Affiliate marketing is one of the easiest ways to generate income from your email list - without creating your own products, handling customer service, or even making a single sale yourself. But there’s a problem.
Too many people do it wrong.
They bombard their audience with spammy links, promote shady products, and burn trust faster than a bad marketer burns through ad spend.
If you’ve ever thought, “I don’t want to sound too salesy,” or “I don’t want my audience to feel like I’m just pitching them,” then you’re in the right place.
Today, I’m revealing the exact playbook for making affiliate sales without annoying your list.
If you want to write better emails, come up with better content, and move your readers to click and buy, here's how. We put together this list of our Top 10 most highly recommended books that will improve all areas of your email marketing (including some underground treasures that we happened upon, which have been game-changing for us). Grab your FREE list here.
If you want to chat about how you can maximise the value of your email list and make more money from every subscriber, we can help! We know your business is different, so come and hang out in our FREE Facebook group, the Email Marketing Show Community for Course Creators and Coaches. We share a lot of training and resources, and you can talk about what you're up to.
This week's episode is sponsored by ResponseSuite.com, the survey quiz and application form tool that we created specifically for small businesses like you to integrate with your marketing systems to segment your subscribers and make more sales. Try it out for 14 days for just $1.
Want more? Let's say you're a course creator, membership site owner, coach, author, or expert and want to learn about the ethical psychology-based email marketing that turns 60-80% more of your newsletter subscribers into customers (within 60 days). If that's you, then The Email Hero Blueprint is for you.
This is hands down the most predictable, plug-and-play way to double your earnings per email subscriber. It allows you to generate a consistent sales flow without launching another product, service, or offer. Best news yet? You won't have to rely on copywriting, slimy persuasion, NLP, or ‘better' subject lines.
Thanks so much for tuning into the podcast! If you enjoyed this episode (all about the psychology of marketing and the 9 things we use in all our email campaigns) and love the show, we'd really appreciate you subscribing and leaving us a review of the show on your favourite podcast player.
Not only does it let us know you're out there listening, but your feedback helps us to keep creating the most useful episodes so more awesome people like you can discover the podcast.
And please do tell us! If you don't spend time on email marketing, what do you really fill your working days with? We'd love to know!
00:01.12
Kennedy Kennedy
Could you and should you be promoting other people's products to your audience and getting paid for it? That's what we're talking about in today's show.
00:36.75
Kennedy Kennedy
We're back, email marketing Wednesday. Lovely to see you, or hear you, or not hear you, speak to you. That's what I'm talking about. ah Welcome back to the show of your brand new. Hello, I'm Kennedy. Welcome to the show. We do this every Wednesday. We call it email marketing Wednesday. That's the day of the week I want you to think.
00:52.39
Kennedy Kennedy
About your email marketing and we're going through a real good spell of really high quality amazing Podcast episodes recently if you didn't listen to last week's episode where I was speaking adjacent flatland about all things webinars definitely go back and listen to that and We've got some great new things coming up as well. I've got I've got to admit something I am ah in my personal life. I'm having a little bit of a withdrawal issue from the TV show, The Traders. ah yeah And the reason I think that's happened is because I watched all three seasons within three weeks. And that means I created this like dependency ah on the whole show. And I'm like, I've got a severe lack of Claudia Winkelman in my life right now. um So that's that's what's going on with me. yeah How are you? Oh yeah, I can't hear you. Anyway, um so today we are talking about affiliate promotions.
01:45.11
Kennedy Kennedy
And this is one of those things that some people are like, oh, I already do it. And I'm going to share with you ah some ideas of where else you could be using affiliate promotions. And there's a whole bunch of people who are like vehemently against, oh, I shouldn't promote other people's things. I'll come across as too promotional, or that's what but dodgy people do. And that's not at all true either.
02:06.39
Kennedy Kennedy
as a whole bunch of techniques and ah and opportunities for us all to be using um the ability to go and promote ah promote other stuff to our audiences and we're going to get into that. If you already haven't, if you haven't already I should say, if you haven't already joined our free Facebook community. It's called the email marketing show community. We literally hang out there and talk about all of this stuff, everything relating to digital marketing and email marketing to grow your business, make more sales from your email list. Then chuck open Facebook and search for the email marketing show community.
02:41.72
Kennedy Kennedy
We're keeping it on Facebook. People keep it saying to me, oh, are you going to move it to this platform or that platform? I'm like, no, man, I'm good. Like it works really, really well. Um, and so it's, it's great. It's a great place to hang out. I don't want to cut anybody off by moving to a different platform. So that's, that's where we're at. So the email marketing community over on the Facebook machine. So.
03:02.78
Kennedy Kennedy
Let's get into talking about affiliate stuff. I, I've got to say, I resisted promoting affiliate stuff, like promoting other people's offers in exchange for a commission for a very long time. as i I think at one point I might have even uttered the words, I'm never going to do that. And then of course, as soon as you use the word never leaves your lips,
03:24.88
Kennedy Kennedy
you know that you've actually just set the ticking timer of life to be, we'll see you about that, and then you know it's going to happen at some point. As soon as you say never, I'm never going to do that, you know that at some point something will change. And for me it was my perspective.
03:40.96
Kennedy Kennedy
I always thought of affiliate offers as kind of those a bit scammy, a bit spammy, cheesy, over-hypy, short-lived offers that really don't help people. And yes, I will never promote one of those. That is true. I will never go to one of those marketplaces and be like, oh, I found a thing which is like how I made a gazillion dollars and got a gazillion views on my YouTube video in my sleep and ranked number one on Google. Like, blah, really? What year is it? Is anybody even buying that shit anymore? I hope not. I really hope no one's actually falling for that stuff anymore. and And if they do, I hope they learn their lesson really, really quickly.
04:23.08
Kennedy Kennedy
one i'm what What I'm really talking about in this episode is looking for other people's products that will genuinely help your audience, right? So there's two rules I have when I'm going to tell my audience, whether it's on my socials, but mostly by email, because my biggest audience is. And that is, my first rule is, will this genuinely be helpful to my audience?
04:48.54
Kennedy Kennedy
Right? So in the case, it might be like a piece of software that helps them to do something like make a sales video or ah write better copy or something like that. Like that's something my audience I know struggles with. And if there is a solution that actually works. And that brings up my second rule is always take a look at the product.
05:09.05
Kennedy Kennedy
So if it's a bit of software, go test it, go play with it. And I've done this ah to the extent where I'm like, I've tested the product, I'm about to promote it, but actually it kept erroring, it kept glitching out, it's not working. So I got in touch with the creators, with the offer owner and said, look, I'm unable to promote this until this is actually ready for the audience. I don't want people buying something for it through my recommendation and then having this experience. so Because that that reputational damage doesn't just affect them and their product, but it affects me. And I think I spend a lot of time and being and i'm I'm very considered and very thoughtful about what I share, right? Whether it's my own stuff, what I put together, our own products, our own services, my own thoughts even. I'm very careful and very thoughtful about all of that stuff. And it's the same with recommending something else. I don't want to damage that reputation. I want to know. I want you guys to know.
06:08.34
Kennedy Kennedy
that when I recommend something, when I say, hey, I've created this, or I've got a friend, or I know somebody, or I found this product, I want you to know that I stand by and go, this is really, really good. Now, does that work 100% of the time? No, because sometimes I test the thing and it might you know it might work in my tests and then later they screw something up. Like I have to let go at some point. Like I don't want to be paranoid about like, Oh my God, I need to control every single variable here, which I can get to that stage sometimes. and can I can be a little bit crazy that way, but I want to make sure I test the product. So if it's sort of a software, it's, Hey, give me a login. Let me look at it.
06:44.23
Kennedy Kennedy
Okay, yeah, this looks good. It delivers all the things that it says on the offer page. The offer page, at the sales page is not too overhyped for what's actually being delivered. Make sure that when people get in, they're going to be excited. They're going to be like, this is great. Not like, oh, all the energy of this promotion was really in the marketing. And there's not really much passion for the deliverable.
07:07.90
Kennedy Kennedy
And because people are savvy and now they're realizing actually we need to have great products. So always, always, always test the product and make sure it's going to genuinely help your audience. Now at this point, you might be thinking that's all great if you teach marketing or sales or like a B2B thing, but will this work if you're B2C? The answer is yes. In fact, some of the biggest affiliate earners, people who earn the biggest affiliate commissions are in the B2C space. I know people.
07:36.96
Kennedy Kennedy
And I've met people over the years who are really really big affiliates for like makeup brands, clothing for for electrical goods. All of this stuff works really, really well. In fact, um affiliate networks are like a huge, huge business, multi, multi-million dollar businesses are in their own right. Now, for people like you and me, most of us are experts or have expertise in things.
08:04.00
Kennedy Kennedy
And so there are other things that our audience needs. So I'm going to take you through five different types of um offers and what and when to use them and some places to use ah to actually promote other people's products or services. And then we're going to get into my process for actually, how do you do really successful promotions? What are some things you can do to make sure you don't annoy your list, to make sure you do it compliantly, and actually get really good results?
08:33.91
Kennedy Kennedy
and and also how to really um keep yourself safe a little bit when um when doing these affiliate promotions. There's some stuff I've learned from having been burned in the past with these things. um Obviously, none of this is legal advice. You need to make sure you're being compliant as much as you can. But I've got some some bits and pieces, definitely not the complete picture on ne on some of that as well. But before we get into how to make really successful promotions, I really wanna go through this list of five different um places, for want of a better word, of where you could be promoting other people's products, services, software and stuff like that. And what's great about this is it doesn't matter the size of your list. It doesn't matter whether you're beat to be beat to see what your niche is. There are other things that your audience needs.
09:18.45
Kennedy Kennedy
And here's the rule, if your audience is already going to be buying these other things, then why don't you tell them about the other things and get paid when they buy it? So, hey, someone's going to go and buy that big new two grand course off that guru who's launching this week.
09:38.70
Kennedy Kennedy
Well, they're gonna go buy it anyway, some of them, okay? Well, why don't I earn a 30, 40 or 50% commission when they do buy it? They're gonna spend their two grand. why not Why don't I also earn three or four or five or 600?
09:54.39
Kennedy Kennedy
ah dollars but when they do that. I may as well. They're going to buy anyway. I may as well earn the commission. And also, in doing so, you can align yourself with these with the bigger name in your niche, if you're if you're doing that. Well, it doesn't even have to be like a bigger name in the niche. Like it literally could be, my audience has already going and buying this other thing. I may as well get a commission when they do that. Okay. and So how do you do it? Well, the first thing I was thinking about is,
10:23.10
Kennedy Kennedy
How do you fill a gap in your existing offer suite? This is how you're going to identify some really good things that you can promote to your audience. Take a look at what you do offer and what you don't offer.
10:37.64
Kennedy Kennedy
And the best way of doing this is not just to do with the topic, like, okay, let's say we didn't teach anything to do with list building. We have a small amount of list building stuff. It's very targeted and very niche, but we don't teach like an entire program about Facebook ads. But I know a bunch of our audience really want to learn and master Facebook ads. So if I find someone who's got a really good Facebook ads course,
11:02.15
Kennedy Kennedy
I know my audience needs that. It would be crazy for me to not tell my audience and not about that because they're going to be looking for it. They might buy something. What they buy might not be this course. And if the course I've vetted is really good and I know it's going to deliver, then I should recommend it to my people and then also get paid a commission. So that's to do with the topic. So what are the the parallel topics to your subject matter. And so let's say I know we've got one of our one of our clients, he's not in the in the sort of expert space in the same sort of way, he has a martial arts studio, it's Andy from from Melbourne, Australia.
11:38.69
Kennedy Kennedy
and Someone like him is like, I've got an in-person studio, what would I promote? Well, anything to do with um helping kids, because his his whole studio is about like helping kids be more disciplined, be more motivated, be more confident. What else could you promote in that world? And that could be sportswear.
11:58.20
Kennedy Kennedy
that they can wear. It could be other programs which help them to improve their studies while they're at school. Like what are other things that young people need? For us in the education expert space, that's something that's parallel to what you do. So maybe you teach people how to grow on Instagram.
12:14.40
Kennedy Kennedy
but you don't teach them about lead magnets. Okay cool, find someone who's got a course about lead magnets or maybe you do teach them Instagram and lead magnets but you don't teach them how to convert people once they're on get on their email list. Find somebody who does. You've basically got a choice, you can either create that solution or you can recommend it. And I think a lot of us, so by default, will get into this world of creating more solutions. Instead of just focusing on selling more of our existing solution, because that takes time creating new solutions, right? And then when you recommend somebody else's solution, your audience gets served, but you get paid if you're being an affiliate. And what's nice is, because they're buying from somebody else, you don't have to worry about the fulfillment, the customer support, or any of that stuff. And so, in fact, To be quite frank, you could build a whole email list. And this is an entire business model, the affiliate business model. Build an entire email list, which is about a topic. And all you do is promote promote other people's stuff. Then you don't have any fulfillment. You don't have any upkeep of the product. I mean, much of you had a Facebook ads course, how often you must have to go in there and update that. I never want to have a Facebook ads course like that.
13:21.77
Kennedy Kennedy
Right? We have a strategic level Facebook ads course, which is about the strategic element of how Facebook fit facebook ads and all advertising fits into your business. But in terms of like the buttons to press and where to click and setting it up and campaign structure, that changes so often. Those people have to have update all the time. I'm going to recommend someone's course instead.
13:41.05
Kennedy Kennedy
I also don't have to work worry about um about customer support, about any of that stuff if I'm just recommending stuff. Of course, most of us are what what's called an offer owner. You have your own offers. You have your own programs, courses, membership, softwares, and things. So you don't have to create another another thing. You can just recommend it. But here's another way to think about it.
14:05.59
Kennedy Kennedy
It's not just to do with what you teach. And this is, I think, a mistake. A lot of people and a trap that people get stuck in when they're thinking about, Oh, I don't really know what I should recommend. Cause we kind of, you know, I don't want to recommend, we kind of cover all of this, we kind of whatever. And I always say, okay, well, what about the modality in which that thing is delivered? So it might not be what they're teaching. Hey, you might cover.
14:31.53
Kennedy Kennedy
email marketing, but maybe you don't have an email marketing agency. You might be a copywriter, but you might teach copywriting, but you don't do copywriting for people. So if you don't have a done for you offer, a higher ticket done for you offer, you don't need to build a done for you offer. You could instead recommend a done for you offer.
14:55.06
Kennedy Kennedy
Think about how powerful that is. If I don't have a done for you agency offer, I can go to my friend and go, hey, Andy, who I know has a writing agency, we can strike up a deal and say, if you if you want, I can send people who want done for you over to you and get a commission. And he's like, yes, because I can find out how much he currently pays for a lead. I can find out how much he's willing to pay me. And it's a win-win. He gets a new client and I'm able to make a commission from a service that I don't even have to provide. I don't have to manage a team of writers, have processes, have all of this stuff for the done for you offer. So if you, this is the this is the first thing I want you to do. If you do not have a done for you offer right now, find somebody who offers a done for you solution
15:39.04
Kennedy Kennedy
in your market and strike up a deal with them. Because there are some people who will come into your world who think they want to learn the thing that you do. They're like, oh yeah, I want to learn how to shave badges. And then they get in and realize it's quite tricky to get grab ahold of those little bastards and they sort of wriggle around a lot. They're like, fuck it. I just want somebody to come and shave my badges for me. If that's the thing. Pet badges. Who hasn't got one, right? And and then they're like, OK, cool. I'm going to pass those people over.
16:08.39
Kennedy Kennedy
Right? So yog if you're the educator, but not the doer, then the first the absolutely amazing opportunity for you to do is strike up a deal with somebody who is a done for you service provider. And today, there are so many people offering done for you because they've been sold on this thing that doing done for you, high ticket, high touch done for you services is the best business model. that is what's That's what's been taught.
16:33.81
Kennedy Kennedy
In fact, that was the number one business model that was taught online last year. That was what everyone was talking about. And that means we've got this load of people who are looking for clients for done for you services. You can definitely strike up a deal with those people if you don't have one. But it's not just done for you.
16:49.76
Kennedy Kennedy
What about software? is there Do you have a software element to your business? If not, people love software because it makes things more predictable, it makes things more unique, it gives them an advantage, and also usually will make things faster and easier. If you don't have a software element, I am sure there will be software in most of our industries that relate to our audiences.
17:13.32
Kennedy Kennedy
So again, go find somebody who has a software and strike up a deal. So you'll often hear me say, oh, yeah, you should go and use this bit of software. Here's my affiliate link for it.
17:26.09
Kennedy Kennedy
because I don't own all the softwares that we use, obviously, right? I just like, I use an email marketing platform. I don't own that. I use XYZ. I use all these different platforms ah to to run the business. So when I recommend these things to our clients, they're gonna get that bit of software. They were gonna buy the software anyway. I may as well make a commission.
17:46.79
Kennedy Kennedy
Okay, so again, think about what is a software that would really help your audience. The third type of thing you could be looking for is templates. If you don't offer templates. So for example, if you are a Let's go back to an Instagram strategist. like If you offer social media Instagram growth as a strategic coach, but you don't have templates, you could create a whole system where they but where you have a ah team or or even yourself making templates every single month that your clients get to use or you could find somebody who has templates of the month clubs and there's bloody loads of them and recommend that in exchange for a commission because again that's going to help your clients and it's going to help you. It's going to help your clients get better results from your strategic advice etc. And then finally community and that could be in the form of like a mastermind or something like that. If you don't have a high touch community element
18:46.89
Kennedy Kennedy
but you know someone who does, then you should be recommending it. And if you don't know someone who does, go find someone who does. Because again, there are a certain number of people in every audience who want to get that level that high level of touch And they want to be in a mastermind and they may as well hear about a good one that you've vetted from you and you may as well be getting paid when they're going to enroll in it anyway. Right? So hopefully that makes a bit, a bit of sense. So that's the first element. The second element of this.
19:23.50
Kennedy Kennedy
And the second reason and way to um to do this is, but well, first of all, so your first reason I just talked about that was like to fill in a gap in your offer suite. The second reason and place to recommend um other people's offers in exchange for a commission, and an introductory fee or whatever, an introductory fee.
19:43.47
Kennedy Kennedy
is to create reciprocal agreements. What I mean by that is, look, if you want other people to promote your thing, because that's a great way of bringing in sales for your business, like loads of other people recommending your thing, you'd be like, this is great, keep on bringing it, right? And we've built a large part of our business on exactly that, by having a really good product,
20:04.57
Kennedy Kennedy
and having good strategic partnerships, having good relationships and friendships with other people who are also serving the same audience, telling people about your offer. That's a great way to build a business, right? so But how do you do that to begin with? And this is something I wrestled with for a while, and then I really cracked it, and here's what I do.
20:23.98
Kennedy Kennedy
If I want X person, let's say I want Mary to promote our email hero blueprint. Okay, it's tricky for me to reach out to Mary, who probably doesn't know me, and say, hey, Mary, I've got this really cool thing. Will you tell your audience about it? She's gonna be like, well, no, because she's got her own audience. I would only be approaching her of shout if thought if I thought she had a big enough audience. She's gonna be pretty protective of that audience, like just like you are, just like you should be.
20:50.57
Kennedy Kennedy
So what do we do to get around that? Well, we go first. It's really simple. We go first. I approach Mary and say, Hey, I noticed you've got X thing. And because I know that we're serving the same audience, which is the reason I wanted to promote my thing, I'm going to be like, Hey, you've got this thing. Do you have a way that I can promote it as an affiliate partner? She's gonna be like, you want to send me sales? Yes.
21:14.45
Kennedy Kennedy
So I say, great, let's set it up. And I do a promotion and I do a good job of it. I communicate all the way through. I work with them on the offer to make it really convert. I go first. And that means they are going to feel like, Oh, maybe I should promote their thing. Okay. The second reason you can, the second way you can do this is you can go first to win someone's attention. Hey, I really want to be on this person's radar.
21:44.25
Kennedy Kennedy
right For whatever reason, you want them to ah follow you on Instagram. You want them to write the forward to your book. You want them to you you want to know you want to just be in their world. A great way of doing that is to send them some sales.
22:00.53
Kennedy Kennedy
I used to do this, here's a funny story. When I was an entertainer at full time doing corporate events as a hilarious mind reader, then um I was really wanting to get on the books of some agents. And there was this one agent who I really wanted to be begin in with because they had some really good clients they were doing events for and I really wanted to do events for those clients, right? So this is what I did. Here's a sneaky sticky, sticky thing. I don't know if I've ever told anybody this, right? But it works on the same principle.
22:30.64
Kennedy Kennedy
i um This person had never heard of me, right? So i am I wrote a check back then, I had a checkbook, those are the days, right? But 20 years ago, whatever. And I wrote a check to them for what I would pay in the agent's commission, which I think at the time was like 20%. So I took my fee and I found 20% of it and I wrote a checkout to this agent with a letter that said, hey, I feel really bad. I just found out from my client who I was working for last week that they found out about me through you. um And so I just want to do the right thing and make sure you've got your commission. I really appreciate it. And then obviously that was on like letter headed paper. Send that to them.
23:18.37
Kennedy Kennedy
And of course they cashed the check and they were straight in my email inbox because one, they've never heard of me. Two, I've just sent them a few hundred dollars or in my case pounds. And finally, I'm being really honest. The big battle that agents have in the entertainment space is entertainers circumventing them and cutting out their commission. Obviously that kills their businesses. So I'm showing them that I don't do that. I'm really proactive. And I got on the books of many, many top agents by doing that.
23:47.96
Kennedy Kennedy
What's the principle? The principle is going first, is pouring into somebody first. So if you want to get booked onto their stage, onto their podcast, on their summit, any platform that they've got,
24:02.09
Kennedy Kennedy
Do a promotion for somebody else first and they will then give you their attention. Okay. That's a really good reason to do an affiliate promotion to your list. Yes, you'll probably make some sales as well from your list, which is nice to have the cash in the bank, but you're making a bigger play, which is I want the attention of this person. And I've definitely, definitely done that in this business. All right. Third.
24:26.39
Kennedy Kennedy
This is a really powerful way to earn some extra cash while somebody else is already creating buzz and marketing. Let's imagine there's one of the big launches in your market, right? In the in the online digital marketing space, there are a few people who once or twice a year have a big product launch and they are telling for again everybody ah about it.
24:50.79
Kennedy Kennedy
They are running ads. everyone's on their Their social media is going crazy. They're doing lives. that They're creating loads of buzz. You can ride that wave of hyper awareness and tell your listener and say, hey, I've just found out that this person, Amy, is doing this really cool thing. I think you'll really like it. I think you should register. And if you're the person that gets them to go, oh, I'll keep hearing about this. I'm going to go register because Kennedy recommended it. Then I'm going to get the commission for that. Okay. But the way this one works is we have to convince people to buy through my link. So this is what you have to be really strategic with. This becomes a very competitive zone. So let's say Amy is doing a big launch.
25:41.87
Kennedy Kennedy
I know that there's gonna be like three, 400, 500, maybe a thousand, maybe more, like hundreds if not thousands of people. promoting that launch. The only way that I can really get my audience to buy through my link, because remember, all of our audiences are on lots of other people's email lists, but they're receiving emails from lots of different people, right? The only way I can really make them buy through my link is by giving the most obnoxious, highly valuable, ridiculous bonus package.
26:14.62
Kennedy Kennedy
So I can literally show it to my list and say, Hey, Amy's doing this launch. When you join her XYZ program, um she's gonna give you all this really good stuff. And if you enroll through my affiliate link, I'm going to give you this extra stuff. And it has to be like, knock the socks off. Are you kidding? And you have to spend time putting those packages together and probably invest a bit of money in making them happen.
26:40.81
Kennedy Kennedy
So, but that's only a few times a year. We don't really do much of that kind of stuff in this business. We have a lot of friends who do that and I've seen them go very, very, very, very well. Number four is to fill your promotion calendar. So between your own promotions of your own products and services, what are you doing? One of the biggest questions I get on our Hotline Q and&A calls in our Email Hero Academy is,
27:07.06
Kennedy Kennedy
What do you do when you're not promoting things? And you can be setting out value. You can be doing our normal bottomless email type strategy. But the other thing you can do is find other people's stuff to tell your list about. And this is all the things I love to do. Okay. So I'll find out like my friend Rich, or he's doing a webinar. I can tell my audience about that. Great.
27:27.62
Kennedy Kennedy
because it's something new and different to tell my audience about. It refreshes and resets the attention of my email list, because I'm not just talking about my stuff, my stuff, my stuff. They're like, oh, he's talking about something else. I make your recommendation, puts me in place of authority, and they go register for the webinar, and if they buy something, I might make some cash.
27:43.98
Kennedy Kennedy
So again, when do you when you plan out your quarter, we do it quarterly, right? So you might go January, February, March. Okay, we're gonna plan out, we're gonna promote our thing of this, our thing of that, and our thing of that. Okay, between that, we've got like two weeks gap there, we've got a three week gap there, we've got a one week gap there. What we're gonna do in the middle of them. And sometimes we'll go, ah, we're not gonna do anything there, we're gonna just like do like bottomless emails. And in the other gaps, actually, I think that's a good time because X person is doing a launch, or we could do a promo for this evergreen offer. That's always open.
28:11.20
Kennedy Kennedy
And that's one of the things to talk about is that you'll find that some things you can promote as an affiliate are always open. You canfo you can you can promote them at any time. They're called evergreen offers. And you've got some launch offers. And they're the things you're probably more likely to have seen. um so And I often will just do the evergreen offers. I don't really want to get into the launch game. I don't find the launch thing very um interesting. I also find it very and anxiety inducing. So I kind of stay away from that just because that's the kind of person that I am.
28:40.50
Kennedy Kennedy
Here's the big key of it all. And this is kind of point number five before we get into how to do the promotion. All right. I told you I was going to give you all of the goods today, right? Hence it's a bit of a longer episode. But one of the things that we have to do here is remember that when you got an email subscriber onto your list, you paid in some way to get that person on your list, right? You are already net negative on that person.
29:04.58
Kennedy Kennedy
Our job as a person who owns that list, who attracted that new potential buyer, that new prospect, that new lead, our job is to turn that prospective buyer into a buyer. We need them to pay us back.
29:21.34
Kennedy Kennedy
So one of the things that we want to do is use affiliate offers to monetize those leads. There are some people who come to your email list. They think they know that they know what they want. They think that you might be the person to help them. But no matter which of your offers you put in front of them, they just aren't frigging buying for whatever reason.
29:43.36
Kennedy Kennedy
Okay, maybe they joined your list too early. It's like, Oh, well, I know I want this for later in the future. It could be for whatever a bunch of reasons. Okay. But they still are buying something. And so our job, since we attract them on the list is to monetize them in some way. Promoting and recommending other people's offers is a fantastic way of doing that. They're not by my stuff. They might buy somebody else's stuff.
30:08.57
Kennedy Kennedy
Right? And so and a great example of when I do this is um yeah one of the things I teach, we have a program called the unsubscriber and that is... we on um on when When somebody unsubscribes from our email list, we have an affiliate offer on that thank you page. So when someone clicks unsubscribe from our emails, after they after it confirms, hey, you're unsubscribed, that we have an affiliate offer on that page, I make sales most weeks from that offer. So someone's on their way out. They're like, I'm never going to see your emails again.
30:41.21
Kennedy Kennedy
Cool. I paid to get a person on the list. I don't know how much I paid. I might have paid $80 to get that person on my list and they bought something, they bought nothing. I don't know. But they they decided they didn don't want to hear from me anymore. um I'm going to show them an offer on the way out. And that's an affiliate offer. It's not one of my offers. The reason it's not going to be one of my offers, by the way, is because if they buy one of my offers, they'll be back on my list. And I feel it's unfair to put somebody straight back on your list when they just unsubscribe. It just doesn't jam very well with me at all, even if it's something I really feel is going to help them.
31:07.67
Kennedy Kennedy
So I feel it's better to say, hey, I recommend this other person's thing. That other person, you're sort of passing the bat on to somebody else, which I think is a nice thing to do. That other person gets a new buyer, which I think is great. And I get a bit of a commission, which works really, really well. So if you're if you're able to do that on your um on your email platform, I would highly recommend you do it.
31:26.41
Kennedy Kennedy
So now let's now we've sort of got kind of got all these five different things we're going to do in places that you can offer other people's offers to your audience. Let's talk about some important stuff. I'm going to rattle through this about how to actually promote other people's stuff. The first thing that's really, really important is you have to disclaim, right? It's a legal requirement. You have to disclaim that you will or could get paid a commission if they buy through your link.
31:53.93
Kennedy Kennedy
I know that a whole bunch of Instagram creators and influencers got into lots of trouble a few years ago, now it's a little while ago, by saying, hey, I really recommend this thing, and then not saying, hey, but I also get paid for this, or this is a paid promotion. They do now have to disclaim that and and be very clear and transparent about it. And that's always been the case. so And it's one of those things you might have screwed up in the past. I've definitely screwed up in the past. I remember when we were building the business, we were just like putting like affiliate offers in various places. And there was one place I remember, I remember going back and going, Oh my God, we didn't actually put a little disclaimer and saying, Hey,
32:28.07
Kennedy Kennedy
you know, we get we get paid if you buy through this link. you know You know, it was an accident, it was a bit naughty, but I'm human, right? We're building a business fast. None of us, I don't want you to be paralyzed by like the legalities of this, but also, you know, just be be sensible out there. I'm not a lawyer, obviously, it's at your own risk and stuff, but the way that we do this is ah to make sure that it's very difficult for us to screw this up now with the disclaimer is the bottom of all of our emails. If you get our emails,
32:56.36
Kennedy Kennedy
you'll realize in the bottom there's a disclaimer just says disclaimer and there's a whole bunch of stuff in there one of the things that says in there is we may be paid or otherwise compensated when you buy through our links and what's really nice about that wording for me and again not a lawyer can't so speak for its legal efficacy that's a nice word isn't it legal efficacy But for me, it's very blanket, as in some of the links we'll put in there will be to our products. And of course, why did I get paid if you do that? But some of the links we put in there will be to other people's products and we might get paid through that. It means I don't have to think about switching the disclaimer in and out. It means that whenever I'm sending an email, whether it's got a link in it to our stuff, somebody else's stuff on no link at all, it means we are disclaiming we will get paid if you click and buy a thing.
33:43.58
Kennedy Kennedy
So that's one thing. Make sure you do have a disclaimer. It's just in the small print at the bottom of the email. Just make sure it's there to be really transparent with people. You don't want to be misleading. People are going, hey, this is the best thing ever. And I don't get paid if you click through this thing. And then, ha, I do get paid. Like, obviously, no shenanigans like that. Be real.
33:59.08
Kennedy Kennedy
Next is oftentimes when people have a program that they allow others to promote as an affiliate, they will often supply what's called swipes or swipe emails. And they're basically sample emails that you can use as in ah to to actually promote their product. And what I would suggest you do, in fact, I would say i would say don't ever not do this. And that is don't don't ever use the emails they supply as is.
34:26.77
Kennedy Kennedy
You want to use them as inspiration, maybe find out what the angle they're going for is in that, or find some of the facts about the offer from that, and then use it as inspiration for writing your own emails. That way, one, if everybody who's promoting this thing sends the same emails out, it's going to look awful, and no one's going to you know do any any really good um work on that.
34:47.04
Kennedy Kennedy
but also You have a connection with your audience already. Don't interrupt that and start suddenly sending out emails on somebody else's voice. So send emails in your voice about those points. Here's a really big one and that is what I call the opt-out.
35:02.70
Kennedy Kennedy
At the bottom of every, pretty much every, I do again, sometimes forget, I did it a couple of weeks ago. I forgot one of the emails. I'm like, shit, because I'm human, right? But in the bottom of our emails, when we're promoting somebody else's thing, I have a little bit of text just above our signature, above all the proper opt out stuff, which says something like, have you already bought this?
35:23.79
Kennedy Kennedy
If you have, click here and I'll stop reminding you about it. And that just means the people who bought the offer will click that link so and they don't keep getting more sales reminders about it. It also means the people who don't want to hear about that thing anymore will also pretend to have bought it. They'll click that to again, not hear about that offer.
35:43.40
Kennedy Kennedy
so But it does have a nice implication of people buying it. So have an opt-out link for your affiliate offers, which is all about, have you bought this? That's a really powerful thing to do. I don't want you to overlook that. We added that in a few years ago and it really made um a lot of difference in our affiliate promotions. Because obviously, when somebody buys somebody else's thing,
36:03.31
Kennedy Kennedy
when you're emailing them, you don't get like an integration with your email platform to say, hey, segment them out because they already bought because of data privacy reasons, you can't really do that. So that's a nice way of overcoming that, but just by letting people sort of opt out. The final thing, this is a big one.
36:19.79
Kennedy Kennedy
This is a big one. Let me tell you a quick tale, a quick story. I was promoting a brilliant product, genuinely brilliant product. And I was really excited about it. And the offer closed on the Friday. So the guy's like, hey, it it was like a live launch, right? So it was one of the very, very few live launches I've ever done.
36:39.28
Kennedy Kennedy
And it wasn't that long ago, I can actually sort of forgotten about it. I'm just telling you. But anyway, the offer close on Friday. So I was like telling my list, telling our audience telling you guys, Hey, this is a great thing. I've used it. It's actually working very well. It was a bit of software. And you should go buy it. It closes on Friday, it closes on Friday, it closes tomorrow, closes tonight. It's closing last chance done. Then So I've hyped up my list and made this promise to them that they've got to get it now before the price goes up or it goes off sale or whatever the the the consequences were. Then the dude who owns the offer emails all of his affiliates and says, hey, it was going so well. I mean, come on. It was going so well, we've decided to extend the offer till Monday. And I'm like, fuck this. what i've just That means you're making me a liar to my list. And that meant he hadn't expired the sales page.
37:31.80
Kennedy Kennedy
So that means my people who are on my list, who I've built trust with and my audience know, you guys know, like when I say something, i' I legit mean it. Like I don't ever extend deadlines, nothing like that. When I say I've used something, I've actually used it. When I'm doing something, I actually do it. Like I'm really about honesty and integrity. So when i when my audience are like, oh, it's after 10 PM and he said it's expired and they click on the link and the page is still there and they can still buy it.
37:58.06
Kennedy Kennedy
And I can see some sales still coming in, by the way. I wake up the next morning and the sales still coming in. I'm like, what's going on? Then I check my inbox. I see this email from this douchey guy going, oh, we've extended on Monday. It's not because it was going so well. It's because you want to make more money and you want to have ridden the wave of the urgency that we all created for you on Friday and squeeze a bit more out of it, which is dodgy. It's ungrateful. It's unprofessional. It's not okay.
38:24.64
Kennedy Kennedy
Now, as you can tell, I really care about this. And I went fucking ballistic with this guy. And I will never, ever promote anything he creates again. Even if it's the best thing I've ever seen. Because I won't do business. I will not recommend my audience to somebody who has those practices and doesn't have the ethics and the morals to stand by what they say. I won't do it. But how did I solve the problem? And that's the point I want to make to you.
38:50.52
Kennedy Kennedy
Luckily for me, the way that I have always done affiliate promotions is this. When you promote somebody else's thing, they're gonna give you a special link. That means when people click on your link and they buy through it, it tracks that lead came from you. All right, it's a special ID. That means when they buy it, the person who owns the offer can go, oh, Kennedy referred this person. And that means that's how you get paid. What a lot of people will do, and it's a big mistake,
39:20.27
Kennedy Kennedy
is they will use that as the link in the emails they send people, okay? They'll be like, hey, I really recommend this really cool thing, here's the link, and then the link to the guys page through their link. Don't do that.
39:34.17
Kennedy Kennedy
All right, what you wanna do instead is set up some kind of redirect link on your website. So we have a WordPress website, which means we use a little free plugin called Pretty Links, which means what I do is I go in the back of that and the link that I actually put in my emails is like emailmarketingheroes.com slash nameofproduct or the name of the person, right? So that's the person was called Terry, and he's got a program called ABC Live. I would probably have a link called,
40:03.35
Kennedy Kennedy
email marketing heroes.com slash Terry hyphen ABC live. And I would make it so that when people go to Terry email marketing heroes.com slash ABC, hi ah Terry ABC live, that it would redirect to my affiliate link to that person's website. Why is that important? It's important for two reasons. One,
40:24.90
Kennedy Kennedy
is what we just talked about. It meant that when this idiot extended his deadline without me agreeing to it and making me look like a dick to my list, I can go into my website and change where emailmarketingheroes.com slash terry hyphen what ABC live goes to.
40:46.36
Kennedy Kennedy
I can choose where that destination is. I can change it so that, yes, the links and the emails are still emailmarketingheroes.com slash terry. But where that goes to, I'm going to change that. And I did, I went in and I changed it so it no longer goes through my affiliate link and to this guy's website. I redirected it to a sorry, this offer has expired page.
41:08.87
Kennedy Kennedy
I would not have been able to change the destination of the links and the emails I have sent over the past week if I was going straight to my affiliate link to his page. I could only do that because I've got a redirect set up. That's the first reason. And that's what I did in that situation. So again, if the offer stinks, if you're getting lots of refunds, if you're getting lots of complaints, you can just kill all of your links by doing that.
41:33.92
Kennedy Kennedy
The second thing, yeah the second reason is oftentimes you'll get bad deliverability by sending links in your emails, which go through these affiliate tracking platforms. They'll go, oh, that looks like an affiliate link. I don't really like it.
41:49.22
Kennedy Kennedy
Whereas if you send it to your website, they're going to go, oh, that's to his own website. That's great. To our own website. That's great. So always use redirect links that go through your website and never directly to the affiliates site. Lots of information in today's episode. I want to make sure I spill the whole beans on using affiliate promotions. I really think every single one of us so should be promoting other people's things. Okay. In fact, if you're thinking right now,
42:14.72
Kennedy Kennedy
Oh, I wonder what Kennedy email marketing heroes has got available that I could promote because maybe you serve experts or other people who could do with improving their email email marketing. Drop me an email to partners at email marketing heroes.com partners at email marketing heroes.com.
42:32.89
Kennedy Kennedy
And we can have a chat about the different affiliate offers we have for our partners who promote our products. I'd absolutely love to do that. So that was partners at email marketingheroes.com. Oh, and by the way, we're about to get into subject line of the week. But next week, I'm going to be sharing something really cool with you. I'm going to be sharing with you the three different types of of ah of lead magnet.
42:54.86
Kennedy Kennedy
that absolutely every one of us needs and most of us don't have right. So there's three different types of lead magnet you absolutely need. I'm gonna be sharing with you next week. So make sure you hit subscribe and your podcast player, and make sure you tune in next week, it's gonna be absolutely amazing. Anyway, before we wrap up today's today's class, today's podcast, let's get into this week's
43:14.82
Kennedy Kennedy
Okay, this one's really simple. It just says, player Kennedy eliminated, and I just mail merged their name into the subject line. So it was player, their first name eliminated. And this was riding on the back of the new Squid Games um TV show. Season two had just come out. I had just caught up on season one.
43:36.47
Kennedy Kennedy
because I hadn't watched it, but then I loved it. um So it was really dialing into something that was already in people's consciousness, but also it doesn't make sense. Like what, yes, I know it's related to Squirt Games, but what's it got to do with me? What's it got to do with the thing that Kennedy always sends me emails about? I'm going to get that open and it works really, really well. That's it for this week, bit of a longer episode. I hope you enjoy these longer episodes. If you haven't already,
43:59.00
Kennedy Kennedy
Make sure you hit subscribe on your podcast player, and I would love to read your reviews over on Apple Podcasts. So if you've got two minutes right now before you do anything else, before you move on to your next thing, go leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It will mean the absolute world to me. Otherwise, I will see you all next week.