Affiliate marketing strategies for business growth with Chuck Anderson – ep 122

Mostafa Hosseini  00:02

In this episode, you will discover how to double or triple your sales by launching your affiliate program, five keys for launching an affiliate program, and you’ll discover five keys for making your affiliate program successful. Welcome to simple marketing the podcast that helps you grow your business with simple tips and strategies.

If you’re looking to simplify your marketing efforts and boost your profitability 22 Simple marketing because sometimes simple is better. today. My guest is my friend Chuck Anderson, and we’re talking about five keys to running a highly profitable fillip program. Let me bring Chuck and welcome Chuck, good to see you.

Chuck Anderson  00:48

Hi, Mostafa. Thanks for having me. And I’m so glad to be the first episode of the year. And I think you’re the new name for your show as well. So absolutely.

Mostafa Hosseini  00:58

So we just renamed and rebranded our show from daily competence for entrepreneurs to a simple marketing. And this was probably a good year or two behind it was in the workings probably should have done it sooner. So finally pulled the trigger and did it and it just feels so much better. And it’s much more unbranded and connected with what we do and who we are, as I’m all about simplicity, simplicity and keeping marketing simple.

And so yeah, let me do the proper introduction for Chuck. And we’re going to dive into a very interesting conversation about affiliate marketing and gang if you’re running a business, make sure you tune in, make sure you listen or watch the entire episode as this is going to be life changing. And make sure to subscribe to whichever channel you’re watching. Like the show, share it with your friends, whoever could benefit from growing their sales through affiliate marketing, which is probably, if not the best way to grow your business. It’s definitely on the top five.

So investor and affiliate marketing expert Chuck Anderson has been teaching affiliate marketing strategies for 20 plus years. He’s an investor and marketing consultant that helps business owners create a network of referral partners and affiliates that will promote their products and programs in exchange for commissions or referral bonuses. Welcome, Chuck.

Chuck Anderson  02:26

Thank you, Mostafa.

Mostafa Hosseini  02:29

Happy New Year. Yeah, this is how was how was your holidays? You

Chuck Anderson  02:34

know? It they were great. And I gotta say one of the best December’s ever. And so just super grateful. super blessed. And yeah, it was, it was great to take a little time off in that in that last week of December, just kind of put the feet up and recharge and and hit the ground running this week.

Mostafa Hosseini  02:56

antastic Yeah, I probably had one of the best holidays. Christmas New Year holiday times ever. It was really good. I really enjoyed it. Good friends, good family mindset was in the right place. So I’m really looking forward to this year like brand new show. Starting brand new mastermind. I think things could not be better.

So let’s share some amazing tips about affiliate marketing guys that this has been life changing for me. And let’s, let’s start by your story check. What is your story?

Chuck Anderson  03:32

Yeah, well, my story is I got started with affiliate programs first introduced to them in 1998. That gives gives people a little context of how long I’ve been doing this. And the timing couldn’t have been better because I was just finishing up with a business that was failing miserably. We’re in the telecom industry spending way too much money on equipment and infrastructure and services. And it you know, it was no longer profitable.

And friend of mine invited me over to his house, he had just the affiliate, the affiliate thing was kind of new. So was online, for that matter. I mean, some of the first websites in 1998 were not much to look at. But what was interesting is when I went over to my friend’s house for dinner, he pulled up this check for $10,000 that he had just earned by setting up a website, putting a link on that website and linking to somebody else’s product.

 And that changed everything for me because there were I was introduced to one half of the equation in affiliate marketing which is earning commissions as an affiliate and and I was able to within just a few short months get up to that $10,000 a month level as well. And I started teaching people how to set up websites and how to join affiliate programs and, and all of that so that’s really where I got started. And that launched me I ended up as the Chief Marketing Officer of an Internet Marketing Training Company, where at our peak, we were doing $20 million in annual sales and 40% of that 40% of that.

So almost half, were coming from our affiliates. And so I had the good fortune of learning the other side of affiliate marketing, which was managing an affiliate program, recruiting and training and managing affiliates to keep us at that level. And so, so it led me to that, sadly, that company was sold very abruptly in 2010. And I found myself in a consultant role, and I could have probably rode that amazing story in that amazing company for a very long time. But it came, came to an end.

And then I had to go and repeat all of this as an affiliate and also launching my own affiliate program as now as an individual contractor. And, you know, that’s where a lot of the things I’m going to share with you today, Mostafa is, and the audience is where that came from, because it’s easy to work for a $20 million company that has 80 employees. And I had a staff of 15, that would do everything for me to go to now a personal company of one, and then to try to do the same things we were doing as a company of 80. And so and so that’s where we learned some very important things about marketing, and especially what to do when not to do what’s too expensive, what, what’s effective, and how affiliate marketing was still the solution and still is today?

Mostafa Hosseini  06:40

Absolutely, absolutely. It’s been a game changer for me as well. Affiliate marketing is really good. So, I know you touched on this already, but what do you do these days? And who do you serve?

Chuck Anderson  06:56

Mm hmm. Yeah. So, you know, for the, in 2010, when I when I left that I was more or less a marketing consultant and who I was serving at the time, and it’s evolved. But I’ve always been really drawn to coaches and consultants. And because these are people, they are just like me, because I’m a coach, and I’m a consultant. And what they are is they’re people who are engaged in helping other people helping, you know, helping others succeed at a higher level.

So I really enjoy working with that audience. And you know, the struggles that come along with that, you know, the how to get clients is probably at the top of the mind of most coaches, and most consultants. And so I’ve been helping them with their marketing strategies since since leaving that company in 2010. And as we go, we’ve we’ve gotten more and more specific in our strategies. And now today, I specialize in setting up and managing affiliate programs for coaches who need clients, or people running events.

And a lot of coaches to get clients will run workshops and webinars and multi day events and challenges. And, and it’s it’s the one of the challenges you have with that is filling those events and getting the clients and all of that. And so this is where today I really specialize in, in working with those groups, but specifically, recruiting affiliates that will fill their events, fill their workshops, promote their podcast, get them appointments on their calendar, that sort of thing.

And so even if they’ve tried and affiliates before, because there’s a lot of people and we’ll talk about have have found out that having an affiliate program is a little bit more than just being able to give someone an affiliate link, you actually have to work with them and get them to follow through. And so, but that’s part of it. So so even if someone has tried affiliate marketing before and is ready to give it another chance, we actually help them to relaunch and and do it more effectively this time.

Mostafa Hosseini  09:05

Fantastic. So tell us about what is what is the definition of affiliate marketing.

Chuck Anderson  09:14

So So affiliate marketing has two sides to it. One is the affiliates where you can earn a commission for promoting someone else’s product. So an affiliate program essentially that where you’re promoting a product, and there’s a commission being paid as a referral fee, or, or commission or how little a lot of people goes by a lot of different names. But as an affiliate, you earn money by promoting someone else’s product.

That’s what the affiliates are. When you have an affiliate program, the product or service is yours, and you’re the one paying a commission to affiliates. So in other words, if you send me a customer, I will keep track that you’re the one who sent me that A customer, and I’m going to take a percentage of the money that I earned from that sale, and I’m going to give it to you. And that’s essentially what an affiliate program is. And so, so then if you multiply that well, okay, so that’s you sending me a customer, but what if I’ve got 100 people sending me customers?

Well, no, that’s 100 People that are out there, doing the marketing, for me, spreading the word about my product, and I’m not having to pay for that out of pocket up front. Like so many other types of marketing, like organic marketing, and paid media, Facebook ads, all that kind of stuff where you have to pay, and hopefully you’ll, you’ll get a return with affiliates you actually are paying after the sale is already made. So it’s money you can afford to give and so.

So that’s really what affiliate marketing is, it’s it’s where you’re paying a commission to compensate an affiliate who’s out there promoting your product and service. And every time they send you a customer, you send them a commission, and hopefully they keep doing that. And that’s is essentially what it is, for sure. And

Mostafa Hosseini  11:06

then so what’s the difference between let’s go through the definition of an affiliate program. Hmm, what would that look like? What’s the definition there? What is it? Yeah,

Chuck Anderson  11:16

so an affiliate program is a program you set up that does a few things. Number one, is it allows you to the opportunity to recruit affiliates. And these ideally, would be people who are influencers or have a list or something that of your ideal target audience, where your affiliate program, usually it starts with some first of all, it would start with, you know, allocating some percentage of that sale that you can afford to pay as a commission or a referral fee, or whatever you want to call it.

And then a tracking software of some sort, that’s going to give you the ability to give a unique link to your product to your affiliates. So that so if I give you a unique link, Mustapha, and you and your, you send that out to your list and the people on your list, click that link, I know that those clicks, and those sales came from you. And now I can compensate you for that.

So at a very basic level, that’s an affiliate program, we do go a little bit further, because now we we want to train and manage and nurture the relationships. But at a very basic level for keeping things simple. It’s allocating some portion of your sale that you can pay as a commission or a referral fee, having some sort of a tracking software tracking system that you can use to give affiliate links to your affiliates, so that you can track sales, and then and then simply follow through on paying them because if you pay them, they’re gonna get excited, and they’re gonna want to do it again.

And so in a nutshell, that’s what an affiliate program is, we do go deeper in it when we when we work with them to make them more successful. But at a simple level, that’s what it is.

Mostafa Hosseini  13:02

Absolutely. At speaking of tracking links, I’m going to put an example like that, the example that I’ve got from you for this show. So gang, if you’re watching or listening, here’s a here’s a link in the comments of the show. It’s to get access to to Chuck’s gift, the the free affiliate workshop, where he teaches you about this whole piece that we’re talking about. Now, the link you see at you see that it’s got my name at the end of it.

No, that’s how they track who the source of the traffic is. And then if let’s say you go through, and then you become Chuck’s client, then we I may get a an affiliate fee. Right? And then that’s basically the to how the tracking piece works. Right. So who is who is a good fit? To start with affiliate tracking? Who should think about it?

Chuck Anderson  14:04

You know, my short I have two answers to that. One is the short answer. One’s a slightly longer answer. The The short answer is anyone selling anything, it’s just three words. If you’re selling anything, and you have a need for new customers, for that thing that you’re selling, then an affiliate program is something that I feel is a necessity for everyone. For all the reasons we just mentioned, you’re paying for customers you’ve already received instead of very speculative money that’s being spent on marketing hoping that customers will come in so anyone selling anything should have an affiliate program.

If we drill a little deeper where it’s really working well is I would say some of the highest commissions you see out there is services digital products, so if you sell that if you’re a coach, selling consulting services, we see affiliate programs working really well for them. Course Creators if you sell a call worse are a program that works really well. And then we’re really seeing impressive results is with, with events.

So if you’re trying to if you have a webinar coming up, and you want to fill that webinar, and maybe you’ve put that webinar out to your list, so many times that the response rate has gone down a little bit, well, you can get that webinar filled. If you recruit some affiliates, give them an affiliate link and have them email it out to their list. And so filling events such as webinars, workshops, challenges, multi day events, whether they’re virtual or live, anything you need to get the word out about. We’re seeing that work extremely well, for events, both virtual and live.

And this is where I tend to specialize. I mean, most of the clients that we have right now, they might be coaches, they might be consultants, they go by a lot of different terms. But one thing they all have in common is they use some form of Facebook Live or a webinar or workshop or a multi day event to help to get new clients. And so, so that that’s where I see people working really well. But you can also do it with physical products.

So let’s say we know, one of our biggest clients, they do $24 million a year in nutritional supplement sales. And so they’re basically selling bottles of vitamins, and doing extremely well what I’d say about 36% of that is coming through affiliate referrals. And so you can sell any type of merch, T shirts, pens, journals, any type of product that can be shipped, you can pay a commission and a referral fee on that. So that’s why we say first of all, anyone selling anything, but then where we really specialize I think is more in the services and the digital products and events. Love it.

Mostafa Hosseini  16:57

So let’s say that I’ve I’ve got a digital product or service, how do I get started with affiliate programs?

Chuck Anderson  17:05

Yeah. So first and foremost, okay. And this is where a lot of people go wrong, because they start looking for software, it’s not the first step, the first step is always to decide how much you can pay for a commission. And I highly recommend that you’re as generous as possible. You don’t have to give them all of it. But you know, one of the things that we do is we calculate what our profit margin is on that product. And as a starting point, we might look at, okay, well, you know, what’s 30 to 50% of that?

And number and, and then can we afford to pay that as a commission. So that’s got to be the first step, you got to know how much you are willing to pay. And don’t look at as an expense. I mean, look at it as a reward. Right? I am grateful. Every time I have to pay, or I get to pay affiliate Commission’s to my affiliates, because a I know that it worked, they sent me a customer, and I want them to do it again. So it’s when you’re calculating this. It’s not about the minimum, it’s about the maximum, how generous can you be, and it’s, it’s definitely you will talk about some of the success factors later, but it’s one of them, for sure.

And then once you know that you have a plan that okay, I’m going to do affiliates. And I’m going to pay this amount per sale on this product, then you can start looking for the tech, you know what tracking software, maybe you already have one, so many people have it already the capability in the in their, in the software and the systems they already have, if not need to find one that will layer on either layer on to what you already have in place. Or really you got to figure out the tech so so a lot of people try to do the tech first we say do the tech second.

First calculate how much you can afford to pay and be as generous as possible, then put the tech in place. So then you can give the affiliate links like the one Mustafa that we gave you that has your unique tracking identifier in it. And so now we know who came from you. So that’s that’s what we did first, but we started with knowing how much we can afford to pay

Mostafa Hosseini  19:27

for sure. And for those of you who are who are thinking of the fee that you pay to your partners as an expense, think about how much money energy resources and other things goes into finding a customer. To me over the years is anywhere from two to $500 per lead, to get a lead to just talk to you. And for those people who think it’s like 10 bucks a click Can Facebook to get someone to talk to a potential good prospect, you’re like you got this really wrong, because it’s very expensive to find a customer.

So if you could find someone that could hand over a customer to you with, and we’re going to talk about next about affiliate fees and how much you should consider, but I would paid all day long. If someone say, sends me customers every day, I would pay, let’s say, I don’t know, a few $1,000 per week, depending on the average deal size. So. So let’s turn that to my next question, Chuck, what is an average or regular type of percentage or fee that I should give to my partners, based on what I sell.

Chuck Anderson  20:46

And there’s in the industry, there’s a lot of people will say a lot of different things about this. I mean, there is a belief that like, you’ll give your partner’s half, but you can’t just give automatically give half of off the top because there’s other things you need to consider, there’s always a cost of delivering that service. In a physical product, there is a physical cost to that. So what I always say is calculate what your true profit is on that product.

So so we start with what our sale price is in a cost minus cost of delivery. And that’s going to give us sort of our, you know, sort of our gross margin, it doesn’t take into account all the things other things you’re going to spend, but the cost of delivery, right? And so then what we look at is go, Okay, can we afford to give us give them half of that number, right? Yeah, half of that number. So half of that, that net sale, and then we will go and recalculate it so that then for just ease of communication, we can say, oh, it’s X percent on the top line, because most affiliates there, they’re not going to do math in their heads, right. And if it’s too difficult to explain, you’re going to send them away.

So it might be 50% of my margin or my profitability on that product. But that might translate to 40% off top line. And so then I will just very conveniently say, Oh, great, we pay 40% off of our top line for referrals of this product. And that’s we need to be able to communicate it in the simplest way possible. And that’s what we do. But that’s what we do with the starting point is we calculate our profitability, and we try to be as generous as possible, you don’t have to go over 50%.

I mean, some people say I’ll give them all of it, you’ll make it up on the back end, I actually don’t think you need to do that. Most affiliates, I’ll tell you, most affiliates would be happy with some sort of instant gratification, you know, give them $100 A sale, instantly, they’re going to be happy with that there are some that are quite aware of the back end, and they want to participate in that bigger number. Most affiliates are looking for the immediate and not the long term. So the more generous, you can be upfront, and pay as quickly as possible, really does contributes to having an easier time recruiting new affiliates, getting them to follow through, and then getting them to repeat and promote you again in in the future.

Because if they have to wait too long, most people are Yeah, I might make $1,000. But I gotta wait three months for that to happen. Most affiliates are super impatient, they would rather risk you know, what can I get now? What can I get this month? And so they’re very motivated by instant gratification. Sometimes we’ll even do a two tier. So like, oh, yeah, we’ll give you $100 now, and we’ll give you X percent on back end. And so they kind of get the best of both worlds. So but that’s something to consider it a little bit of thinking in terms of human behavior and what motivates people. We want things now versus later. And and then how generous can you be?

Mostafa Hosseini  23:57

I love your tip about the fact that you said most partners want instant gratification and instant results. And that’s definitely key to this whole affiliate game because I think some people have delayed payments, or some people forget, which is we’ll probably talk about mistakes that people could make in the whole affiliate game.

Mostafa Hosseini  24:32

I’ve done quite a bit of this affiliate thing. And could you talk about and I didn’t know you talked about instant gratification. Could you talk about the different different motives for finding affiliate partners like for example, I myself, I don’t care about the money. What I care about is if I promote you, I want you to promote me back. Right? What are like different types of motives that are out there and what Should people look for?

Chuck Anderson  25:02

Well, I’m gonna touch on that first one that you just said, which is more of a promotional swap than it is a an affiliate program. And you know, you and I met through masterminds where this is a very common proposal that comes you promote me, I’ll promote you. And you know, let’s not worry about the money. Let’s not worry about paying Commission’s we’ll just, we’ll just promote each other. And that’s all well and good. And that sounds amazing in the moment, right. And that’s that instant gratification and just keeping things simple.

But humans being what they are they, if you do that, and you don’t feel like you got anything from it, or it didn’t produce the results that you wanted to, or your list is 10 times larger than my list. So it didn’t really seem fair, in the moment, out of convenience. It’s like, oh, yeah, let’s do a promotion swamp. But humans being who they are, they’re going to do the math at some point. And you want this not to be a one and done sort of deal. I am always looking for partnerships where we can promote each other three to five times a year, sometimes more can we integrate, or we can do evergreen, do something throughout the year, not just a one time deal.

So so that one there, I wanted to touch on that one, because that is a very common thing. And I don’t actually do promotion swaps for the all the reasons I just mentioned. So I prefer you give me an affiliate link. And then my list, if it’s smaller than yours, it doesn’t matter, because you’re only going to pay me or compensate me for what I produce. And vice versa, your list could be 10 times larger. If I just say I’m going to pay you Commission’s on that it and you’re going to be compensated on that. Well, that takes into account the the difference in list size.

And it overcomes that objection, because we hear it all the time. And usually does come up as an issue at some time in the in, right. And then when you want to promote again, it’s like well, I promoted you last time, my list is bigger than yours. I didn’t really feel like that was the best way. So So I say always pay commissions and not to do the partner swaps.

Mostafa Hosseini  27:21

So the way I’ve done it is like we do we do we do the payment. So if my list is bigger, I want to get paid. Or if a list is not a good match, we want to stall it did the performing partner should still get paid for you know, sending out the message. What do you think about like comparing lists size? Right? And then be like, Look, you have 5000 people, I’m going to send it to 5000 people on my list, although I have half a million people, but I’m not going to it like it’s kind of it has to be kind of a equal type of swap, if you will.

Chuck Anderson  27:58

Well, that’s that is something that I hear often. And I do come across as like people, because so someone with a large list will ask you how large is your list? 5000. Great, I’ll send it to 5000 of my contacts. But here’s what I noticed happened with that. So if your list is 50,000, and you’re only going to send it to a segment of 5000, usually it’s not your best 5000 You might not be you I know you’re a real generous guy, and you’re nice, but But human behavior being this is what people do.

It’s like, Oh, I’ll use this segment over here out of convenience, they’re not really going to do the work to pare that down to 5000 people who are really going to perform for you. And so that’s another reason why I don’t love it i I’m always looking for can I motivate a full list send or at least a full segment send? If they have if they have a list big enough where they have multiple segments, and you want that to be a good fit?

Because it’s not just about are you sending this out? But are you sending this out to people who are my ideal customer that are going to be interested in what you’re emailing out? For two reasons. Number one, if you email it out to the wrong people, it hurts your email delivered deliverability stats, you might get some opt outs, you might get some spam complaints, that sort of thing.

Also, it doesn’t benefit me either. And and then again, it takes away from that repeat potential, where it’s like, okay, great. We promoted each other, it’s been three months. Let’s do it again. And if it didn’t work out, and if there was this, well, I did this and you didn’t do that and it’s never gonna happen again. And so we always try to do this in such a way where low resistance, it’s fair. It takes into account that that list size differential and, and it’s like look, if your list is 50,000 minus five.

Great, send it out to your list of 50,000 we pay you the Commission’s that you earned on that Add, and we celebrate that with him go, wow, look, this was amazing. Can we count on your support again in a couple of months? And you’re going to be more willing to say yes. Because you are fairly compensated than that energy of I’m going to reduce my list size to match your list size, I don’t think it’s, it makes for great partnerships.

Mostafa Hosseini  30:22

So then, let’s say that we’re going to do that, let’s say that I’m going to come up to you and you’re like, my staff, I have 50,000 people, and I’m trying to try to convince you to promote me, even though my list is a fraction of yours. What do I need in place to make that happen?

Chuck Anderson  30:44

So where you’re saying that your list is

Mostafa Hosseini  30:46

gonna have 5000 people, you have 50,000? And I want to convince you to, you know, promote me. How do we how do we go about it? Yeah.

Chuck Anderson  30:54

And so this is where, first of all, I think that list size kind of comes out of the conversation, when we’re no longer talking about a, a promotion swap. It’s like, Yes, I’m going to promote you, and you promote me. But to be fair, and I usually will be very proactive about that. And I will say, Look, we may not have list size that are the same. And I believe wholeheartedly in treating everyone as fairly as possible.

So if your list is larger than mine, probably I will always assume that the other side has a larger list than me, even if I don’t know, right, and so say, if your list is larger than mine, no problem. Let’s, let’s put a referral fee on both sides. So that way, it’s fair, you’re getting fair compensation for those sides of your list. And it’s not even then it’s no longer a promotion swap. Now it’s, I’m paying you, you’re paying me. And either way you win.

Because if you send if you’re the one, receiving the smaller promotion, and you make sales, you win, because you did get new customers, and you sent out a proportionate amount of commissions. And on the other side, you may have received more sales because that person had a longer, larger list. So you win. But they also win because now you’re paying a proportionate amount of commission back to them. That was fair. And based upon their performance, and based upon how well they’re listed.

So the Commission’s that you’re going to pay to them is also going to be higher. And I think people are going to be more motivated by the money than they are going to be about list size, equality. And so that’s, that’s if the objection ever came up. That’s that’s the way we would address it. So love it.

Mostafa Hosseini  32:47

Love it. So let’s go over the five keys to making an affiliate program and you’re in your affiliate marketing successful. What are they?

Chuck Anderson  32:54

Yeah, so this is where we have this mantra. It’s recruit, train, manage, celebrate, and repeat. Okay, and I’m gonna break those down here. Okay, so recruit, train, manage, celebrate, and repeat. So recruiting is you must always be recruiting affiliates will come and go. And, and so we want to recruit, you got to have a system in place of recruiting people who have influence over your target audience, and pick a a method that works for you. For some people, it’s joining masterminds and, and or networking groups and looking for affiliates that way, my favorite way is actually through podcasts. When I identify a partner that I want to partner with, I invite them to be a guest on my show.

So that a I can be their affiliate and be I it’s an easier conversation to turn them into mind. But, you know, everybody needs to have their own system of recruiting, where can you get to your people, not just people who want to promote and that’s the thing with some of the masterminds and the networking groups, great groups, beautiful people. We don’t always have each other’s exact target audience. It’s all not always the best pit fit.

So that’s where I will turn to people who have YouTube channels, Facebook groups, sometimes LinkedIn groups, podcasts, some other form of media where they have influence over my exact target audience. I need to have a plan on how can I get into relationship with them and recruit them as affiliates. So recruiting affiliates, by recruiting the right affiliates. So that’s recruit the second thing is train. Don’t assume that they know what they’re doing. So this this happens, it’s like, Oh, great. You’re gonna be my affiliate. Here’s an affiliate link. here’s the here’s the email swipe. Some people go what’s email swipe? And so an email swipe is Just a pre written email that is easy to copy and send. That’s what I always tell people, but they don’t all know what it is.

So you have to train them say, Great. Here’s the link, here’s how you use it. Here’s how you put it into the this is swipe, copy, maybe don’t even call it swipe, copy, because not everyone knows that. Even if they’re more sophisticated affiliate, it’s still good to do a walkthrough of how to be successful. We also make recommendations about what dates to send based upon whatever we’re promoting. So we’re training them, give them some information.

So the third one is manage, we will ask them for a commitment say, okay, great, now that you have everything, when do you think you will send this out? Oh, well, I will send this out on Thursday. Great. So we make a note of that. And we will on Friday, we will take a look at our stats. And if their stats are still at zero, we’re going to assume that they need a little support. So we’ll email them back and say, Hey, how did it go yesterday?

Did that email go out? Let me know. If you need any assistance, we’ll jump happy to jump on a zoom call and help you out. And that and so we’re managing the expectations, we’re managing the commitment. Then the last two pieces, celebrate and repeat. So when they earn a commission, we don’t want to just send them their money.

That’s boring. We want to celebrate with them. We want to do a big woohoo, like, and so will sometimes we’ll send them like a gift that they weren’t expecting, or, or we’ll jump on a zoom call and just say, hey, you know, that email that you sent out? It did amazing. Here’s all the sales you made, by the way, we just wired you the money? And would you be up for doing this again in eight weeks. So now we’re getting into that fifth piece, which is repeats.

And we want to book them in for a repeat promotion, not when we need it. But right at the peak of where they were just successful, and I just paid the money. So if I give you a couple $1,000 in in commissions and go, Hey, Mostafa, look, here’s two grand, thank you so much for participating in this, Hey, by the way, maybe we could do this bigger and better on the next one in a couple of months, would you be up for that?

Well, you’re at a high you just received money, you’re more likely to say yes to that. And now the cycle continues. And this is how we not just recruit new partners. We don’t want this to be too much of a revolving door where we always have to find new people. But if we can build a network of partners who are excited to promote us on a regular basis, we don’t have to work so hard on the recruiting part, because now we have a partnership base that send people again and again and again, I have a partner now who’s got we’re just going into our 11th year.

And we we pay out probably 40 to $50,000 in commissions to him every single year and have done since we joined forces in 2012. And and that has no end in sight. They’re happy, we’re happy. And look, if you can have a partner promote you consistently, and send you clients every single year for 11 years, just think about how many things you don’t have to do, like organic marketing and social media marketing and Facebook ads that are hard to be profitable and all those other things that people do to try to get clients.

The best thing way is to build this network to build this promotional team of partners who, and maybe just have a handful of them that will promote you again and again and again. And that’s where we see the key to successful affiliate program.

Mostafa Hosseini  38:42

For sure, I love your framework there. So first one was to recruit and then train them and then support them celebrate big and then rinse and repeat, basically. So when it comes to training, would you would you ever like to create like a short little training video to kind of go over the basics so that we know everyone is on par with what we’re doing?

Chuck Anderson  39:04

That’s exactly what we do. So we actually do that in two ways. When we have a new campaign coming up, the first thing we’re going to do is we’re going to schedule a live Zoom meeting. And we’ll we’ll call it an affiliate information call or how to make money promoting us or we’ll give it some name, but it’s basically an affiliate recruitment call.

So we’ll invite everyone that we want to park past partners, potential new partners will invite them to that call. And we’re going to walk them through that live and actually try to support them right there. And then on on pre scheduling all of the emails to send. And so then we’ll take the recording of that call. We’ll edit it if we need to.

And then we take that recording and we put it on an affiliate Instructions page. So then when we’re recruiting additional affiliates, this is really great for stuff that’s evergreen as well as record that video, get them excited about the opportunity. Let them know how much they could potentially earned from promoting you. And then give them all of the details, including a full walkthrough on how to sign up for your program where to get the link, how your swipe, copy works, or your social media thing works and where to put the links and what dates to send it out on.

And maybe in a little bonus if they, if they pre schedule everything by a certain date. And so those are usually the things that we’ll cover in a training video. But I love your idea, because that’s exactly what we do. But we do it both live and pre recorded. For sure for sure.

Mostafa Hosseini  40:34

Like, except for beginners who are just maybe new to this whole affiliate world, because I’ve seen people that have lists of 10s of 1000s of people, but they still don’t do any affiliate marketing. And we when we tell them would you promote us, they’re just not. They’re not familiar with the the affiliate marketing world’s terms and little little abbreviations and this and that. And I love your your your your think about celebrating big and making sure that they will remember.

 And that’s probably one good way to stand out from the rest of the pack where they would just, I have received like, I just saw my account on my PayPal account. I just received a $300 affiliate fee from a partner. But that was it. There was no there was no celebration there, which I think that’s a good way to stand out from the rest of the partners and be like, Look, thank you very much. We’ll probably thank you note, maybe a thank you card, maybe a little gift depending on how much business they’ve sent you. What’s your take on that?

Chuck Anderson  41:36

Well, exactly what you just said, and you know, Human nature being what it is, we will do more for the recognition. And the gifts, and the acknowledgement and the recognition are more memorable than the money. Yeah, right. It’s not about the money. Yes, you did this to earn money. And you’re appreciative of that. But you’re more appreciative of my gratitude towards that than anything else. And most people are. So when I acknowledged and go, Wow, that was amazing. You, you did. So well. We’re so excited to be a partner.

And we’re grateful for you. By the way, I just sent you a you know, here’s a $25 amazon gift card, which is a nice easy one if people are looking for a gift because I’ve got one where you get like gift boxes and coffee mugs and all kinds of stuff. But you know, a nice simple one you can do. Amazon now has this digital digital gift card thing that you can do, you can send them any amount. But a really cool thing you can do is you can send them a video love note right there.

 And so you can upload a video. Yes, so I can record a video and say that I could say hey, Mostafa, thank you so much for that promotion. And I’m so grateful for you and everything that you do to help us promote, we’re looking forward to the next one. Here’s a little gift that we didn’t talk about. And so we’ll record a little video love note, upload that with the digital Amazon gift card.

We don’t even tell them that it’s coming. We’ll just send it to them. And it’s a little bit of a surprise. And it’s a really cool thing that Amazon does now, because you can upload a video to go with it.

Mostafa Hosseini  43:16

I didn’t know that. So I have a quite personal question. I just got a referral from a friend. And it was actually a sizable referral. But it’s it’s a base for our service for a follow up service and for our call center. And I’ve been thinking and and dabbling like, what’s is there like what’s a good percentage for a service based type of referral or affiliate fee, if you will?

Chuck Anderson  43:45

Well, we always do the math, same formula that we talked to before. Now with a service services aren’t free just because they’re, they’re digital or time there’s time. And especially if you’ve got to pay your staff or your team and call center. I’ve run call centers before they’re not cheap to run. Yeah, even in a virtual world. So there’s always that cost.

So you have to take that into account. What is your cost for delivery? If it’s a monthly retainer type of thing? How much of that monthly retainer Can you can you afford to give? So we always do the math? How much does it cost us to deliver this? What does that leave us with? And then how much of that can we share? So maybe it’s 50% of that number? 30 to 50% of that number is what we’re usually looking at, but then we’ll recalculate it off of top line and maybe that translates to 10% or 15% or 20% off of top line off the top line sale because the affiliate, we shouldn’t have to get make them do math to figure out how, how much they’re going to earn.

The other thing too as you get into higher and higher tech Get percentages don’t really work as much and your percentages are, are exponential. So the start to get big, you might want to just cap it at a referral fee, right? And so we’re gonna send you $500 a month on this customer, and we’re going to send you $1,000 a month on this customer, whatever it is. And so then, and that works really well, again, simple math, very clear, the affiliates going to be excited about that number, they’re not going to go, Hey, wait, you’re getting so much more than me?

No, they’re not, you’re the one providing the service. So they’re going to be very happy with that. And they’re going to feel like a generous so. So there does come a point where you want to maybe look at switching off of a percentage based commission, and just a flat fee type of commission, but still done in such a way where it’s perceived as being very generous,

Mostafa Hosseini  45:53

for sure. And one thing that in the celebration phase has worked me worked for me, and has done wonders for me is, once they deliver, I will reach out and say thank you very much. I really appreciate what you’ve done, obviously send them the money, and then the question of what can I do for you. And then that has done wonders for me.

And it’s sometimes it’s not even a swap type of deal where now you got to promote me it’s been other things, like prime example was a friend of mine got hockey tickets for Calgary Flames for his friend Vancouver, who’s who was a massive flames fan, he got front row seats for some big that he did for for my buddy, and that that guy was just tickled pink with those tickets.

And he was he was just so happy. What’s your take on that? Is there any, like creative ways that we should think about when it comes to cross promotions and getting partners and recruiting and the rest of it? Yeah,

Chuck Anderson  46:53

well, first thing I’m going to say is, that’s great example of that gift being more memorable than any type of commission, or money that you could send, like, that person is going to remember that hockey game for the rest of their life. Whereas if I send you $1,000 Yeah, you’re excited about that this month, but next month, you’re not thinking about that $1,000 anymore. So you might still be thinking about that hockey game for a long time.

So so so there’s that, and it didn’t cost him 1000. You know, well, depends on what part of the season it was. Yes. The, the my take on that is this. So look, it doesn’t always have to be you promoted me. So there, I promote you now that is we come across that all the time. And we it’s a very common conversation. It only makes sense. If I have your target audience and you have mine. And you don’t want to cases that is going to be true. If you have my target audience chances are I do have also yours. But what it doesn’t have to be me What if I could connect you with Okay, Mostafa, our promotion calendar is full for the next three months, I’ll promote you in November, but we’re not gonna be able to fit anything in.

But here’s my buddy, Jim. Jim has a opening in his calendar. And he can he can get you in there. Well, that also helps you you got what you wanted, which is somebody doesn’t have to be me, but somebody to promote. So so even if you hear a no, you might be say, Look, is there anyone else that I should be talking to you? Do you know, anyone else that maybe you could introduce me to? That also has my target audience? And sometimes we’ll even take that to a level of offering a two tier commission.

Right? And so it’s like, okay, well, I’m gonna give them 15% of the top line, I’m gonna give you five, for referring them. And so that that’s where we get a little bit more sophisticated with our affiliate structure. But, but it does happen. And it’s its way, but it doesn’t have to be that it could just be Look, I’m sorry, I want to promote you. I can’t fit it in until November. But here’s Jim, Jim, Jim can get you covered. And so you still got what you want, which is the promotion.

Mostafa Hosseini  49:12

Fantastic. Yeah, I think there’s creative creative ways to to do this. And then I think in the perhaps the recruitment phase, we should probably find out as much information about say, Chuck, his favorite team, his favorite wine, his favorite drink, favorite, maybe a travel destination so that when it comes to you know, giving back, we’re like here, it’s probably a couple of tickets for you to travel to Florida.

 I don’t know, wherever it may be. And then they’d be like, oh, yeah, like you said, that’s a memorable memorable thing that we could do. Versus here’s 1000 bucks like you said they’ll forget

Chuck Anderson  49:47

absolutely like exactly be curious find out as much about them find out what their their interests are. So one of the reasons I love using podcasts for for affiliate and partner recruitment because when I’m the Interview interviewer. I’m not trying to get my message across, I’m not trying to be the star, I’m trying to make my guests the star.

So I get to be legitimately curious about you for 30 to 45 minutes, and I’m learning, I’m listening and learning as much about you as possible during that time. And so that does give some clues as to where you can go, what the motivations are, are you even willing to play because we not all of our podcasts, recruitment efforts turn into a partner, but a podcast interview is a great way to meet people you wouldn’t normally get conversation with, right?

So spamming them on LinkedIn doesn’t always work. So if I go, Hey, you’re gonna make I have this event coming up, and you’re going to earn so much money by promoting it, you’re probably going to ignore that. But if I say hey, Mostafa, it was great to meet you at that networking event last week, I have a podcast would you like to be on it? This is precisely how we met. Right? You’ve been on my show. And now I’m on your show. And that, to me, is it’s about building a relationship. It’s about building that, you know, now we know who each other are.

And if any one of us either one of us has anything coming up. We’re on a first name basis. Now you can email me, I can email you, where we’re down the road enough where where we’re going to pay attention. And it’s about nurturing that relationship as much as you can and honoring that. So it’s not just a one and done thing. For sure.

Mostafa Hosseini  51:35

What are the top three biggest mistakes that people make with affiliate marketing and this whole process?

Chuck Anderson  51:41

Yeah, so the very first mistake that people make with their affiliate programs is looking at the Commission’s that they pay as an expense. And, you know, we mentioned this earlier, and when we when we when we are looking at the money that’s going out of our pocket, we are in a way, ignoring or dishonouring, the money that’s coming into our pocket.

So I never looked at as as an expense, I already know that if I have promised 20%, or 30%, or 40% of that sale than my and that sale was a $5,000 sale, well, I know that I didn’t earn 5000, maybe I only earned 4000 or 3000. So I celebrate the money that I put in my pocket, and I pay the Commission’s with gratitude, and I’m super excited about it. So you can’t look at it as an expense, like we do with Facebook ads, or Google ads or media buys.

That is an expense, and there’s no guarantee you’re gonna get customers from any of it. Whereas an affiliate, you’ve already received the money. So that’s the first mistake. The second mistake is that they don’t follow some of the keys that we talked about whether you know, they recruit affiliates, but that’s all they do. They don’t train, they don’t manage, they don’t celebrate, and they don’t rinse and repeat. Like, like us, I love the way you put it.

So, you know, it’s it can’t be like, here’s your link, and then hope for the best. You gotta you got to work with them, you got to nurture the relationship, you got to lead them by the hand. Some people in our industry call it hurting the cats. It kind of can be like that sometimes, but but I you know, I prefer a much more positive imagery than herding cats. How about supporting and nurturing partnerships, right, that are going to be long term.

Mostafa Hosseini  53:42

So we’re getting people that are sending your money?

Chuck Anderson  53:44

Yes, exactly. And then I would say the last mistake I’ll mention is, you know, spending too much time, you know, when you need instant results, and you need quick results, spending too much time in your marketing, budget or marketing mix on things that are not instant, like SEO, like social media? Should we do all of those things?

Yes. But recognize the fact that they’re not usually instant. We get the benefits of that by being consistent over the course of a year or a period of time, where that’s going to increase but it’s not instant. The second thing is paying money blindly to Facebook and Google and other media, buy sites, hoping and praying that you’re going to get customers spending money you can’t afford to spend and needing it to come back. The reality of most paid media is that you’re not always going to get the money back in the same money month that you spent it. When when I was running ads for the bigger company.

We did a study and we realized that our paid media spend came back to us every 90 days. And so so if I spent if I have a $5,000 budget, I’ve already spent 15,000 Before I get it before I really start seeing that positive return, like it does kind of drip in and that amount of time, but we, we spend money, so I’m gonna spend five grand on ads, and we’re gonna really go for it. And then nothing comes or, or maybe only He can only get $1,000 back.

And so So, you know, the thing with affiliates is that you’re guaranteed to make sales, right? Because if I don’t have to pay unless a sale is made, so it’s a guarantee, or I don’t pay anything. So, you know, and there’s so many potential partnerships, there’s so many influencers, there’s so many people who have their lists, who don’t even know what affiliate programs is, I have someone who has a list of 4500 people on their list.

Three months ago, he didn’t know what an affiliate link was. And now he’s topping leaderboards on, on, on on promotions and campaigns everywhere. He’s super grateful he makes money on almost every email he sends. And so so that’s what it is. And so that’s why Okay, so I’m biased. I’m an affiliate marketing guy. I say affiliate marketing is the best. But all three of these are good. Do we do organic? Seo? Yes, we do. Do we do social media?

Yes, we do. Do we do paid ads? Yes, we do. But we started with referrals, referrals has been our consistency. And then out of our profitability. We spend money on the other two, for sure. And that’s our approach, and

Mostafa Hosseini  56:23

check what I love. But affiliate marketing is that let’s say that you’re promoting me, you have spent two years building relation relationship with your people on your list. Establishing your expertise. Now those people trust you, if you turn around and say, Here’s my staff has offered, you should probably take a look, those people are a lot more likely to pay attention to versus random cold people on Facebook who have absolutely no clue who I am.

Like spending all that money. I think this is probably to me, that’s like the number way to go. Number one way to go about finding leads where you have 5000 People say on your list, versus three clicks on Facebook, to people who have no clue if

Chuck Anderson  57:04

they’re complete strangers, and there’s no relationship. But if I send an email, say Mustapha, meet Jim. Jim, you know, meet Mustapha. And, you know, I know you guys are gonna take good care of each other. There’s that third party trust. That’s that third party endorsement, I find that referrals are so much easier to convert into customers, then. And I don’t know what the numbers would be I my mind, I always think it’s 10 to one, right. And so I could sign up 10 referrals to one customer I get from Facebook ads, just because of that relationship. Because I’m probably going to sign 80 to 90% of those. Whereas with the Facebook ad people, maybe it’s five or 10%. If I’m super lucky.

Mostafa Hosseini  57:49

Yeah. Yeah. Big, maybe typical one to 2% if they’re on a good day. Yeah. Yeah. How are you doing for time? Do you need to run? I’m good. I’m good at some personal questions. Sure.

Chuck Anderson  58:01

Go for it.

Mostafa Hosseini  58:03

What’s a new thing you have tried recently?

Chuck Anderson  58:07

A new thing that I’ve tried recently Big or small,

Mostafa Hosseini  58:09

as small as a cup of coffee as big as going to moon.

Chuck Anderson  58:15

Wow, that’s, that’s really cool. You know, what I’ve done recently is, is scheduling time, for listening to audiobooks. I’ve always been big into audiobooks. So I shouldn’t say that. It’s only a partially new thing. But scheduling that it was very hit or miss it was whenever I had time, but now doing it that first 30 minutes of every day. And it’s been amazing.

And you know, I have talked about this one of the books that you recommended to me the last time we talked the game of life and how to play it. And I have probably listened to that 50 times since our conversation and when you recommended that to me. And I have to say it’s, we mentioned earlier that December was probably our best month, the mindset that resulted from listening to audiobooks again and again and again. was, I think, a huge contributing factor to that. So so that is kind of my like, semi new thing. But yeah.

Mostafa Hosseini  59:21

Which brings me to my next question, which you already partially answered it, which is what are your top two favorite books?

Chuck Anderson  59:28

Yeah, so so that one for sure. I love that. My second one. Okay, is I’m gonna I just happen to have it right here because we didn’t plan this high performance habits by Brendon Burchard. And I learned so much about myself in this book, because it’s it’s a book for high performers. And I read it I’m like, because the first thing it does is help you. You go through a quiz of like, how high performer Are you?

And I’m like, Yeah, I consider myself to be a fairly high performer. I’ve been an entrepreneur for 20 plus years now. At successful businesses, I was amazed at some of the stuff that I was doing. That was sabotaging my own success complicating everything. And so what that book helped me to do was to simplify, focus on my genius, focus on my strengths, get rid of the other things, and just perform at a high level. Not at everything. But you know what they call it. PQ o. So, quality output, prolific quality output is what PICCHIO is.

And so it’s like, what’s that one thing? Well, for me, it’s serving clients, helping them manage their affiliate programs, that’s the thing that I, I really do the best. The second thing is that I’m really good at podcasts and video editing. And so I take those skills that I love to do that I would do all day long. And I combined them and and it’s simplified things were now I either outsource or automate everything else. And so beautiful. That’s been huge. I love it. What’s

Mostafa Hosseini  1:01:03

one advice that made a big impact in your, on your life or business?

Chuck Anderson  1:01:10

I am blessed to have a lot of mentors and a lot of advice. And I’m a very big personal growth advocate. So never stop learning. But the biggest advice I hear and I say this all the time to my clients, and I really believe this is the only way to fail is to quit, right? The only way to fail is to quit. So you know, what’s the opposite of that? Keep moving forward.

Right? Keep moving forward. And so if you’re in an obstacle today, what can I do about it? Who could help me with this? What new thing haven’t I tried yet that could get me through this, and keep moving forward. And never ever, ever, ever quit? Love it.

Mostafa Hosseini  1:01:51

If you had a Facebook or Google ad, where everyone in the world with access to internet could see your message, what would your message be for the people of Earth?

Chuck Anderson  1:02:04

Be kind to one another, right and recognize that people do what they do because they’re avoiding pain. And sometimes the the ugliest things that we see in the world are not because of evil people. But this is a person doing their best because of some sort of pain and hurt that they have in their life. And if we can be there for them, and to help to first of all, prevent more pain and hurt.

And then also and this is why I love working with coaches, because they’re the kind of people who work with people to try to overcome and heal the pain and hurt because hurt people hurt people. Right? It’s it’s, it’s what it is. And it’s where all revenge comes from. You have realized I’m going to hurt you, right? We need to heal, we need to understand why that’s happening. not take it personally. In the book, The Four Agreements, they there’s another book, they talk about not ever taking anything personally. And it’s really hard not to take revenge, or hurt personally.

But that’s what they’re talking about. It’s understand why that’s happening. It’s not personal. This is a hurt person, that’s hurting people. So how do we heal the heart? Love it. Love it. Love it.

Mostafa Hosseini  1:03:21

Chuck, this has been an absolutely amazing conversation, our first episode of the year, thank you for sharing all the valuable info and wisdom. With my audience, again, if you’re watching or listening, to get access to Chuck’s training, on affiliate marketing and how to get started and the rest of it go to the link in the descriptions of the show or in the comments of the show. Get we’ll get a hold of Chuck. Obviously he knows what he’s doing.

And he probably wouldn’t be here if you didn’t, and do reach out and get help on this affiliate marketing piece. Because to me, it’s the fastest surefire way to grow your business, almost by eliminating your your failures and whatnot. There’s a there’s a learning curve, but it is good. Let’s just leave it at that. Chuck, is there anything that you want to mention? Maybe we didn’t get a chance to talk about it or I forgot to ask.

Chuck Anderson  1:04:26

I think well, it’s in terms of affiliate marketing and all of that we definitely covered it and then some and you know, the workshop, if you will, it will definitely help you plan out an affiliate program or relaunch one if that’s what you want to do. And I always, you know, and all my talks and all of my conversations with the same thing and I already said it, but I’m going to repeat it and that is the only way to fail is to quit so keep moving forward.

And and I’m going to add to that and I’m going to say if it’s seems to fficult to keep moving forward, then reach out to a friend who you know, will not sympathize with you and go, Oh, it’s okay. You know, maybe you should go get a job or quit or whatever. But that’s going to help you to find a solution. Right. And that’s the kind of friends I want to surround myself with is that people who will see solutions, not obstacles. And so that’s, that’s the last thing I think I’ve got

Mostafa Hosseini  1:05:28

fantastic up. One thing that has kind of helped me significantly in the past month or so month or two is Nassim Taleb, his book called anti fragile. And he says, when you fail as humans, we got to become or build a business that actually becomes a stronger every time we fail. So we could we become anti fragile. And so every time we fail, and something wrong goes wrong. Alright, perfect. I have a new piece of information that I could, you know, work on and improve and optimize, and I only get better, faster and stronger, based on what happens.

And as soon as I heard that, I’m like, Oh, my God, this is amazing. This could actually literally help me help me through every day, when things don’t happen that where you are supposed to love it. So that’s another book for you. Again, if you’re watching or listening, go pick that up. It’s a good one, you could probably even watch a summary, the summary on YouTube actually kind of gave me a massive aha moment and helped me push forward.

So gang, you’ve been listening to the first episode. First episode 2023 of our new show called simple marketing. If you have any questions for Chuck, put them in the comments. do reach out to him. If you have a friend who could benefit from growing their business and fixing their lead generation problem, which pretty much could be 99.9% of your friends who own a business. Do an introduction with Chuck, or send them the link to to the training and have them go through.

And I wish you and I hope you have an amazing year in 2023. All the best grow your business, fix all the problems with your business do reach out to amazing people like Chuck who know what they’re doing. They’ve been at it for a while. They have a proven framework and they could actually help and like Chuck said, do reach out to a friend who could actually help and he’s not there to just, you know, give you the it’s okay talk and do get help. Chuck, thank you again, thank you very much. This was really valuable and great. You’ve been listening to simple marketing, and we will see you next week. Bye now.