Seminars
319: Live Events, Non-Profit Fundraisers, Sponsorships, Partnerships, Referrals and More with Small Business Consultant and Event Manager Melissa Forziat
Melissa Forziat is the founder and principal of Melissa Forziat Events. She's run live events of all shapes and sizes, from Rugby World Cups to fundraisers for non-profits. She works with clients to develop possible opportunities for growth, for example, partnership marketing (a photographer could send business to a videographer and vice versa.)
She also discusses how to make those calculated risks (look at the upside, pain of not doing it, and reward for doing it), developing confidence, and knowing your value.
Quotes:
“You can learn the skills you need to. Sometimes, you just need to be motivated by what you're doing.” – Melissa Forziat
“When you get creative, you can probably find another business or influencer to collaborate with, so you can mutually help each other gain more exposure, more clients, and more income.” – Melissa Forziat
“You have to know your value, because if you're getting less than your value for the thing you're providing, you're going to feel it.” – Melissa Forziat
Takeaways:
02:53 Skills from one career can transfer successfully to another with creativity and motivation.
12:56 Live events are just one of many marketing options for small businesses.
21:47 Partnership marketing offers powerful ways to expand business reach by collaborating with complementary businesses.
27:21 Taking calculated risks and believing in your business value is crucial for entrepreneurial success.
29:39 Undercharging early in your business can lead to long-term resentment and burnout.
Resources
- Melissa Forziat Events (Website)
- Melissa (Facebook)
- Small Business Marketing on a Budget (Free E-Book)
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 32:39 — 29.9MB) | Embed
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190: Love Yourself Successful: Network Using Offline Events, Profit from Social Media and Jumpstart Your Business with Katrina Sawa
Katrina Sawa is a business coach known as the "Jumpstart Your Business Coach." She is the author of the book "Love Yourself Successful" and the creator of the Jumpstart Your Biz in 90 Days system. Katrina helps entrepreneurs, especially those who are not tech-savvy, grow their businesses both online and offline by focusing on practical marketing strategies, networking, and building supportive relationships.
Katrina Sawa has a lot to say about networking, social media, landing speaking gigs, and making money doing what you love. She gets 60-65 speaking gigs per year. She says you should become a member of multiple speaker associations and private message prospects on Facebook and LinkedIn using her templates, and later move them off social media to help them and their businesses.
Quotes:
“Your website is your most important marketing tool—it should be the central hub of your business, where everything flows in and out.” – Katrina Sawa
“If you can meet people in person, it's often faster to build relationships and move them to the next step than if they’re just an online friend or follower.” – Katrina Sawa
“If you want to delegate, it might only cost a few hundred dollars a month to offload tasks, allowing you to be more consistent.” – Katrina Sawa
Takeaways:
02:01 If people around you are not supportive, you need to either communicate better, set boundaries, or move on.
06:48 You don’t have to learn every technical skill—hire someone to help with things like websites if it’s not your strength.
13:42 Every business website should have an opt-in box, a freebie, and some kind of email marketing.
16:00 Reaching out to people on social media and moving the conversation to a phone call can lead to speaking gigs and new business.
24:32 Being consistent with your marketing and getting help from a team, even if it costs a little, is important for business growth.
Resources
- Three Business-Building Gifts (Website)
- Love Yourself Successful (Free Gifts)
- Jumpstart Your Marketing (Katrina Sawa's Products)
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 28:45 — 26.3MB) | Embed
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Product University: Attend Offline Events and Quickly Grow Your Business in the Process
Let's talk about offline events. Seminars, workshops, masterminds, intensives, whatever you want to call them. Getting off your butt (off your "but" too), off the computer, onto a plane and to a hotel for 2 or 3 days where you get to interact with people just like you.
If you're "new", you need to attend these events for the training sessions – and probably to buy someone's course from the stage. If you're experienced, you need these events to network, make some joint venture connections with people just like you.
I'm talking about attending at least 1-2 events per year. I don't want any excuses. You need to go. It's a cost of doing business and if you spend too long cooped up at home, you're going to wonder why you aren't relevant anymore, what happened to your affiliates, and therefore your traffic, list, and sales.
If you're young with no family then you need to see the world anyway. If you're old with a family then take them along, not into the conference room at the event but take them so they can do the touristy stuff on their own and hang out at the hotel.
These things called offline events are on my mind because Lance and I just wrapped up our event called "Product University." It was the first event we had run in two years, and THAT event was the first event I had hosted in two years. Our next one is in Salt Lake City October 12-13 and you should attend.
Pitch-Fest vs. Pitch-Free?
Sure, some of these events are "pitch-fests" (I still learn a lot from those though), some are "pitch-free" (a bad excuse for speakers who don't know how to close onstage), some of the people you meet are all about getting their business card in your face, others have the tired "I have an idea so you can do all the work of implementing it for 50% of the business" approach, a few will talk your ear off, plot world domination with you and want to be your best friend... but the majority of the people you meet at these events are cool people just like you, a lot of them are in your niche and just want to make a new CONNECTION that might pay off in the future.
I speak on just a FEW stages per year to stay relevant. Lance and I are reluctant to host a bunch of offline events because we could just as easily run a webinar to generate a few tens of thousands of dollars without having to promote it for several months, deal with the hassle and expense of traveling and renting the conference room, dealing with the equipment, making sure everything goes smoothly. But it is a lot of fun to host an event every now and then.
"Two-Day Intensive" Explained
The way we run these events is slightly different from what we usually see from others and here's why...
1. First of all, it's just us two speaking for the whole event – mostly because we trust very few people ALTHOUGH having one or two guest speakers in the future (who promote the event through our affiliate program) would go a long way towards getting more people to attend
2. We run the events for two days (Saturday and Sunday) instead of three days (Friday, Saturday and Sunday) because a 1-day is too short and a 3-day is too long – I have attended a few events where hardly anything happened on that last day
3. No PowerPoints, SOME very minimal software demonstrations on the laptop and projector, it's mostly teaching using markers and a flip chart
4. Eight 90-minute sessions total (morning, before lunch, after lunch, then a Q&A session to wrap up the day, for both days) – we had each session's topic planned in advance and probably 5 bullet points so we knew what areas we wanted to cover. Only one of us would be the "presenter" (i.e. Lance presenting on affiliate programs while Robert is the sidekick with the occasional comment, or Robert presents about product launches while Lance interjects)
5. We never did a hard-pitch, but we did mention several URLs and we soft-pitched our Double Agent Marketing Platinum Coaching Program at the end of the day on Saturday (just before the Q&A session)
6. We recorded the whole event (audio only, so we didn't have to deal with lighting) and posted those inside the member's area whether people attended or not. This lead to a bunch of extra overseas sales and I think is a much better alternative compared to people selling the live stream of their event for 10 or 20 dollars
7. We bundled the event (for a short time) with our Income Machine course. Income Machine is $97, the event is $197, but when we launched Income Machine (about a month before the event), we said that Income Machine is $197 and includes Product University. But Product University is $197 and comes with Income Machine for free – this is called the double close
IMPORTANT:
Know WHY You're Running an Event!
Nothing too major. I don't know if you are at the point in your business where you can or even want to host an event, but if you do, make sure you know WHY you are running this event. If you're only running an event because you've seen someone else do it, it seems cool, or your customers are bullying you into it (I have seen all three) then forget about it.
The reason we ran our event earlier this month was to add a few people into our Platinum program, which we did and is the reason why the event made money.
I have also seen several up and comers lose money running an event on purpose in order to build a list. They run an event for a few hundred people, get a few big-name speakers to promote the event (50% commission), speakers pitch products from the stage (50% commission), and the event organizer spends 30 thousand bucks on the huge conference room and the add-ons the hotel requires, only make 20 grand back after all is said and done, but now has this list of very hungry buyers, in fact some of the best people in their niche, who will buy over and over again and take action and get huge results.
Then again other marketers who should know better run events and get all the meals catered, hire musicians, magicians, and hypnotists as part of the event and lose big money, then burn themselves out and you wonder why this person hasn't run an event in the last 5 years.
What's my point? When it comes to offline events...
- Attend them. Go to every session, hang out in the bar or the lobby instead of hiding in your room on your laptop. You'll have plenty of time for that at home. Keep attending them but be sure you know what your goal is each time (i.e., more affiliates, solve a specific problem in your business, join a mastermind, buy a product that solves a problem you've been having in your business)
- If you want to be a speaker, attend events, make friends with the event organizers, make a speaker sheet (a list of your products, URLs, speaking topics, your bio and testimonials of you as a trainer), create a book that proves you know what you're talking about (using our Make a Product system, takes 1 hour, is 30 pages long, free to publish on CreateSpace, costs $20 to get transcribed, $20 to edit, and $5 for the book cover), and run webinars consistently (at least one per month) to stay sharp and flesh out your "message"
- If you're running events or plan on running events, know ahead of time what your backend will be for the event (mastermind or coaching program is great) and keep it simple and low-budget, also keeping in mind that if someone attends an offline event who’s on your list, they probably own most if not all of your existing products
You can't ignore offline events but I hope to see you around, especially in Salt Lake City this coming October 12th-13th for Product University (it will be the FIFTH time we're running it!)
26th Birthday: Where Can We Meet?
My 26th birthday is coming up in a few weeks, on Thursday, September 23, 2010. I'm having my "real" birthday party a few days before because on Thursday I'm going to be traveling to JVAlert Live in Denver.
Here's my question to you: what major city close to you, can you get to on Thursday, not for anything major, just to hang out at a bar where I buy you a drink?
I don't want to fly into the northwest, southwest, midwest, northeast, or deep south, and I'm staying in the United States... so that pretty much leaves these choices:
Update: Here's what you guys voted...
- Los Angeles, CA (17 votes)
- San Francisco, CA (10 votes)
- Las Vegas, NV (7 votes)
- Salt Lake City, UT (3 votes)
- Denver, CO (6 votes)
- Dallas, TX (9 votes)
- Austin, TX (9 votes)
- Atlanta, GA (12 votes)
- Orlando, FL (6 votes)
- New York, NY (7 votes)
- New Orleans, LA (2 votes)
- Washington, DC (2 votes)
Which of these cities can you be in to meet me on Thursday, September 23, 2010? Go ahead and vote with your comment below. I'm not sure if I'll be doing it yet, it depends on the votes.
Persuasion X Winner
The winner who I'm taking as my guest to Persuasion X, a $5000 seminar, is: Pamela Miles!
Here's what Pamela had to say:
I hear that this truly is Armand's best event. I know that I really need this information to fully capitalize on the opportunities that are going to be presenting themselves with the new weight loss concept I'm bringing to the world! I've been approached by a doctor out of Texas who has offered to take my product to the board of her hospital (which also owns several hospital corporations) about having me speak at their monthly Healthy Women Conferences at their various locations around the country. I don't have a lot of public speaking experience...so if I can learn from the best...I'll really be able to catch up to speed fast!
Plus I need a chance to redeem myself (insiders Cara, Robert & Lance will know what I mean) 🙂
There were 9 people in the running... so why did I choose Pamela over everyone else?
1. Not only has she taken many of my classes, I had already seen Pamela at other seminars so I knew she would have no problem getting there. It's the worst when you choose a winner, and they can't make it.
2. She was one of the only people who didn't seem offended when I said I don't want to sit next to the winner at the conference.
3. She stated not just what she wanted to get out of the event, but what she was going to do AFTER the event.
If you didn't make it, no hard feelings... it's not you, it's me. I wish I could take all 9 of you.
Here's the mean part: In exchange for being able to go to this $5000 seminar for free, I made Pamela promise to have her entire business setup by October 2, 2010... including an optin page, autoresponder sequence, joint ventures, paid advertising, affiliate program, articles, an improved sales letter... all of it.
She didn't know I was going to be stating this in public. I just set a reminder in my Google Calendar to check back in October, and tell YOU guys if she succeeded or failed.
Now that you know this, go ahead right now and post a comment: congratulating Pamela, and telling her "good luck" ... she's got literally 100 items to add to her business in the next 3 months.
I want to have a bunch of "good lucks" under this post... comment below right now, ok?
I’ll Take You to a $5000 Seminar July 20-22, in Las Vegas, for Free
I have never offered anything like this for free. In July I'm getting trained by a guy who has made 1 million dollars in 90 minutes, speaking at a seminar.
I want to take you as my guest to Armand Morin's "Persuasion X" speaker training seminar in Las Vegas, Neveda on July 20-22, 2010. That's a Tuesday through a Thursday.
I have spoken on stage four times. A couple of weeks ago, Lance and I presented on membership sites at a seminar in Minneapolis to a room of 50 people.
7 people had already bought our $997 package in the past, but we got 7 new people to pay us $999.
Think about that, $7000 bucks from a 90 minute presentation, that I would have done for free anyway.
If you ever want to speak from the stage, if you want to get better from with your webinars, or even just become more confident, then you should come to this very secret seminar.
All I want from you, is to tell me why I should take you as my free guest. But here's the thing:
1. It's up to you to drive or fly to Vegas on your own.
2. You are on your own, hotel and food-wise.
3. I don't want you sitting next to me at the event, go find your own friends... the room is full of proven five thousand dollar buyers
4. You will get to meet with me, and talk to me at the seminar
Like I said, this seminar literally costs $5000 but I want to take you as my free guest so you can find out:
- How to become an in-demand professional speaker
- Persusasive presentation
- Control and lead your audience
- Hypnotic speech patterns
- Structure your offer so it makes the most impact with your audience
- How to sell membership products from the stage
- Exact PowerPoint designs to increase your sales from the stage
- How to "work" the stage: where to stand and what to do with your body, plus the most POWERFUL closing sequence ever created
Go ahead, tell me why I should take you as my free $5000 guest. If you have the best answer, I'll buy your way into this $5000 seminar.
Aftermath from the Action Seminar
Hey guys, I'm finally back from the Action Seminar which I co-hosted with Mary Wilhite and Jason Fladlien. It's been a long week. After hosting that event in Dallas for two days I hopped on a plane directly to Chicago for three days at the AM2 Platinum retreat.
The first day of the Action Seminar was pretty fun... Jason and I both spoke twice, Mary Wilhite spoke, Marc Harty and Jeanette Cates spoke.
The second day was an all-day mastermind session. It was pretty cool when Jason dictated copy to David Burch (one of our old students). At one point we created a free report, squeeze page, and thank you page for Roderick Martin -- including a Flip video of him thanking people for opting in and asking to call his phone number for a free consultation.
Yes, we even uploaded that Flip video to YouTube right in front of everyone and watermarked it. It was pretty cool.
But the rest of the crowd didn't have anything specific to ask. They'd spend 5 to 10 minutes explaining every little detail of their business, and then ask, "What now?" Which was annoying, especially when Jason and I are internet marketers.
We spoke about product creation, time management, passion marketing, video creation, and e-mail marketing so why ask something completely unrelated to those things? I'd rather people asked questions in areas where we were experts so we didn't have to guess. I'm good (probably one of the best) at fast infoproduct creation, fast PHP programming, fast copywriting.
But offline marketing? I won't touch it. Nothing wrong with that... it's just not my area of expertise.
Anyway, that's me catching up. Do you ask ten cent questions or thousand dollar questions? Comment below and hit the submit button within the next 5 minutes.
Double Your Prices!
Hey guys, I'm back from AM 2.0 in Dallas and I'm still getting caught up on customer support issues.
I talked to Ryan Deiss the first day (I saw him speak in Dallas last year but I never got a chance to say hi). He said, "How business?" I said great, that I just had my first $30K month in February and that I quit my day job of three years (first and only job out of college) to attend the event.
Later that night, Armand Morin was talking to a group of people so on my way out to dinner, I fist-bumped him (my standard greeting) and he said: "Robert, double your prices. You'll double your income instantly." Basically, if you wanted to buy all of Armand's products it would cost you $15K. To buy all my stuff (not including webinars), probably about $1K. He gave the same advice to the rest of the group the following morning.
You got it, Armand. The first product I'm doing that with is Action PopUp. The price was $27 for the last several months, it's now $37 and it will be $47 before the end of this month once I wrap-up my new popup training course that'll go along with it.
1. This weekend was one of the best events I've ever attended. Armand mentioned Action PopUp onstage and Ray Edwards mentioned WordPress Letter to a bunch of people. I didn't get to meet Michel Fortin... maybe next time!
2. My goal was to have 10 webinars scheduled by the end, I left with 5. I'm still happy.
3. March 2009 was my SECOND consecutive $30K month (actually it was slightly over $32,000). February's goal was $30K, March goal was $31K, so now my goal for April is $32K.
4. I launched Enhanced Sales Letters and WordPress Letter just before leaving. The night I left for the airport, I cleaned out my PayPal account and came back to an $11,000 balance. Not bad for my first week of full-time self-employment.
5. I joined AM 2.0 Gold, the $500/month program that gets you into these seminars. My goal is to upgrade to AM 2.0 Platinum within 10 days. All you need to do is prove you made $100K last year (done -- in fact I've made about $80K just in 2009), and complete a 100-point checklist that all "professional" web sites satisfy. I knocked out 58 of those 100 points in about 20 minutes this morning.
6. Armand showed a super-secret AdWords technique that my business partner is already implementing. At the bar, DJ Dave Bernstein shared six networking strategies that made the whole trip worthwhile. The following night I used just ONE of those techniques to pay $46 for $120 of alcohol. Good stuff.
Bottom line: Go to seminars, know what you want out of a seminar before you go, actually make mistakes and use the stuff you learn, and most importantly... hang out at the bar every night even if you don't drink. You'll make some connections and have a heck of a lot more fun sitting at the computer in your hotel room.
What networking events are you attending this year?
Bring Numbers to the Seminar
Hey guys, I'm still at AM 2.0 in Dallas. It turns out Michel Fortin and Stu McLaren didn't make it. But I did get to meet Armand Morin, Ray Edwards, Ryan Deiss, and a chunk-load of other people.
Last night we did a networking event, everyone in the room rotates and you get to spend a few minutes explaining yourself, what your biggest problem is, and what you get out of the seminar.
Hardly anyone shared their numbers which sucks. I want to know how much your last product launch was even if it only make $100 or how much you made last month online even if it was only $50.
It's all 80/20 rule... 80% of the stuff in your business usually is a waste. But if we're listening to you explain your business we don't know what 20% is making you the most money... if you don't share numbers!
I shared a couple of income numbers during the session but since no one else was doing it, it felt like bragging, so I stopped.
If you're at these seminars and you haven't make any money online, freaking tell us that too so the people you talk to can get you on track. Share income numbers if you're trying to get advice, because that's the most important thing.
Always Write a Report About What You Learned
I'm back from my trip from Affiliate Incubator 2008 Dallas.
I learned a lot, and here's my tip for attending seminars: Take whatever notes you write down and turn it into a PDF report, that you NEVER show anyone else.
Not only does it train you to keep pumping out 5 to 10 page reports, the information becomes a part of you because you retyped it and revised it.
If I had a clone who wasn't able to attend the seminar, I could just hand this document over to him and he would have all the info without having to attend.
I'm a pretty rare note-taker. If you're a smart enough businessperson you know that 99% of what's being said doesn't apply to your business, but I still wrote about 10 pages of notes.
I took the best of Perry Belcher's AdWords tips, Ryan Deiss' continuity management, Mr. X's time management secrets, Frank Sousa's traffic tips, Russell Brunson's "moving the free line" and article marketing stuff, and Anik Singal's affiliate marketing techniques... plus some stuff I learned from chatting at meals and made it into an 8 page report.
To be honest, I walked out of all the other presentations to avoid information overload. There's only so much information you can absorb over a weekend, and with seminars I always avoid the newbie oriented stuff.
Now I've torn most of the pages out of my physical notebook and I have stuff to do for the next 30 days to keep me busy.
To be honest, looking back over my report, I'm going to ignore about half of the tips on there because I know I just won' t have time for them.
Knowing what NOT to change on is even more important than knowing what to change in your business.
Anyway, my friend Jason Fladlien wrote up a quick report of his own about the 8 mistakes he saw being made at these seminars.
Some of these are truly classic, like the SEO guy and the "60 Second Rule." If you can't make a decision about something, give yourself exactly 60 seconds to decide.... even if it's the wrong choice.
P.S. No, I didn't get to meet Russell, but I did meet Stu McLaren, Joel Christopher, Big Jason Henderson, Blake Milton, Bobby Walker, and more. It was great to see Eric Louviere again, and Marc Harty talking about mini-days.
P.P.S. I'm also on an article writing frenzy, setting aside one hour per day to write 7 articles... before I come off this seminar high.
Today's Question: What's your best post-seminar productivity tip? How do you get back on track, and maintain that seminar high?
I need my ten comments... if I don't get them, I'm never attending another seminar ever again.
Affiliate Incubator Part 2
The other day we went over some stuff you can do to promote products as an affiliate, but what can you do to get others to promote YOUR affiliate products?
As of this writing, I sell 48 different products from one Clickbank account. Affiliates only account for about $1,000 per month of my income, but hey that's a free $12,000 per year on top of everything else so it's definitely worthwhile.
I'm sure the seminar will have some kind of non-disclosure agreement, so I don't want anyone to think I'm passing on something from the seminar... which I haven't attended yet. Let's get my affiliate MANAGING tips out in the open right now.
Affiliate Management Tactic #1: Offer High Commission or Recurring Commission
I joined Amazon.com's affiliate program, the first BIG affiliate program on the net, in 2000. They offered 15% commission on DIRECT sales (if you linked right to that product) or 5% on SIDETRACKED sales (you link to that product and the person buys something else on Amazon.com).
Screw that. If you are running a pay per click ad campaign, the sales letter you're promoting converts at 1%, the product costs $30, and you get 50% commission, your maximum bid would have to be 15 cents just to break even. 10 cents per click if you even want 50% profit.
Likewise, if that same vendor offered 75% commission, you could bid up to 22 cents per click. If they offered a $297 upsell, and 10% of buyers took the upsell, that brings the "average" product price up to $56.70 and means you can bid up to 42 cents per click.
Introduce backends: upsells or one-time-offers, thank you page offers, recurring commissions, anything to give your affiliates more money... and they'll be able to afford sending the serious pay-per-click and targeted traffic your way, instead of the usual "setup a blog and post to forum" half-assed effort.
Give free access to the product after a certain number of sales. Incentives for the top affiliates... plasma TVs and MacBook Airs... but only if it's a big launch. Russell Brunson gave an H3 Hummer to his top affiliate once! Show affiliate leaderboards to get people clawing for the top spot.
Affiliate Management Tactic #2: Provide Banners and Solo Ads for Affiliates
When I give affiliates something to promote, I create a page for them where they can fill in their ID and it shows them their affiliate link and a solo ad branded with their ID. I do this using JV Plus.
A solo ad is simply a quick e-mail your affiliate can cut and paste to send to his list. It doesn't have to be long, just 250 words. Find the best bullet points or the biggest benefit/takeaway and write a SHORT article about it. Tell affiliates they can post it on their blog, submit it as an article, send it as an e-mail, do whatever they want with it.
468x60 sized banner ads are also popular but for me (not being a graphics-oriented guy), the solo ad is most important.
Affiliate Management Tactic #3: Remove Distracting Links
Remove opt-in forms, squeeze pages, offsite links from pages affiliates will send traffic to. I just had this argument with Ben Prater about an opt-in form he had on a sales letter I was promoting as an affiliate.
If I'm sending affiliate traffic to someone else's site... it's not leading to a sale... and it's building someone else's list without giving me credit, I'm GIVING away subscribers. Your list is your baby... your affiliates value their own lists as well.
What's your TOP TIP for getting affiliates to promote your products? Give me ten comments, below and I'll increase the affiliate payout on ALL my products across the board from 50 percent to 60 percent.
Affiliate Incubator Part 1
I'm attending the Affiliate Incubator seminar next week (Sept. 25th - 27th 2008) in Dallas, Texas. I'll probably learn lots of things about promoting stuff as an affiliate.
Affiliate marketing is pretty cool, you don't need to worry about product creation or customer support, you just send traffic to the vendor's page and then get your commission.
My own products sell the best to my list ($2000 to $4000 launches all the time) but I have been known to send $500 e-mails on a regular basis. Recently, I promoted the legendary Ben Prater's "iPhone Secrets Exposed" package.
That landed me 8 sales on a $397 product with 50% commission. You do the math... that's 1500 bucks from a couple of e-mails, probably 20 minutes of work writing the follow-ups. Those e-mails were so good that Ben incorporated them into his sales letter.
Let me empty out my brain with what I know about affiliate marketing already...
Affiliate Tactic #1: Have a List Already
It's simple, you can't expect any big profits unless you have a list of leads you've built yourself and more importantly, qualified buyers. Write up a quick 10 to 20 page report, record at least 20 minutes of videos and price it at $7 to get lots of buyers. Make sure to capture an e-mail address after the sale.
If you can get just 100 people to buy that $7 report, you can safely assume you'll score one affiliate sale... if you promote a complementary product to that list.
Affiliate Tactic #2: Think of Something They Didn't Think Of
I learned this one watching Todd Gross promote affiliate products. He promoted a product called "Floating Action Button" ... it's just what it sounds like, shows a hovering box that moves as you scroll. My Action PopUp script does the same thing.
Instead of giving people the usual sales pitch about popups, he showed how cool it was to place a YouTube video on the floating button, giving your sales pitch in the corner WHILE they read your sales page, and you urging them to click the order button.
All I see Big Jason Henderson do when he promotes affiliate products... records a video of himself (either screen capture or talking head) going over the benefits, then he watermarks his affiliate link to the bottom of the video and blasts that video out to YouTube, Revver, Vimeo, all the video sites.
When I promoted "iPhone Secrets Exposed" I just thought of what Ben left out of his sales letter...
E-Mail #1: You should be in a SPECIFIC profression... i.e. iPhone programmer instead of a regular programmer. No URL yet, just warming them up.
E-Mail #2: Code iPhone apps to get a recurring income on subscription fees... I just looked at Ben's bullet points and asked myself, "WHAT'S IN IT FOR ME when I create an iPhone application?"
E-Mail #3: Are iPhones an untapped resource? What would you do if you invented YouTube, MySpace, before anyone else. If you don't code an iPhone app is it like letting the next Facebook pass you by.
E-Mail #4: Statistics to blow them away. There are this many iPhone users, this much profit from the AppStore, this many applications (low competition).
That's it. I could have fired that off as one e-mail but I spaced it out into several.
This tip goes without saying: Don't promote the same launches as everyone else and don't use the samea cut-n-paste affiliate messages as everyone else.
Affiliate Tactic #3: Proper Redirects
Don't promote your naked affiliate link. Get a simple script to send traffic from a link like http://www.robertplank.com/recommends/some-affiliate-program so it's not totally obvious you're using an affiliate link.
Actually what I really prefer is, I register a .com domain and use that as a redirect. It's only 8 bucks, and I've got some really good ones. For example, Jason Fladlien's 7 Minute Article product is on a domain name called "InstantContentCreation.com" ... but I grabbed up 7MinuteArticles.com and redirected it to my affiliate URL.
I'm sure Affiliate Incubator will have a lot of newbie-oriented info like, promote recurring products... how to calculate the Clickbank refund rate or statistically decide if a product is worth promoting... how to make a squeeze page and a viral report. How to add your own crazy bonuses "Gary Ambrose" style.
But if I can find out just one thing I don't know, the trip will be worthwhile (just like everything).
What's your FAVORITE affiliate marketing tactic? I mean marketing AS an affiliate, not MANAGING affiliates... we'll get to that later.
I need ten comments on this post... add yours below... or I might stop creating products for good, and only promote affiliate offers.
