more than catalog size is having a product with good conversion rates, a clear value proposition, and commission rates that make affiliates want to promote you over competing offers.

Is influencer marketing regulated?
Yes. The FTC requires influencers to clearly disclose paid partnerships and material connections, including affiliate relationships. This applies to social media posts, videos, blog posts, and podcasts. The disclosure needs to be clear and conspicuous, not buried in hashtags or mentioned at the end of a long video.

Don’t make the same mistakes I’ve made with my affiliate programs. Learn my top 20 affiliate program mistakes…and how to avoid them!

The post Influencer Marketing vs. Affiliate Marketing appeared first on The Affiliate Guy Matt McWilliams - Advice for Affiliate Program Managers.

Most business owners spend weeks trying to figure out where to find affiliates, when the answer is usually sitting right inside their existing business. Here’s a sourcing system that works whether you’re starting from scratch or trying to add fifty quality partners to a program you already have running.

Why most affiliate searches stall before they start

The most common mistake I see when people try to recruit affiliates is starting with a Google search. They type in “affiliates in ” or browse a few affiliate networks, get confused by the options, and either give up or sign up a hundred random people who never actually promote.

The better approach is to think in categories first. There are six distinct sources of affiliates that work for almost any niche, and each requires a different outreach approach. If you skip the categories and jump straight to the pitch, you’re guessing. If you work through each one systematically, you’ll have a pipeline of real prospects within a week.

What you’re looking for isn’t just someone with an audience. You’re looking for someone whose audience has already shown interest in solving the problem your product addresses. Relevance matters far more than reach. A blogger with 8,000 engaged readers in your niche will almost always outperform a general influencer with 200,000 followers who don’t care about your category.

Your own customers are the most overlooked source

Your customers are your best affiliates. They’ve already bought. They already believe in what you sell. When they promote you, it comes across as a genuine recommendation rather than a sales pitch, which converts better than almost anything else you can put in front of a new audience.

Start by identifying your most engaged customers. Look at who’s leaving reviews, responding to your emails, tagging you on social media, or referring friends without any incentive to do so. These people are already doing the work. You’re just formalizing it and giving them a reason to do more of it.

When you reach out to a customer to invite them into your affiliate program, keep the email short. Acknowledge that you’ve noticed their enthusiasm, explain that you have an affiliate program, and tell them exactly how it works: the commission rate, how they get paid, and what promotional tools you’ll give them. Don’t oversell it. People who are already fans don’t need convincing. They need a clear invitation and easy next steps.

The Your First 100 Affiliates report covers this in detail, including how to identify evangelists inside your existing customer base and the exact email approach that converts them into active promoters. It’s free and worth downloading before you start any outreach.

Competitors can become your most valuable partners

This one surprises a lot of people, but turning competitors into affiliates is one of the fastest ways to access a large, pre-qualified audience. I ran the affiliate program for a guitar instruction company years ago. Our course was the most comprehensive on the market, and also the most expensive. That made us a natural upsell for every competitor selling a cheaper course. We approached them with a simple pitch: promote us as the premium option, earn a solid commission, make your customers happy by giving them a path to something more advanced.

It worked. Our competitors made more money. Their customers got more value. We got in front of an audience that had already demonstrated they would buy guitar instruction. Everyone won.

This works in four specific scenarios. First, as an upsell: if a competitor offers a low-cost entry-level product, your premium version is a natural next step for their buyers. Second, as a downsell: if you offer something expensive and a competitor sells a more affordable option in the same space, they can promote you to aspirational buyers who aren’t ready yet. Third, to non-buyers: people who’ve been on a competitor’s list for months without purchasing aren’t going to buy from them anytime soon, but they might buy from you. Fourth, in niche-within-a-niche plays: if your product goes broad and a competitor goes deep on one specific angle, you can cross-promote without stepping on each other.

The key is approaching competitors as potential partners, not threats. Most entrepreneurs in any given niche would rather collaborate than compete. They’re not your enemy. They’re your fastest path to a warm, relevant audience.

Content creators in your niche are ready to say yes

Bloggers, YouTubers, podcasters, and newsletter writers in your niche already have an audience of people interested in your topic. They’re also almost always looking for ways to monetize that audience beyond ads and sponsorships. Your affiliate program is a direct answer to that problem.

Finding them is straightforward. Search Google for ” blog” or ” podcast” and look at who’s ranking on pages two through five. The creators on page one are usually too big or too SEO-sophisticated to be easy wins early on. Pages two through five are people with real audiences who aren’t being inundated with affiliate offers.

For podcasters specifically, look for shows in your category that don’t rank in the top hundred in their category. Check if they do interviews. If they do, they understand partnerships. Reach out with a short, specific email focused entirely on what’s in it for them and their audience. Don’t lead with your commission rate. Lead with why your product genuinely helps their listeners. That one change in framing makes a significant difference in reply rates.

YouTube is another channel worth working. Search for review videos of your product or competing products. Anyone who’s already created content in your category is a warm prospect. They’ve demonstrated they care enough about the topic to build something around it.

Industry communities surface prospects you’d never find otherwise

Facebook groups, LinkedIn groups, Slack communities, forums, and industry associations are full of engaged people who talk about your topic every day. They’re not always creators with large followings, but they’re often influential within the community, and that kind of peer-level influence converts.

The mistake most people make here is showing up and immediately pitching their affiliate program. Don’t do that. Spend a few weeks being useful. Answer questions. Share resources. Contribute something real. Once you’re a recognized contributor, the outreach you do later lands completely differently. You’re not a stranger asking for help. You’re someone the community already knows and trusts.

I’ve seen this approach take someone from zero to a hundred engaged affiliates purely through communities. It takes longer upfront, but the quality of affiliates you find this way tends to be higher than cold outreach. These people are already immersed in the topic. They have context. They care about it. That shows in how they promote.

Also worth noting: affiliate leaderboards from other programs in your niche are a goldmine. If you’re promoting products in your space as an affiliate yourself, look at who else is ranking on those leaderboards. Those are the people who already know how to drive sales in your category. Reach out. Introduce yourself. Use the shared promotion as a reason to connect. Some of my best affiliate relationships started exactly that way.

Joint venture partners offer faster results than cold outreach

A joint venture partner is someone you have a real relationship with who has an audience that overlaps with yours. They’re different from a random content creator because the relationship already exists. That changes everything about how quickly you can get them promoting.

Think about who you know in your industry. Who have you collaborated with before? Who do you follow and engage with regularly? Who has complemented your work publicly? These are your first calls, not emails, when you launch a new affiliate program or want to add quality partners to an existing one.

When you approach a JV partner, be specific about why you’re reaching out to them in particular. Generic pitches get ignored. A pitch that references their specific audience, their recent content, or a shared experience you’ve had gets read. The more personal, the better.

If you’re just starting out and you don’t have many existing relationships, build them deliberately. Promote other people in your niche genuinely, not just as a networking strategy but because you believe in what they’re doing. Refer clients to them. Comment thoughtfully on their content. The relationships you build this way will eventually become your most valuable recruiting source. People want to work with people they know and trust, and that’s as true in affiliate marketing as it is anywhere else.

Your own product users outside your customer list

This is slightly different from your direct customers. There are people who use your product or benefit from it indirectly, people who’ve received it as a gift, people who’ve used a free version, people who’ve read your content but haven’t purchased yet. Some of these people are just as enthusiastic as paying customers, and they’re worth recruiting.

Think about coaches, consultants, or educators who recommend your product to their clients. Think about employees at companies who use your software. Think about community members in your space who’ve shared your content even without being on your list. These people exist in more abundance than most program owners realize.

The top affiliate recruiting email we’ve refined over years of running programs works well for this group. It’s been used to recruit affiliates across dozens of industries, and the reason it converts is that it leads with relationship, not transaction. That matters especially when you’re reaching out to someone who has indirect exposure to your product rather than a direct purchase history.

Get my #1 affiliate recruiting email (the one I’ve personally used to recruit thousands of affiliates in dozens of niches). Grab your copy here!

How to prioritize your outreach

You don’t work all six of these sources at once. That leads to scattered, shallow outreach that gets mediocre results across the board. Pick one or two sources and go deep on them first.

If you have an existing customer base, start there. It’s the fastest path to your first affiliates because the trust already exists. If you have industry relationships, work those next. If you’re newer and don’t have customers or relationships yet, content creators and community involvement are your best options, with the understanding that they take a few more weeks to convert.

One thing that helps at every stage is having the right tools to manage the outreach itself. Writing personalized recruiting emails for each source category takes time, and that’s where most programs fall apart. The outreach starts strong and then slows down because the person running the program gets busy. Affiliate Email Pro was built specifically for this, with templates covering every affiliate scenario including initial recruiting, follow-up sequences, and activation emails for people who signed up but haven’t promoted yet. It runs inside ChatGPT and cuts the time it takes to write these emails from hours to minutes.

Once you’ve worked through your initial sources and have your first wave of affiliates, the next challenge is keeping them active. Most programs have a 95% dormancy problem: the vast majority of affiliates sign up and never promote a single time. How you solve that is a different problem from finding affiliates, but it starts with who you recruit and how you onboard them. The better the sourcing, the better the activation rate. Affiliate Activation Templates are a free resource covering the exact emails that move dormant affiliates into active promoters, and they’re worth having ready before your first wave of recruits comes in.

If you want the complete system for building an affiliate program from scratch, including the full recruiting methodology, commission structure, and management framework, The Book on Affiliate Management covers all of it. It’s the 300-page version of everything I’ve learned building programs that have driven over a billion dollars in sales.

FAQ: Finding affiliates in your niche

How many affiliates do I need to start seeing results?
You don’t need a hundred affiliates. You need five to ten who are genuinely active and motivated. One affiliate with a targeted, engaged audience of 10,000 people will generate more sales than fifty affiliates who sign up and never promote. Quality beats quantity every time, especially early on.

Should I list my program on an affiliate network?
Affiliate networks like ShareASale, CJ, or Impact give you access to a marketplace of existing affiliates, but they come with network fees, approval processes, and affiliates who are often promoting dozens of programs at once. For most new programs, direct recruiting from the six sources above will get you better, more loyal affiliates faster. Networks make more sense once you have a proven program and are looking to scale volume.

How do I know if someone is a good affiliate prospect?
Look at three things. First, does their audience care about the problem your product solves? Not a tangential audience, but a directly relevant one. Second, do they promote other products occasionally without burning their audience’s trust? That tells you they know how to make offers. Third, do they engage with their audience, not just broadcast? Affiliates with genuine two-way relationships convert better than those with passive followers.

What should I offer to convince someone to join?
A competitive commission rate is table stakes. What actually convinces good affiliates is a combination of: a product they genuinely believe in, a program that’s easy to join and easy to promote, and a manager who communicates well and pays on time. Most affiliates have been burned by bad programs before. Show them yours is different through how you run the outreach, not just what you say in the pitch.

How do I reach out to a content creator I don’t know?
Reference something specific from their content. Explain why your product is relevant to their audience in concrete terms, not generic ones. Keep the email short. Make it clear you’ve actually looked at their work, not just their follower count. And follow up. Most responses come on the second or third email, not the first. The approach for niche industry recruiting and the guidance on recruiting affiliates you don’t already know both dig deeper into the mechanics of cold outreach if you want more detail on the process.

What’s the biggest mistake people make when recruiting affiliates?
Pitching before qualifying. Most program owners send the same generic email to everyone, hoping enough people say yes to get something going. The affiliates who respond to generic pitches are usually not the affiliates you want. The ones you actually want, the ones with engaged audiences and real promotional ability, get pitched constantly. They respond to specificity and relationship. Slow down, qualify your prospects, and personalize your outreach. You’ll sign up fewer affiliates, but the ones you sign up will actually promote.

The post How to Find Affiliates in Your Niche appeared first on The Affiliate Guy Matt McWilliams - Advice for Affiliate Program Managers.

Most affiliate programs don’t blow up overnight… they bleed out slowly from a handful of preventable mistakes. In this episode, I’m breaking down the “killer” errors that quietly wreck tracking, relationships, motivation, and momentum, and I’ll show you the simple fixes that get you back on solid ground fast.

Click Here for The Written Transcript of This Episode

TEXT ME: +1 (260) 217-4619

Links Mentioned in this Episode

Top 20 Affiliate Program Mistakes (and How to Avoid Them)

Find Affiliates Now Program

My #1 Affiliate Recruiting Email

How to Determine Commission Structure

Facebook Live: The BIGGEST Lie You’ve Been Told About Finding Affiliates

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Previous Episodes of The Affiliate Guy

How to Decide Between an In-House Affiliate Manager and an Agency

How to Help Affiliates Write Emails That Convert

How to Fix the 7 Beliefs That Kill Affiliate Programs

How to Become an Affiliate Manager

How to Build a High-Converting Affiliate Webinar Funnel

7-Figure Affiliate Launches: The Exact Launch Plan

How to Avoid the Biggest Affiliate Program Mistakes (Part 1)

When I started my first affiliate program back in 2005, I literally knew nothing about how to run an affiliate program. But through a lot of trial and error and some huge mistakes, I built a $12. 6 million affiliate program over the next two years. Now, some of these mistakes were nearly fatal to our affiliate program and our whole business at the time. Now, the good news for you though, is you don’t have to make the same mistakes I did.In today’s episode, I’m going to share the first of 20 huge mistakes I made in those early years of my affiliate program. So you don’t have to make them. So in our last episode, I shared why I was wrong about when to start an affiliate program.

And go back and listen to that if you haven’t yet. it gives you some, some of the thinking behind why I taught what I taught for so many years and also kind of the evolution of that thinking again, what I taught about when to start an affiliate program was right for some people. It really was.It’s right if you’re running a seven figure business and, you don’t have an affiliate program. What I teach is right. But if you’re just getting started, what I was teaching was wrong. And I’ve rethought that. And I think you should start right now.You should start an affiliate program right now. I don’t want to hear from people, oh, one day I’ll have an affiliate program. One day I’ll be ready. No, you won’t start now. Like, start right now.

And there’s these advantages that you get. You know, you get to make money before you spend it. it’s infinitely scalable. You get to bring in leads and grow your list and start making money now, even when you’re first starting out, you don’t have to guess at targeting and try to go spend thousands of dollars with, you know, Mark Zuckerberg, just trying to make a little money before he lets you be profitable. You bring in these warm prospects and it grows itself like success begets success with an affiliate program.

And so I hope that that episode, and I hope today, if you’re not already convinced to convince you of two things, that an affiliate program is the best way to grow your sales and the best way to start, build and grow an affiliate program is to learn from others, to model others, to learn today from my mistakes. Because I sure as heck have made a lot of them. And the beauty of this is I made a lot of them. In fact, we had to, like, trim this down to 20 because I could have kept going for a while. the beauty of it for me was these were mistakes that I made back in 2005, early 2006.I got to make those mistakes, and I didn’t have to pay a huge consequence for that. And so I was able to learn. I was able to keep going. Our business survived and in fact, thrived. We built a $12.

6 million affiliate program over the next two years. An, $18 million business. We were the third largest, you know, largest company in our entire niche. The largest privately held company in our entire niche. It was a big niche, you know, insurance, leads.And so we were doing awesome because. Because I got to screw up and not have to pay the price. I will say that these are mistakes you cannot make today. Some of these mistakes that I made that weren’t really that big of a deal or, you know, they certainly weren’t fatal. You know, they stung, they hurt, they cost us 5,000, 10,000, 20, $5,000.

They weren’t crippling, you know, they weren’t crippling our business and destroying our affiliate program. You make these same mistakes today. They might. And I don’t say that to scare you. I say that to, like, that’s why I want to share them with you.You don’t have to make any of these 20 mistakes. How cool is that? I’m going to literally go through and share all of the ways that I possibly could have screwed up. And you don’t have to make any of these mistakes. You get to do these right from the get go.So let’s jump right in. Let us jump right in with mistake number one. now this is a two. Oh, by the way, this is a two part, serious. I’m gonna release a part two here in a few days because if this, if I shared all 20, this would be like a two hour podcast.

I don’t know. I don’t know how long it’ll be. I haven’t recorded it yet, but it would be really long. So we’re breaking it down into two parts. All right, you guys ready?Are you ready? No, I can’t, like, I can’t really see you right now, so I don’t, you know, I’m not recording this live or anything, so I don’t get any feedback So I just, I hope you’re ready to dive right in. Or it’s weird that you listen this far. anyway, alright, mistake number one is that we waited too long to start it. we waited until we were desperate.And if you know anything about sales or business, that is not the best time to start anything. The best time to start a business is not when you need to start a business. Right. The best time to start is when you’ve got a full time job. That’s why I tell people like, don’t leave your full time job.

Run your side hustle. And you know, the cool thing about that is, you know, let’s say you make $60,000 a year from your job and only 20 from your side hustle, then you could take all 20 of that and set it aside and after three years you have an entire year’s worth of income stored up. So don’t quit your job. but we waited too long to start it. We tried a bunch of other stuff first instead of just starting our affiliate program.Now part of that was again, back then I didn’t know about affiliate programs. None of us did. I heard about it randomly from someplace and it was like, oh, we should do this. Very few companies and none of our competitors had an affiliate program back then. But it’s not just us.

And it definitely wasn’t back in, you know, just back in 2005. there’s a guy, I’ll share this story. I’m going to call him, I’m going to call him Fred because I’m gonna, you’ve, you’ve heard of him? Okay. he’s, he’s been on the TED stage.Like the main stage, not the X stage. Right? He’s been on the TED stage. He’s written probably four or five best selling books, six figure email list, seven figure business, close to eight figure. I want to go with probably six million dollar a year business.I met him about four, three and a half, four years ago and he said, I don’t need an affiliate program. He’s like, man, I’m running Facebook ads. And they are killing it. We’re making like, you know, 80, 90% of their revenue was from Facebook ads. Now the irony of this is that this guy had built his empire in part on telling people to diversify their incomes through things like investing in real estate, you know, all these things, right?

And that’s about all I’m gonna say about him because then you might figure out who it is. And I don’t Want to do that? I think I’ve been vague enough. And yet he was putting all of his marketing eggs into the Facebook basket. Now, thankfully, he had a CMO chief marketing officer who is a pretty smart dude.

This guy tried to talk him into starting an affiliate program, but this guy, like, he would not listen. What did I say? Fred. I think it was Fred. Yeah, Fred wouldn’t listen.

Then four months later, four months after we first met. So this was about, almost four years ago that we met. About three and a half years ago, this happened. Facebook shut their account down, their ad account down. And it’s funny because I just had a call with a Facebook ads expert and you know, she was just saying, yeah, it just, it happens all the time.

Like accounts get. Ours has never been shut down. She’s like, that’s why you should have a second ads account with the pixel running and all that stuff so your account doesn’t get shut. You know, if it does get shut down, you’ve got the backup, right? It took them a week to get the ads account back up.

Hours and hours of dealing with Facebook, a, ah, full week with nearly no revenue, no leads coming in. You know, basically their entire business was almost, I mean, he’s talking about shutdowns, right? Their business almost shut down. When they came back, their CPC rates, their cost per click rates, more than doubled. Their ad costs more than doubled.

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And they went from nearly a hundred percent profit margin. They went from spending like a hundred dollars to acquire $2,000 customer down to it costing like, their margins were like astronomically higher because, not only did their CPC rates go up and their ad costs went up, but their click rates and their actual, like the amount of times that their ads showed went down dramatically. So literally they went from, you know, making let’s just say about $500,000 a month, and spending less than $50,000 a month to spending more than double. So like spending 125,000 and they were making like 250. You know, again, this is a big business with a big team.

That’s a dramatic difference. So their next call to me was, was to me, of course. And as you can imagine, my rates doubled. But the thing is like, I was like, yeah, I’m not trying to gouge you, but like, I tried to give you a deal last time and get you in and you said no. So here’s what, we’re going to go back to charging what we normally charge.Well, the thing is, these nightmare scenarios are like I said, they’re very common. I mean, I just was talking with Andrea Vowell. She’s a, Facebook ads expert, and she’s like, yeah, this happens all the time. And so there’s this lie out there that says that you can do everything that you want in your business alone. Like, you don’t need help from anyone.

You can reach everyone on Earth through Facebook and Google, maybe LinkedIn. Right now. Those. I get it. Those platforms are huge.Instagram’s huge. TikTok’s getting huge. But I am telling you that you are missing out on all the benefits. All those benefits we just talked about. The scalability, no risk because you make money before you spend it, the easy targeting, all those benefits that we talked about, the warm prospects.And so, simply put, when you don’t have an affiliate program, you put a very low ceiling on your growth. That was one of the biggest mistakes that we made. We waited way too long to start. So start now. Plan on starting right now.Like, start laying the groundwork. Let’s get you an affiliate program up and running in the next couple of weeks. That should be your goal. I promise you, it’ll be the best investment you ever make in your business. So we did eventually start.

We waited way too long. And then we actually started reaching out to affiliates. And we made my second mistake. I say we made my second mistake. We didn’t make this mistake.I did. and that was. We sent, we. I keep saying we. It was, yes, it was our.It was a business. I had two business partners, but it was me. I screwed this up. So I’m going to take it. I’m going to take, take ownership of this.I sent way too long of a first message. Sent way too long of a first message. Now, that means when I’m trying to find affiliates and recruit them, I would send these long, verbose emails, like, six, ten paragraphs long. It’s got all the details and the stats, and there’s a link in there, and it’s. Oh, my gosh.This email went on and on. I don’t know these people. I didn’t know anybody in the industry. That was the other thing. I didn’t have any connections in the industry.

I knew no one. And I’m, reaching out to them cold. And I’m saying, hey, do you want to be an affiliate of our program? Here’s why it’s great. It’s the best affiliate program on the face of the earth.And we pay this. And here’s our conversion rates, and here’s our EPC you know, earnings per click. And here’s this link that shows this form and you can see this link that shows this landing page and also this link that shows this landing page and this link that shows this landing page and also this and this and this. And oh, by the way, my favorite color is purple. And here’s some more links.And it was, it went on and on and on. That is totally wrong. Now why did it sort of work back then? It sort of worked because I was like the first person who ever reached out to them. Maybe the second or third.

Nobody was reaching out to them and saying, hey, do you want to be an affiliate for insurance leads program or do you want to be an affiliate for any of our. Any program, period. They weren’t getting very many emails about that, so I got away with it. It does not happen now. So the key now is to make sure that you keep your initial contact short.Keep that initial contact super short. This is hard to understand, but your goal is not to get a yes response. Like, I know this sounds weird. Your goal is not to share any everything with this prospective affiliate. Not, not to tell them everything about how amazing your product is, how awesome your course is, how amazing your services, how great your coaching is.

And oh, by the way, here’s what so and so says about me. And Tony Robbins said this about me. And so and so uses this product and loves it. And here’s a testimonial we got from one of our raving fans yesterday. And oh, by the way, here’s our conversion rate, our earnings per click.And we have this upsell and this, this feature. We have a lifetime commission. We’ll talk more about that later. You know, but we have, our lifetime cookie and here’s your commissions. And oh, by the way, we have these prizes.Like, that’s way too much. Your goal is simply to inspire enough curiosity that they write back with these three simple words. Tell me more. Tell me more. Those are the three sweetest words you can read or hear that starts a conversation.

And so when they write back, and I’m going to share a, link here in a moment where you can grab this template. But when they write back to this very short email, the sample email that I’ll share with you is like three or four sentences. And we’ve tweaked this over the past decade plus. And it’s, it’s perfectly like optimized at this point. When they write back and say tell me more, that is permissioned for you to now write back and say Great.I would love to tell you more. here’s a little bit about our product. Our conversion rate is this, you know, it’s for this audience. Here’s what we provide, here’s what you will make. And that’s when you write a little bit more detailed email and then they write back and say, oh, great, what about this?

And you respond back and answer that question and give them a little bit more detail and they go, okay, I’m in. Now they say, yes, will you get, if you reach out to a hundred prospective affiliates, will you get five or eight yeses from that first email? You absolutely will. You will probably get about seven yeses, 12 to 15 no’s, about 35 no responses. And then the rest of the people are going to write back and say, I’m interested, tell me a little bit more.And that’s when you start that conversation. And you, we love hearing tell me more. So if you want to get a sample, email, if you want to get the email that we’ve optimized over the past, you know, 12 to 15 years, and it’s super short, but it’s super effective, just go to mattmcwilliams. com best email mattmcwilliams. com Bestemail and you can grab that.

My number one affiliate recruiting email. So mistake number one was I waited way too long. Mistake number two, I sent too long of a first, you know, reach out message to these folks. mistake number three is I thought I needed to know all of my affiliates. I thought I had to know all of them.So that meant that I could only have a small affiliate program, 20, 30 affiliates, you know, and like, I thought that because one, I didn’t know any better and two, I had heard kind of that’s what you wanted to do. And so what I had heard is, and we see this a lot in the, you know, kind of in the, like the big launch world is affiliate programs, JV programs, whatever you want to call them, they’re only for the cool kids with the right connections. That’s, that’s, that, that’s only, they’re only, they’re only for the cool kids. You need to know all of your affiliates. Like, but the reality was when I first started out, I didn’t know anyone.

In fact, none of us did. Like, we weren’t the cool kids. We didn’t have dads who knew the right people. We started with nothing. And yet in two years we built a 12 and a half million dollar affiliate program.But I thought that as we got affiliates, like, I had to become best friends with every single one of our affiliates, which meant that we couldn’t have any small affiliates. And we’ll talk more about that in a little bit. But I want to share with you. we did a Facebook Live recently where, we shared a strategy that, I mean, it’s worked for countless. I mean, gosh, worked for literally thousands of people at this point.I’ll, share an example here from a guy named Alex Putnam in a second. he went from literally like a complete nobody to an industry leader in only nine months using this strategy. Now, we shared this strategy on a Facebook Live recently. You can watch that. We’ll, put this link in the show notes as well.

But mattmcwilliams. com 514 so mattmcwilliams. com May 14 we share this strategy on this Facebook Live. We basically talk about the biggest lie that you’ve been told about finding affiliates. And here’s what Alex said in response.Not to that training, but what I taught him a while back. in some coaching. He said, matt, I just had to let you know this. when I signed up for the training, I didn’t know anyone who could be an affiliate. Yesterday we finished our first launch of the course and did 374, 360,000 of that was from affiliates.I’m on bleeping cloud nine right now. Thank you, thank you, thank you. And lots of exclamation points. Right? In nine months, he went from knowing no one in his niche to doing $360,000 in affiliate sales.

And he didn’t know a soul before. So can you see yourself doing this? Like, could you see yourself reaching out to people you don’t even know in getting them to be affiliates? Now, here’s the thing, what I share on this Facebook Live, if you go check it out, and I highly recommend you do like I said, we’ll link to it in the show notes. It seems it actually is.It doesn’t seem so simple. It is so simple, so obvious and so elementary that you might feel tempted to brush it off. But you know what? It’s also my company’s secret weapon. It’s been my secret weapon for more than 14 years now.Took me about a year to figure it out. And so you absolutely do not need to know all of your affiliates. And we’ll talk more about this a little bit in number six, that it’s okay to not, you know, to have affiliates. You don’t even know who they Are as long as you kind of, you know, monitor them all right. Now the flip side, number four here, the number four mistake I made, the flip side was I did not invest enough in relationships early on.

I did not invest in relationships building better, relationships with current affiliates and building relationships with prospective affiliates. I simply did not, build those relationships. So, you know, I was like, I was very transactional and I had a great personality. I was good on the phone. But I didn’t invest in strengthening those relationships or building relationships with people who might become affiliates, but it might be a year or two years before they finally agree to promote.And so the key here, the mistake that I made was not doing that. The lesson I learned over the next couple of years was invest first, then ask, invest first, then ask with the big ones. So the strategy I share in the Facebook Live is not the strategy. You’re going to go out to get the industry leader in your niche to be an affiliate. That’s not going to happen.

Okay, want to be clear on that. Will you get some small to medium sized affiliates that in total, if you look at what Alex did, brought in $360,000 in a single launch with us, brought in 12 and a half million dollars over the next, you know, two years. Actually it was 12 and a half million dollars in a year. In the second year is more accurate. I mean, like, did it, does it work?Yes. Is it the way to get the biggest affiliates? It’s absolutely not. When we did that $12. 5 million, we did not have the biggest affiliates.We just had an army of small to medium affiliates. Again, we’ll talk more about that in number six. But you want to invest in those relationships. And so, what I found is when you’re first starting out, a good mix because you can’t invest in relationships for five years, just investing in relationships for five years. You have to make some money, you have to get some leads, right?

That’s not running a business if you’re just building relationships with people. So I found for me that it’s kind of a good, you know, 70, 2010 mix. So what do I mean by that? 70% of my time is spent on getting new, relationships. You know, when I was starting out, 20% was spent investing in the current relationships, 10% investing in prospective relationships.So 70, 2010. Now as I’ve grown and become more experienced, that has become more like, if I were to estimate, it’s probably more like 50, 30, 20, 50% in new relationships. 30% actually probably is more like 40, 40, 20. 40% in new relationships, 40% in existing relationships, 20% in prospective relationships. Of course, as your affiliate program grows, the amount of time as a percentage of your time that you spend trying to get new relationships will go down compared to the amount of time you spend, on your current relationships.

The good news is, while you don’t want to skimp on time on your current relationships, it is about 20 times easier in terms of time and effort to just keep a relationship than it is to get a new one. 20 times easier. A little bit goes a long way. A text every month or so, just checking in on them. a congratulations email when something good happens in their lives.You know, basic networking. Go to my website, search networking. You’ll find all kinds of stuff on how to, you know, actually not suck at relationships with people. You know, how to not like disappear on people for months at a time. That’s your big mistake there.

Don’t make that mistake. Alright? So not investing enough in those relationships early on and building better relationships with current affiliates and prospective affiliates was a huge mistake. the next big mistake I made was a simple one. I didn’t set up the right cookie length.Now what do I mean by cookie length if you don’t know? It is the length of time, for which your affiliate will get credited after the initial click. So if I click to my, if I click to your affiliate link today and I buy 90 days from now and you get credit then, but I buy on 91 and you don’t. That is a 90 day cookie. here’s the thing.Make your cookie lifetime. It is. I’ll explain why in a second. It’s just the easiest way to do it and it’s the best way to do it. But I’ll explain that in more detail.

But we set it up and we didn’t know any better. And so our cookie length was 30 days. And so if somebody purchased on day 31, our affiliates didn’t get credit. Now there’s two reasons why that sucked. Number one, it lowered their commissions, which was bad for us because then they were less likely to promote.Two, it looked bad. Why is it only 30 days? What, what are you trying to, are you trying to screw us? And so we got a lot of pushback from like higher rank, you know, better affiliates on that 30 day cookie like that. I didn’t know any better.I just like that’s what the default was when we set up the affiliate program. It was just a 30 day cookie. And so I quickly was like, dude, we need to change this to a lifetime cookie. And so we studied the numbers and at that time, less than 3% of our transactions happened outside of 30 days. So it wasn’t going to cost us any, practically anything to change this to lifetime.

But now I could go around and say, we have a lifetime cookie. And we were one of the few programs not just in our niche, but overall. Like out of, you know, 10,000 affiliate programs across all these niches, we were one of like a couple dozen that had a lifetime cookie and it gave us a competitive advantage. And so we studied this a while back and we found, this is across numerous brands, across numerous niches. almost all transactions, like 94% I believe, happen within 30 days.And nobody would ever suggest you have less than a 30 day cookie. So 94% happen within 30 days. So you’re giving up 6%, but you’re gaining so much more because you’re able to say, we have a lifetime cookie. And if that is a competitive advantage, then use it. If your competition does not have a lifetime, cookie, then use that against them.

Use that against them and really talk about the fact that you have a lifetime cookie. There’s no reason not to. It’s not only the right thing to do, in my opinion, because these affiliates work their butts off to send you traffic, to send you leads, and then you’re gonna be, you know, cheap with them. We’ll talk about that in number seven. No, don’t, don’t, don’t be.Just set it up lifetime. It’s easier. You don’t have to explain it. And if it gets you an extra 20% of affiliates, why not? The other benefit that we found is it actually allows for the fact that occasionally you have an affiliate, they’ll make a sale nine months later, a year and a half later, maybe that affiliate stopped promoting.But suddenly they just earned $800 and you send them $800. Now don’t just send them 800 bucks and say nothing. Send them an email that says, dude, we’re paying you 800 bucks. Oh my gosh, it’s so amazing. This is from something you sent a year ago.

And it gets them re engaged, reinterested. We’ll talk more about engagement in the next episode. you know, engaging your inactive affiliates, but it gets them re engaged because you just sent them money. There is no better time to talk to them and ask them, hey, do you want to promote this next thing? We’ve got this huge thing coming up.We’ve Got a summit coming up. We’ve got a new book coming out. We’ve got a new product launch. We’ve got this. We got this after you just gave them money.So there’s that advantage as well. And so a lot of people look at that and go, wow, I had to pay 800 bucks to that affiliate they haven’t even promoted in a year. I look at it, look at that and go, that’s a marketing cost. I just paid 800 bucks to get them to send six emails in our upcoming promotion that are gonna make us $40,000. Like, you don’t gripe that, you got to keep paying Zuckerberg.

You got to keep paying Facebook every time, you know, every time they, you want to run an ad. But we gripe about it when our, when we have to pay our affiliates a little bit, you know, a little bit of a lifetime commission every now and again for something they didn’t do, just to be able to get them to promote again. Now that’s a marketing cost right there. So make sure you set up the right cookie link. Just go with lifetime.Make it easy. Mistake number six, we’re halfway through today. Mistake number six is not working with smaller affiliates. Now, I didn’t do this because I thought, wow, you know, we kind of had to ramp up really fast. I need to get, I need to get some, some, you know, some bigger affiliates in and, and we need to, we need to, like, have a big splash.

Now, I learned this lesson really, really fast that this was a terrible idea. Not for the reasons I’m going to share, but for the reasons that we couldn’t get any of the big ones. Yeah, I said earlier, we built this 12 and a half million dollars plus on small and medium affiliates because that’s all we could get. But I thought initially, no, that’s not worth my time. I’m not going to work with some guys bringing in 30 bucks a week.I’m not going to work with some guy who’s going to make like one sale a month, or am I going to. Ridiculous, right? That is the wrong way to look at this. First of all, you’re probably not going to get the big ones when you’re first starting out. So go out and get the small ones.

Get the people who are, like, at your peer level and below or slightly above. So if you’ve got 500 people on your list, go out and get a bunch of affiliates who have 100 to, 2,000 people on their list. Secondly, let me explain how this works. And this applies. Even if you’re listening and you’ve actually got a pretty decent sized, you know, affiliate program or you got a pretty decent sized list.What do you got 50,000 people on your. What if you have, you know, 50, 100,000 people on your, on your list? you’re doing all right. I don’t want to work with small affiliates. Let me explain how this works.It’s a numbers game. So if you have 100 affiliates that are quote unquote small, average list size of 700 people, they’re gonna make an average of, you know, on an Evergreen program, they’re gonna make you about one sale every four months, three a year in a launch. They’re gonna make you one sale on average, probably 1. 2 sales, something like that. They are.

They’re not gonna show up on a leaderboard. They’re gonna send you 29 opt ins for your, you know, for your first PLC. They’re gonna send you 37 registrations for your webinar. And that’s about what they’re gonna do. They’re not gonna grow your list all that much.You’re gonna be like, that’s not worth it. But of those hundred, let’s fast forward. We’ll m go four years down the road, four years from now of those hundred, 30 of them got out of the game. Like they actually just quit. So they didn’t grow.See, I told you. Some of them even just quit. But another 30 are going to be twice as big as they were. You know, they’re going to 1400. So they’re going to make a sale every, you know, 40 days.Now, okay, when you add that up, that’s, that’s not bad, you know, but not really like game changing, right? When you have a launch, they’re going to make two or three sales. They’re going to send, you know, 87 registrations for the webinar and you know, 55 for your video series, whatever it might be. You’ll sell a few books every now and again through them. But they’re going to promote everything.

Just remember that. They’re going to promote everything. That’s one big advantage of them. So we’re worth 30 and 30. probably about another 30 are going to triple or quadruple.Okay, now we’re really starting to talk, right? That’s great. They’re also going to promote pretty much everything. Of those remaining 10, five of them are going to 5 to 10x. They’re going to grow steady.They’re going to discover some ads or Some, you know, they’re going to get their own partners, they’re going to land a few really big podcasts, they’re going to get some exposure in a magazine, but five of them are going to, are literally going to 10 to 25 to even 100x. They’re going to hit it big. If this had been the 90s, they landed in, a gig on Oprah today. They just, you know, they got on the, they were the first to, you know, get on the new social media network, and next thing you know, they woke up with 180,000 TikTok followers that they turned into 50,000 email subscribers.

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And then they, you know, boom, boom, boom, and one thing after another and they, they had a podcast that took off, they had a YouTube channel that took off, and they’re one of the big, quote unquote, big boys.Now it’s only 2, 3, 4, 5 of those original hundred, but they are loyal to you forever. They will remember that you worked with them and they were nobody. I have affiliates to this day that promote my products in a completely different niche. Two in particular that I can think of that I have been working with since 2007 or sooner. They are massively large today and they are incredibly loyal to me.So I’m going to just say it. Do not make the mistake. I did work with the small affiliates. It may not have a great ROI today, but first of all, you probably can’t get any of the big ones when you’re first starting out. And second of all, it’s, it allows you to build that loyalty.

It’s also a great way to test things out. You know, do you want to go test things out with your dream affiliate? I’m gonna go get my dream affiliate within three months. First of all, it’s probably not gonna happen. Second of all, if you do, it will probably backfire.But with these small affiliates, you begin to learn things. You learn how to work with them. Most of them will stick around. They’re not like most of them. They’re not sending enough traffic anyway to know how things are converting.So work with those small affiliates. All right, Mistake number seven. I was, I tried to be way too cheap with my commissions. Oh, my gosh. I tried to nickel and dime my affiliates.Now, part of that was we kind of needed the nickel and the dime. But it was, it was brutal. It was absolutely brutal. Like, we were like, I wonder if we can get away with only paying 50%. This was in, a niche where 50% was really good, but we didn’t convert as well, and it was 50% of a lower number.

And so we really needed to pay 60 and 70%. And I remember thinking, well, if we pay 50%, we’re right on par with everyone else. And then it was like, wait a minute, we’re not A and B, don’t we want to stand out? You know, we’re the new kid on the block. Like, we want to stand out.So let’s go get, you know, let’s go get some affiliates by offering a 70% commission. And so, sure enough, in the. So we started that, and it was in 2000, January, February of 2005. in August of 2005, we changed to a 70%. we changed.We paid 70% to our top affiliates. We advertised 60, and we could go up to 70, which. There’s a bonus one for you. one of the mistakes I made was I paid. I offered everything I thought I could offer.

That’s not even on my list here. don’t offer everything you think you can offer. Advertise a little bit lower to give yourself some wiggle room to give a super affiliate a little bump. You know, be like, hey, you know, hey, if you send, you know, 10,000 in sales this month, I’m going to bump you up to this commission level. So that might be that.You think you can do 30. Well, then advertise 25 and offer 30. But don’t be cheap with your commissions. I have a video. I’m going to link to it in the show notes.It’s a video on YouTube. It’s from about three years ago where I walk you through how to determine your commission structure. You don’t want to pay too much that you literally don’t make any money. That would be ridiculous. You also don’t want to pay so much early on that you don’t allow yourself a little bit of room to raise it.

Like, we just talked about one of the worst things you can do is lower commissions. So, yeah, it’s better off to start, you know, lower. In retrospect, I wish I’d started at. I think we started at 40 with a. With a 50% bump.I wish I’d started at 50 with a 60, and I could have always gone up to a 60 with a 70. There, were even had affiliates. I think we were paying, like, 80% splits just because they were, you know, they were interested in working with. They were big enough and they brought in a lot of money. But a good commission is one of the best investments you can make.

So go watch that video. We’ll link to it in the show notes and go watch that video on YouTube because you want to, you definitely want to learn how to set up your commission structure the right way. Now, mistake number eight was not taking just five freaking minutes a day to analyze my affiliate data. As our company grew, this was a mistake I really didn’t make until about the six month mark. we started getting busy.We were starting to kind of ramp up. I think we were doing, you know, I don’t know, maybe a hundred thousand a month in sales, starting to make a little bit of money. I had all these other responsibilities. We started bringing on team, you know, next thing you know, I’m in meetings half the day and I got really busy and so I stopped analyzing the affiliate data. The thing is, it only takes five minutes a day, but it is so important.

Like you get to analyze these trends and you get to see like, you know, who’s falling off, who’s suddenly making more sales. All this stuff, like, none of this is in my strengths. In fact, you know, if you, if you can do what I did and I hired it out when I realized, oh my gosh, I’m not doing this, I hired it out and then I just got like a quick, you know, 90 second report every day that’s like, here’s what’s happening with the affiliates. So you want to track things. Like, you want to look at these, the data and look what affiliates are up now.This might be day to day, this might be, you know, week to week, month to month. typically we look at all of those. You know, if you have an evergreen program, if you, if you’re in a launch, you want to look at like, you know, who, who clearly, you know, promoted today but didn’t yesterday, and vice versa. You want to look at who’s down. So you want to look at like year over year data.

You know, if year over year, you’re up 10% overall, but this affiliate and this affiliate are down 30%. You know, March over March, or you know, March and April over March and April or Q1 over Q1, you want to reach out to them. You want to look for things like that. Who’s up, who’s down, who’s got really low conversions or who’s got really high conversion, whose conversions have tanked, whose traffic just stopped completely, whose traffic ramped up. You know, look at all these things.Who, who made their first sale, who hit a milestone. So typically, depending upon the program, our milestones are, you know, first sale, tenth, sale again depending upon, you know, if you make your first selling, your 10th sale on the same day, that’s not really a milestone. we’ll look at like 100 sale. We’ll look at anything involving a comma. So you made $1,000.

You know, unless it’s a thousand dollar commission the first time, that would be ridiculous. But if it’s a, you know, a $50 product with a $20 commission, $1,000 is a pretty big milestone. You know, we’ll look at, any type of milestones like that that people hit. You know, you made, you made a sale for the 200 consecutive day. Woo.You know, we just create those milestones. We call them, you know, ETMs, excuses to mail. So any opportunity we take to, we can create to reach out to an affiliate, the better. But it just takes five, upwards of like seven or eight minutes a day. And again, if you can hire it out, hire it out.

Find somebody on your team who loves, you know, like the nerd on your team who loves looking at this stuff and they can come to you and say, hey, I recommend you. You know, this affiliate’s down 30% year over year. This one hasn’t made a sale in three days after making a sale every day for, you know, a month. And you know, this one, man, their conversions are terrible. They just started two weeks ago.Their conversions are terrible. There might be something up there with them. Got it. Now I can take action on that. So that’s mistake number eight.Not just taking the simple few minutes every day to take a look at the data. Mistake number nine was I forgot the basics. As we got bigger. Now I touched on like not, you know, looking at the data, right? that was a basic.

But we started trying to get fancier with our reach outs and we started, you know, sending like these glossy mailings and things like that. And those can be great. But we forgot our basics and we didn’t rely on what was proven to work. And one of my philosophies in business, that has served me very well and anytime I get away from this, it screws me over very badly, is, find what’s working. Just identify what’s working.This is working and this is working and this is working. Do more of it. Find these three or four things that are working and do more of it until one of them stops working. Then you add something new into the mix. But we forgot about the basics.So don’t forget about the basics. Don’t forget about, you know, again, reaching out to new affiliates, sending a short message. Don’t forget about investing in relationships early on and building those better relationships with your current affiliates and your prospective affiliates. Don’t forget about the basics of just like Lifetime Cookie. No, we’re not going to.

We’re not going to change that. Don’t forget about the basics of working with small affiliates. As we got bigger, became harder for me to work with small affiliates, and I started thinking, well, should I spend the time with them? Oh, my goodness. I knew better.I just told you all the reasons. Like, I can come on this podcast and tell you all the reasons why you should work with small affiliates. But I was like, I don’t know if it’s. I don’t know if it’s worth it. You know, I started trying to get cheap again with commissions.And so don’t forget the basics. Find what’s working and keep doing more of it. And we’ll share, you know, more of these mistakes in the next episode, of course, and you’ll learn some more of those basics as well. And mistake number 10, our last one for today is we didn’t invite our customers to be affiliates. O m g, really?

That was so. I mean, oh, that cost us millions of dollars in the first year. We didn’t, we didn’t ask the people who are going to be the best affiliates, like, what better source of promotional partners than your customers right now? For some reason, this is the thing. Almost no one we talk to actually thinks of asking their customers to promote them.So they’re just like us. I screwed this up in 2005 and 6, but, you know, they’re screwing it up today. And I have no idea why this is. But it’s a great source. I don’t know why people aren’t doing it, but it is a great source of affiliates.I mean, think about it. They have an intimate knowledge of your product or your service, right? They have, they have a personal story, many times a personal success story. They know like and trust you. They will defend you to others.

Like, you literally couldn’t ask for better promoters than your customers. And so if you have a system like infusionsoft, this is really easy. You can actually just take your customers, automatically sign them up as affiliates, you know, just create them as referral partners, and then you just create an autoresponder campaign to, like, you know, 90 days after they buy or whatever. you know, depending upon the length of your course or, you know, how long it takes for your Product to, you know, be used in the most effective way. Send an autoresponder email out and say, hey, do you want to become an affiliate?Do you want to promote? You want to share with our audience and make some money? Now, depending upon your niche, you may or may not want to call them affiliates. In some niches we actually tell, don’t call them affiliates, call them, you know, partners, call them ambassadors. You know, something like that.

Just because they don’t know what the heck an affiliate is, they don’t have a clue. But even if you don’t have a CRM like infusionsoft, just go make, you know, have a, an assistant go in and, and create links for your customers, you know, or definitely if you have raving fan customers, like, hey, would you like to be an ambassador, an affiliate, whatever the case may be. So don’t make that mistake. Invite your customers to become affiliates. So there you have it.My first 10. They’re not my top 10. These are actually kind of in chronological order from the evolution of our affiliate program, which you’ll see in the next episode. I’m going to reveal the next 10 mistakes now. I’m also going to share how you can download these mistakes.

We’re putting these into a PDF, creating it as like, if you ever seen the eat this, not that thing from like Men’s Health and Women’s Health, we’re creating this into a, like, don’t make this mistake. Do this, you know, like a checklist to make sure that you don’t make these mistakes and that you do the right things. This PDF, I’m telling you right now, is going to be a must have for everyone starting an affiliate program. So if you want to reserve your copy right now, just go to MattMcWilliams. com mistakes mattmcwilliams.com mistakes we’ll put that in the show notes and you’re gonna be the first to get this PDF and with that, you got the first 10 mistakes. Think about those. Which one of those is the, the biggest one for you? Which one of those is the most troubling for you? Which of those mistakes do you most, connect with?

Which of those mistakes do you most go, oh my gosh, I’m pro. Yep, that’s the one I see myself making. I’m making that. Or I’m. I’m.Boy, am I glad that one. let me know, you know, just reach out to me on social media. Let me know. You can go to the show notes@mattmcwilliams.com tag341 the affiliate guy341mattmcwaims.com tag341 you can grab, and you leave a comment there if you want. So with that, we’ll wrap up first 10 mistakes I made with my affiliate program even though ended up being amazingly successful. we’ve run some big ones over the years. These are the ways that I screwed up early on. So with that, I’ll see you in the next episode.You’re going to get the next 10 mistakes. I cannot wait. I’m looking at the list right now. Oh, man, there’s some good ones. There are some really, really good ones in there.I’ll see you then.

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