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Recently, Josh Turner had one of the biggest JV launches of the year with The Appointment Generator. Somewhat amazingly, I finished 9th ahead of some of the biggest names in online marketing. How’d I do it? That’s what I share below.

Affiliates using live chat for commissions

First off, the number one factor in my success was Josh Turner himself (and his product). I’d be doing a disservice if I didn’t give credit where it is due and Josh and his team deserve a lot of the credit. As I mentioned before, picking the right products to promote is the number one key to success in affiliate marketing.

CASE STUDY: Speaking of Josh and his team, his JV manager, Ryan Farrell, joined me for a special launch recap. We talked about what worked for them and their top partners, what didn’t, what they learned, and how YOU can apply their lessons to your launch or next JV promo. Click here to read the launch recap and get access to the one-hour interview.

90 Minutes = $2,269.85

By the end of the launch, I did more than $10,000 in commissions, with $2,269.85 coming in only 90 minutes of activity. And as I mentioned earlier, I managed to finish high up on the leaderboard.

Here’s how I did it.

  1. Killer bonuses
  2. Live chat

Now, this post is not about the killer bonuses. I’ll share my strategy for formulating bonus packages later, but suffice it to say that it was pretty awesome.

So, let’s focus in on the live chat. That’s specifically how I made $2,269.85 in commissions in only 90 minutes.

Why Live Chat Works for Affiliates

We’ve all heard of using live chat on your sales pages. If you aren’t using live chat on your sales pages, you are making a HUGE mistake. But I have never seen it done by an affiliate partner.

Here’s why it works though:

1. It stands out

My live chat was proactive. After a person had been on my bonus page for more than 15 seconds, it popped up to ask:

“Do you have any questions about Josh’s course?”

You can see a similar box on this page that we have timed to popup after 65 seconds.

2. It’s personal

For 90 minutes at least (that was all the time I had), I was letting people who went to the bonus page that I was available.

I was communicating that I was willing to answer questions and not leave to guess if the course was right for them. And I was able to answer questions about the bonuses.

The most common response I got was “thank you for being so helpful.”

3. It’s an “Objection Crusher”

Whatever objections people had, I was able to address them quickly.

And since I was a third party, they trusted me.

The End Result

In only 90 minutes of live chatting, I chatted with 7 people, 4 of whom bought.

As best I can tell from the reporting, that accounted for $2,269.85 in commissions, not including some I will make in the future from payment plans. Not a bad use of my time.

How to Do Live Chat as an Affiliate

This was a spur of the moment idea, so your plan might vary, but here’s what I did.

1. Sign-up for a live chat service

I used LiveChatInc. (Yes that is an affiliate link…I write about this stuff. What do you expect?)

My experience with them so far has been nothing but amazing and they offer a free trial. However, there might be a better/cheaper/prettier/more robust option out there.

The key is to get started, so I like doing free things for that.

2. Install the live chat on your site

That part took about 10 seconds with LiveChatInc. I’ve used a few other services back in the day and they were all super fast, too.

And you don’t have to be techie to do it.

3. Set up the live chat popup

I assume this is possible with other services, but with LiveChatInc., I just went to Settings >> Engagement and BOOM, all set.

4. Be available

This was my biggest problem. I did this on a whim and had 90 minutes. It probably cost me at least $3,000 by not being available for another few hours.

The cool thing was I only spent about 15 minutes of the 90 minutes actively engaged in chats. The rest of the time I was doing other work.

Just make sure you turn on the notifications to it makes a loud “DING” when someone is ready to chat.

How I Could Have Done Better

As I mentioned in #4 above, my lack of availability was the biggest detriment to scaling it.

So, in the future, I will have a staff member available during peak hours to answer chats.

WARNING: Before You Try This at Home

Before you do this yourself, make sure you know the product VERY well.

Do not attempt this without you or someone on your team doing a thorough review of the course. Ask for a half hour of the product owner’s or JV manager’s time to ask potential questions. Ask them what their top 20 questions are and what the answers are to those questions.

In short, do your homework, like you should be anyway if you are promoting something to your audience.

A Final Word

I truly believe this has the potential to revolutionize affiliate promotions. It was just about the easiest $2,000 and change I’ve made in my life.

Plus Josh is getting 4 new customers who come prepared and excited, not confused and suspicious. It’s truly a win-win.

I share this little secret of mine in the hope that you’ll try it to and we can all improve the experience of our audience in these promotions.

If you want more inside information on Josh’s MEGA-launch, click here to read my case study on his launch and get access to the full launch recap I did with his JV manager, Ryan Farrell.

UPDATE: More Proof This Works

Since writing this post, we used LiveChatInc during Marisa Murgatroyd’s Experience Product Masterclass launch with great success.

We set up LiveChat on our product review page AND our exclusive bonuses page.

I corrected the mistake I noted above in the original post and Mark, from my team, and I took turns manning live chat. Between both of us, we had multiple people that we chatted with that ultimately purchased the product.

Many of the questions were related to the bonus package, what a specific bonus entailed, which bonuses were still available etc.

We finished in third place in Marisa’ launch and I can say, without reservation, that if we had not had LiveChatInc set up, we probably would’ve finished at least a full two spots lower on the leaderboard.

Click Here To Listen To Our Full Recap of Marisa’s Launch.

What has your experience been with live chat, either as a customer or as a product owner or affiliate?

Questions?

Text me anytime at (260) 217-4619.

Or…check out some of my free reports to help you get on the right track:

Find Your First 100 Affiliates

template for affiliate program terms and conditions

Affiliate Program Terms & Conditions Template

email for recruiting affiliates

Get My #1 Affiliate Recruiting Email

top mistakes to avoid with your affiliate program

Avoid The Top 20 Affiliate Program Mistakes

email templates for activating affiliates

Turn Inactive Affiliates into Your Best Affiliates

Affiliate email template for affiliate managers

Get My Template for Writing Affiliate Emails

Sales secrets of successful affiliate marketers

Affiliate Marketing Sales Secrets

Ultimate Guide to Affiliate Marketing with a resources page

Learn How to Create a Resources Page

guide on how to write a product review with affiliate marketing

Learn How to Write a Product Review


11 thoughts on “How I Earned $2,269.85 in Affiliate Commissions in 90 Minutes Using Live Chat

  1. Agenna Mathley says:

    Wow- great info. That gets me thinking of other ways to use live chat. Thanks Matt!

    1. Matt McWilliams says:

      My mind has been racing for all sorts of ways, too 🙂

      One idea I am going to play with is periodically live chatting with site browsers to ask questions. No idea how that will go.

  2. Paul Colaianni | TheOverwhelme says:

    I just happened to install live chat on my website recently and have noticed an immediate increase in customer contact. Great article and excellent advice, thanks so much for sharing.

  3. Derric Haynie says:

    Just a little confused on one thing. You sent them to someone else’s site for the course and your site to chat about any questions? Or you had your chat up on their sales page? Or you had their sales page up on your site? Alternatively, you could filter your audience into a slack channel and keep an ongoing conversation about all sorts of things. (This converts the audience into a community, which is a stronger evolution of “audience”)

    1. Matt McWilliams says:

      I set up the bonus page and anyone who went to it was offered the live chat.

      They had to still click the link to buy, which of course was my affiliate link 🙂

      Hope that clarifies Derric!

      1. Derric Haynie says:

        Perfect. Now it makes sense. Thanks!

        2
  4. Sue Anne Dunlevie says:

    Great idea, Matt! This is the 2nd time this week I’ve heard about live chat. You converted me!

    Can you share your bonus page? Just use a LeadPages template for my bonus page?

    Thanks!
    Sue

    1. Matt McWilliams says:

      Well, I would except that when we migrated all of our leadpages from one account to another, I somehow deleted 4 of them…including that one. YAY…sucks because it was intense and took 2 hours to make and I was just going to clone it going forward haha.

      Sorry!

      (PS I can tell you the template used – Market Multipurpose.” I think it’s less than $20.)

  5. John Chang says:

    You wrote, “I used LiveChatInc. (Yes that is an affiliate link…I write about this stuff. What do you expect?)”

    I thought it was interesting because I get why you felt the need to say it. But at the same time I wonder if you’ve discussed or written about this.

    If anything, I would’ve been more surprised if there wasn’t an affiliate link. In fact, if they didn’t have a program, I would’ve wondered whether you talked to them about setting one up!

    On one of my mastermind calls I asked how folks felt about affiliate links. The general consensus was that we’d rather have one of *us* earn the 15-30% than some company or others outside our group.

    But I’ll defer the discussion around money mindset and hangups that some individuals (especially “creatives” and “spiritual” types) have.

    1. Matt McWilliams says:

      Hey John,

      Actually that line was my personal way of encouraging people to click. In other words, my tribe WANTS me to earn money, so it makes it easy for them.

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