Recently, I spent some time analyzing our audience and realized that, while most of our members are digital coaches, trainers, and consultants who sell info products, many are also affiliate marketers.
So, I decided to do something special for those of you who are in the affiliate marketing space.
Our agency has managed numerous successful campaigns that have generated millions of dollars in revenue for affiliate marketers, ranging from solopreneur affiliates to companies utilizing affiliate marketing to drive additional backend revenue.
Even today, we target affiliate marketers with ads for various purposes on behalf of multiple clients. Furthermore, we constantly network with and analyze successful affiliate marketers and their audiences.
Needless to say, my team and I have a deep understanding of affiliate marketers and the affiliate marketing niche.
This insight, combined with our extensive marketing experience as an agency, enables us to view things from a different perspective than most people in the affiliate marketing space.
Therefore, my goal today is to help you understand affiliate marketing on a deeper level so that you can finally break through (or take your affiliate business to the next level).
In this article, I share an actionable marketing strategy to help you run and scale a successful affiliate marketing business.
I am confident that the strategy I share in this letter can help you succeed because it’s based on the strategies we currently implement for our agency’s clients, who generate hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue each month across various niches.
We’ve featured a few of them in our VIP Case Studies – feel free to check them out for inspiration and ideation.
If our clients can run highly profitable online businesses, there is no reason why you can’t do the same, regardless of whether you are a digital coach, SaaS entrepreneur, or an affiliate marketer. So, let’s get started.
(By the way, if you are not an affiliate marketer, this letter is still highly relevant to you because I share useful insights and ideas that you can implement in your business.)
Enjoy this affiliate marketing special!
Terminology
In this section, I will define some common marketing terms that I use throughout this letter and share some essential insights and benchmarks about scaling up.
Traffic, Leads, and Landing Pages
Ahh “traffic”… The thing that everyone in affiliate marketing desperately wants and needs but can’t seem to find or get enough of…
Traffic is people who visit your website or landing page.
Just like a brick-and-mortar business wants “foot traffic” in its store, your online business needs website traffic.
More specifically, you need targeted traffic, which means you need the right kind of people who are likely to be interested in (and buy) what you offer.
Captured traffic is called leads. In simple terms, leads are people whose contact information you have and can use for marketing and sales purposes.
Therefore, generating traffic and leads means attracting people to your website and encouraging them to share their contact information with you, allowing you to nurture, follow up with, and convert them into buyers.
However, you don’t want to simply drive people to your website’s homepage or a generic contact page; you want to drive traffic to a landing page, which is a strategically structured and designed page on your website that converts traffic into leads.
Now, this is where understanding traffic and leads gets interesting.
Have you ever heard the term cold traffic? It might make you wonder, “What does temperature have to do with marketing?” – haha
When traffic or leads are “cold,” it simply means they are unfamiliar with who you are, which also means they don’t yet like or trust you.
Generally, in order to convert and become buyers, people need to “warm up” to you, your brand, and what you sell.
As you may have already deduced, “warm traffic” is people who have a rapport with you, and “hot traffic” is people who are ready to buy what you sell.
High-Scale Advertising
Scaling your business means growing it. However, just like in anything, there are levels to scaling.
It’s important to know that your level of scale is highly subjective and relative. Doing something on a small level or “low scale” might mean something different to you than it does to someone else.
Levels vary by industry, business model, and unique objectives.
However, in the context of promoting info products with paid ads, reaching “high scale” means scaling your ad spend to the point where you shift your focus from generating a certain return on ad spend (ROAS) to maximizing customer flow and revenue – knowing that you will generate significant returns on your overall funnel.
Generally, you know you have reached a high scale when you find it extremely difficult (or impossible) to increase your ad spend without significantly decreasing the ROAS to an “uncomfortable level.”
Of course, a high-scale ad spend is subjective and relative because many variables are involved, such as your industry, niche, target geographic location, product prices, and business model.
However, in the United States market, for someone selling a $1,000 info product with at least one higher-ticket upsell priced at around $1-3k, high scale generally begins at around $180,000/ month in ad spend.
- For our friends who are digital coaches in India, your high scale often begins around $50,000/ month or Rs 40 Lakh/ month in ad spend. However, it depends on the type of sales funnel; low-ticket paid webinars and workshops are generally easier to scale while maintaining ROAS than free webinars.
These numbers are based on advertising on a single platform (YouTube video ads).
If you are a complete beginner in this space, all of this may be confusing, but I hope it gives you an idea of what’s possible.
Also, contrary to what many affiliates believe, you shouldn’t be quick to worry about “market saturation” when promoting your offers. Most niches have huge markets with tremendous numbers of potential buyers, so don’t have a scarcity mindset.
Keep these things in mind as you read the next part and, in general, as you implement various marketing strategies and tactics in your business.
The Transient Affiliate Model
If you have been in the affiliate marketing space for some time, you may have noticed that many gurus and leaders tend to promote a new offer for just a few short months, and then they start focusing on a new venture.
They hype it up as if it’s the one and only thing they will focus on for the next decade, only to move on to the next opportunity within 3-6 months.
Why do they do that?
The reason is simple: they have to.
Most of these leaders have a finite pool of people who follow them and buy their recommended offers. Once they sell an affiliate offer and run out of buyers within their following, they have no choice but to find another “hot offer” to promote to generate more revenue.
Why use this model?
The three most common reasons affiliates take such a transient approach are a) freedom – it’s the ultimate “laptop lifestyle” business model, b) they do not have a first-party product or service, and c) they either don’t know how to or are unable to generate a high volume of cold traffic, leads, and buyers.
However, these affiliates rarely have profitable sales funnels with paid ads, so they rarely scale to a high level compared to what digital coaches or SaaS entrepreneurs can achieve in a similar timeframe.
They are generally limited to their finite audience, which grows relatively slowly (mostly through organic channels and word-of-mouth).
Can this model make you a lot of money? Of course.
In fact, we have helped affiliate marketers using this model generate high-quality leads and buyers through YouTube ads.
Although their campaigns did not initially produce a positive return on ad spend (ROAS), they were ultimately successful because they converted the same leads into various offers over time, generating a high return on investment (ROI) by maximizing their average customer lifetime value (CLV).
Here are some of the pros of this model:
- High-income potential in a short period
- Little to no overhead expenses
- No need for an office or employees
- Little to no technical skills are required
- Endless exciting challenges and opportunities
- A high sense of achievement when you are at the top of a leaderboard
Here are some of the cons of this model:
- Requires having an engaged following
- Constantly need to look for the next hot offer to promote
- Inconsistent revenue, which isn’t good for overall business operations
- Unlikely to have long-term potential on a large scale
- Top affiliates’ revenue is generally limited to around a million dollars per year
- Not ideal for increasing your company’s valuation
Is this the best approach to affiliate marketing? I strongly believe that it is not. It’s not an ideal model for someone who wants to build a stable and sustainable business.
So, why am I talking about it?
I want you to be aware of and understand this transient affiliate marketing model as a prerequisite for the strategy I’m about to outline.
Although this model is not ideal because it doesn’t allow you to build a long-term, stable, and valuable business, it has a few key components that I believe all affiliates should embrace to achieve success: an engaged audience, multiple offers, and adaptability.
This brings me to the strategy I highly recommend you implement to succeed in affiliate marketing.
The “Hybrid” Affiliate Marketing Model
If you want to build a highly successful, stable, and sustainable affiliate marketing business, I highly recommend implementing the strategy I share in this section.
Introducing: the hybrid affiliate marketing model.
This strategy is derived from my understanding of affiliate marketing and experience managing marketing campaigns that promote various types of sales funnels and business models.
The most stable campaigns we manage at our agency have one thing in common: the sales funnel generates low-ticket buyers on the front end, which are then converted into higher-ticket offers on the back end.
The idea here is very simple, yet most people tend to overlook it:
You want to bring in as many buyers as possible to your community because having enough engaged buyers on your list allows you to generate more revenue on demand.
The best way to achieve this is to drive a high volume of low-ticket buyers; it’s significantly easier to bring in low-ticket buyers than higher-ticket ones.
So, how do you go about implementing this model as an affiliate?
Below is a step-by-step breakdown of how you can build a marketing machine that allows you to run and scale a highly profitable and sustainable affiliate marketing business.
Step 1: Create A Low-Ticket Product
This is the “hybrid” part of this strategy. You need to create a low-ticket (inexpensive) product that you will sell to people in your niche. It can range from as low as $5 to as high as $100.
Your low-ticket product must be relevant to the niche in which you promote third-party affiliate offers. Your product should solve a very specific challenge or problem that people in your niche are likely to experience.
For instance, if you want to attract other affiliate marketers to your community, your low-ticket product can be a crash course or a step-by-step guide on using essential software or tools for affiliate marketing.
- Now, I know that when I say that you need to create a product, some of you who are complete beginners feel nervous and overwhelmed.
But I must be honest with you because I really, really want to help you succeed:
If you cannot find the time, courage, and ability to create a low-ticket product priced at just $5, you are not yet ready to promote anything.
Please do yourself a favor and invest some time in gaining more knowledge, so that you can create a very inexpensive product that you can offer to the market. Doing so will serve you well.
You are an affiliate entrepreneur – you can do it! And I promise you that once you do it, you will wonder why you didn’t do it sooner.
Here’s why I am having you create a low-ticket product:
In addition to the benefits of having buyers in your community, you also need to optimize your paid ads for sales conversions.
You need to train ad platforms’ algorithms to generate people who are likely to purchase products, even if they cost just $5.
You do so by placing a tracking pixel on the product’s post-purchase confirmation page. You cannot do this if you’re an affiliate of a third-party company – you must own the product to access its post-purchase confirmation page.
Why is this important?
The market is so massive that if you don’t optimize your ad campaigns to generate sales, you may get thousands of people in your community who will not buy anything you promote.
Your low-ticket product will NOT produce a profit, and that is expected.
Its purpose is to optimize for and generate buyers who will be much more likely to purchase the higher-ticket (more expensive) third-party affiliate offers you recommend to them.
Yes, the cost to acquire your low-ticket buyer will be high (you can expect to spend $50-100+ on average to acquire a $5 buyer, depending on your offer and marketing efficacy), but that buyer can be worth thousands of dollars to you when they purchase multiple higher-priced, third-party offers through your affiliate link.
Also, have you ever heard the phrase, “Small commitments lead to large commitments”? Sometimes, to keep someone engaged, you need to sell them something. (This is an advanced marketing practice.)
That is your first step to becoming wildly successful as an affiliate marketer, but it’s only the beginning.
Step 2: Generate Leads With A Lead Magnet
Once you create a low-ticket product relevant to your niche, you need to create a lead magnet that is relevant to that low-ticket product.
This step is significantly simpler than the first one because creating an offer that converts (even a low-ticket one) is often the most challenging part of executing a successful marketing strategy.
Your lead magnet should solve a very specific problem closely related to the low-ticket product you sell.
Promote your free lead magnet on various social media platforms and with paid ads to create a consistent lead flow – fill your sales pipeline.
Optimize your paid ads for free opt-ins and purchases of your low-ticket product. As soon as someone opts in on your landing page to access your lead magnet, offer your product.
Most people will not buy your product immediately. So, nurture your leads consistently with educational, entertaining, or helpful content that is relevant to your product.
Focus on selling them your low-ticket offer, not third-party affiliate offers.
Also, it’s not all about generating sales and affiliate commissions…
At the end of the day, you want to build YOUR business and have customers who are part of your brand tribe because that’s how you build a long-term, stable, and sustainable business.
That is also why it’s essential to sell your own product first and then “funnel” your customers into third-party offers.
Obsess over nurturing and serving your community of buyers, and you will always find new and better opportunities to make more money down the road, especially as your customer base grows and multiplies over the years.
By the way, in some cases, you can skip the free lead magnet and sell your low-ticket product directly. If you can do this effectively with paid ads, you can scale up much more quickly.
Read this VIP case study to learn more about the paid funnel approach.
Step 3: Upsell Third-Party Offers
The first two steps of this strategy are what you focus on to drive leads and build an engaged email list (or community).
This step, however, is where you drive revenue and make a profit.
You can sell your own higher-priced products or third-party offers – it doesn’t matter.
All that matters is that you strategically funnel people into your community and strategically upsell them higher-priced products.
To boost your upsell conversion rate, offer an irresistible value stack to anyone who buys the third-party products you recommend through your referral link.
Think of it as “funneling people in” from one stage of your marketing funnel to the next. Keep nurturing and strategically funneling your leads and buyers down your marketing funnel.
Also, this is where understanding the transient affiliate model from the previous section comes in clutch:
To maximize your revenue and average customer lifetime value, it is essential to have multiple third-party offers. It may also be a good idea to keep testing and introducing more third-party offers that you can sell to your buyers.
If one offer doesn’t do well, adapt and find a better offer that converts. Keep your audience engaged, sell multiple third-party offers as an affiliate, and adapt when necessary to keep converting your low-ticket buyers into higher-priced offers.
I recommend measuring and concluding the efficacy of your paid ad campaigns quarterly (in 3-month periods) and not sooner, so that you can measure the impact of your ads after your leads convert into multiple third-party offers that you recommend.
When you get good at doing this, you will be able to dial your numbers in and do unbelievably creative and powerful things to maximize your revenue.
Closing Remarks
As they say, “There are a million ways to a million dollars,” and the same is true about affiliate marketing.
However, my marketing experience suggests that the strategy I outlined in this letter is the most effective and predictable path to achieving success as an affiliate marketer today.
Like any business, affiliate marketing requires focus, persistence, creativity, and a relentless drive to achieve your goals. You cannot sit idle and expect results – you must take action today.
With the right strategy and its proper implementation, you can achieve your goals. It’s not a matter of if but rather when.
My advice to you today?
Don’t wait for anyone to help you succeed – do everything you can to move the needle forward every single day until you achieve your goal.
If you come across an epic marketing system or opportunity, leverage it to increase your chances of success; however, you would be wise not to rely solely on it, regardless of how promising and amazing it may be.
Study the strategy I shared in this letter, and focus on implementing it without any distractions until you achieve success.
Now, I understand that everything is always easier said than done.
In my head, all of this is simple because I’ve seen it being implemented (and have successfully implemented it) countless times, but if it’s not fully clear and simple to you yet, you’re not alone.
It takes years of focused marketing training, practice, and experience to develop the mind of an expert marketer – and that’s why we offer resources like Vavoza Insider Plus.
I want to inspire you and help you think like an expert marketer because I know that once you do, a whole new world of possibilities will open up to you, and you will realize that you are in full control of your outcomes.
You will be able to implement powerful marketing strategies and generate revenue on demand like a pro!
You will be able to visualize marketing strategies in your mind and understand them both conceptually and operationally, without needing anyone to explain them to you, and you will become unstoppable.
Stay tuned for more exclusive marketing insights and ideas in Vavoza Insider Plus.
– Vlad
