Pat Flynn // Affiliate Marketing Through Niche Markets // Building Your Audience By Adding Value
if you were starting a new
site today from scratch, what would you focus on
doing for the first 90 days? So then I would spend
probably the first 30 days, the first month just
deep in customer research. So selecting a niche that
I might have an interest in that interest in a
niche is really important. I've tried starting businesses
in spaces where I literally have no connection to it. It was just like an income
play, and honestly, all of those have burned out.
Some sort of seed from me is
really important because that keeps me going, especially
when times are tough or it's just not working out. Whenever we start something,
it's really fun and there's that honeymoon period, but
eventually, and this is everybody, they hit a wall. So it's that interest and
excitement to figure it out that gets you over that
wall and keeps you going. And in those first 30
days, I would select a niche market and I would
do a deep dive into who's in that space already. What is serving that audience? What is missing? Find out sort of the
positioning that I could come in with. Perhaps it might relate to
specifically a product that can help serve that audience
and how to become essentially the, the, the, the, the.
Go to resource
for that product. If I was going to start
with affiliate marketing, how can I provide so
much value showing people how to use this product? And then in addition to
that, how might I do this for free and meaning. Like, let's take, for example,
a keyword research tool. You know, there's a lot
of keyword research tools out there that you can be
an affiliate for software. I would probably start with
software, in fact, because the higher commissions,
you know, affiliate marketing, especially
in the world of Amazon recently has gotten slashed. Um, so I would start with
a software product that I could master and get
to know and almost become sort of a representative
of that company. And then oftentimes they have
recurring commissions too. So you can start to
stack every single month. You know, there's
recurring commissions that, uh, that come in. But I would go in there
and create demo videos. I would, I would show it off. I would show people
how easy it is to use.
I might even target a
specific niche, like a niche in a niche. So not just entrepreneurs,
but entrepreneur entrepreneurs who are authors, for example. And I might find a software
that authors specifically use like Scrivener or something. And in fact, there's a
guy, his name's Joe, who created a website called. Learn Scrivener or
The Scrivener Master. I can't, I can't
remember exactly. But his whole business started
as an affiliate for that product, and he's become
known as an expert now and has even partnered with a company
in really interesting ways too, which is really cool. Um, so that's where I
would start, but when I was saying I'd offer the
free way to do it, meaning. Keyword research, right? There's ways to do it for
free, but it takes like hours. But I would show her
that I would give it all away for free. Here's how you can do it for
free for three or four hours. And there you go. You have your end results,
the keywords that you want, or you can do all of that in
10 seconds using this product.
So I call that the, uh, the
free way to do it, or the headache free way to do it. And so, you know, that
juxtaposition allows for people to go, Oh yeah, that's
definitely worth my money. Thank you so much for
providing this value. I'll click on your link. Commission. Boom. Yep. That's brilliant, man. And you, you hit on a
bunch of stuff that has already been talked about
previous to you showing up. So I love like whenever
there's like a thematic thing going on, which
is, you know, go down the route, that's something
you're passionate with. I mean, that is probably the
easiest thing of affiliate marketing is people. So many offers out there. Just go to
shareasale.com and just.
Pick up like, no, no, no, no, no, no. Talk about like how you
look at a product, you know, so a new thing that
you like get behind as a brand with content. What's your filtering
process for that? Or discovery? You definitely need a
filtering process, especially now as the grant is, the brand
has continued to grow like literally five or six messages
a day from different companies wanting to get in front of me. So I have to put a filter on
or else something will happen that has happened with other
people that I used to follow that I don't follow anymore. And that's, they just. Shove all the products
that come their way down your throat and
it doesn't feel good. It's obviously
they don't care. It's obvious. They're just trying to
make money and that's the last thing I want to do. I want people to, when I share
a product with them to go, Oh my gosh, thank you so much
for sharing this week with me.
My life is so much easier. How can I pay you
back in return? Thank you. Like, I want to thank you. So it's, it's almost like
a win for everybody, right? Like, I can imagine, and
that's the first filter. Like, can I imagine sharing
this with my audience and getting thanked for it? Uh, regardless of the
commission, the commission is almost like a bonus on top of
the idea of helping people, which does mean in fact,
sometimes I promote things that don't have an affiliate
commission because it's always in service of others in the
audience, which is really key. Um, another filtering process
is I try to get access to that product or get an example of
it, or, or, or a prototype. If it's something
new or data access or whatever it might be.
I want to experience it. I want to use it. Because here's
the other thing. If somebody sees me,
recommend a product and they go, Hey, uh, so have
you used that before? And then I go,
well, actually, no. Well, they're out. They're out the door now. It's so much easier when you
go, yeah, I totally use it. And by the way, here's how
I'd recommend you use it too. It's like, wow, you're
providing value at the same time, and it just really
shows, especially for people who asked you questions. One of my favorite tactics
is to have as many people ask questions about the
product that I'm promoting. A lot of people don't
want to do that. They don't want to
converse, they don't want to chat with anybody.
I'm like, that's the wrong
way to think about it. Because if a person is
asking questions, they're likely somewhat interested. And if you can answer in a
way that sort of tackles all their objections, well then
then you've kind of got them, you've given them value,
and then you can just offer up an affiliate link being
fully disclosed without that. And uh, it'll be a
win for everybody. Like I said, it went
for you cause you're getting a commission. A win for your audience
member because they are getting something that
they very much needed and a win for the company that
you're helping to promote. And then I also try
to see, and this isn't always possible. But might there be a
way for me to partner with this company? One of the things that I
teach my students in my affiliate marketing course
is it's not just about the relationship between you and
your audience, it's about the relationship of you and
the owner of that product.
Because you could potentially
get special access or special deals or early looks or
something, and this is why, I don't know if you know
who MKBHD is on Twitter. YouTube. He's a big tech reviewer. He gets everything early. Because he does really amazing
reviews about these things. And you can have early
access to things too. And then of course you
create a video about it. You're the first
one to show up. You're going to rank higher in
SEO on YouTube and Google, and now everybody's finding you. When they're looking for
information about this, they see a really thorough
review and they're going to click on your link too. So that's, that's sort of
the formula that I use. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I think, um, you know, you're,
you're sort of mirroring a lot of the philosophies that we've
had around affiliate marketing and, um, I think anytime we've
ever talked about affiliate marketing, it's hard for us
to talk about it and not talk about the relationships with
the product creators as well.
Everybody focuses on the
relationship with their audience and you know, the
people that they're trying to promote to, but they
never actually talk about, like, it's just as important
to have a relationship with those audiences as well. Yeah. We do have quite a
bit of questions. Uh, Florida, uh, I'll pull this one up. I like this one a lot. So, um, Michelle asked what
were the two best audience building techniques that
led to the greatest amount of brand awareness and
exposure, if you know, if you can think of two.
Yeah, I mean, I can
think of hundreds, but the top two might likely
be guest podcasting. Uh, podcasts are huge for
getting people to know you and the voice that you have and
whether it means you being on other people's shows for more
exposure in new audiences, or having, uh, for example,
I love using this strategy, uh, not necessarily for
exposure, but specifically to grow my affiliate income. For example, I interviewed
Nathan Barry, the founder of ConvertKit. I'm a big affiliate
for ConvertKit.
In fact, I'm also an advisor
for the company, and I invited him on my show. And I didn't invite
them on the show to ask questions like, tell me
why ConvertKit's awesome. Why should everybody
convert to ConvertKit? It was more, tell me the
story about why this exists. What were the struggles? What were the objections,
what, what's, what's your mission here? And of course, after
45 minutes, people listen to that. They get a really amazing
bootstrapping story. That's really inspiring. But at the same time, if
they need to make a selection and they have a choice of
different email service providers, who do you think
they're going to go with now? The person that they've now
listened to, who, who they can fully understand because
you've developed this amazing show that asks the right
questions and gets you to know them a little bit better.
Um, and that particular
episode is accounted for over $50,000 in, uh, an income. Um, it's recurring income
cause it's a software email service provider. But, uh, that one episode
alone, inviting him on, not even talking about ConvertKit
and why they should go there. But just the story behind it
and bringing the founder on to build that relationship
has been absolutely key. Um, and then Seth Godin
recently said that podcasting is the new blogging.
So if podcasting is
the new blogging guest, podcasting is the new guest. Blogging and guest financing
is absolutely huge, and it's very evergreen too, so you
can get continual exposure. Um, and the other thing that's
worked really well for me are, uh, and this relates to, um. Two to affiliate
marketing as well. Uh, is, is YouTube
and specifically doing demo videos. That's like my secret
sauce for a lot of my top performing affiliates offers
is literally, like I said earlier, showing people
the insides of the thing that they are interested in
buying and taking advantage of the free traffic that
SEO can give you on YouTube. Should you create a really
good looking video that people can watch for
longer than the others? Um, I love that.
Like the demo video
is the biggest secret. Uh, it's not as easy as
just like writing a blog post and sharing images,
but a demo video where you, not just, you, it's
not like a, like a just a, here's why it's awesome. It's like, here's all you
need to know about it. Here's what's good. Here's what's bad. It's a very honest
approach and as a result, you can get traffic. And you can get more exposure
and you can get affiliate income at the same time. Yeah, I love that. And another thing that's sort
of worked well for us along those same lines too, is like
a, here's a cool tactic that you can do with this tool
that most people don't know.
Well, we'll, we'll make like
a video and sort of show off, Hey, you know, here's
something that you can do with this tool that most people
don't realize you can do it. This tool, you put that
video out there, anybody that already has the
tool is like, Oh cool. This is amazing value. Anybody who doesn't have
the tool watches that video and goes, Hmm, I
should get this tool. So I want to. Exactly. That's very cool..
