Let me ask you something… what if 2026 is the year you stop hoping affiliate marketing works and start treating it like it actually matters? Not more random promos. Not more last‑minute emails. Real commitments that change how you show up, how you promote, and how you get paid. In this episode, I’m sharing the affiliate resolutions that actually move the needle… from building systems and tracking results to selling with confidence and creating bonuses that stand out. If you want this year to be different, this is where it starts.
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Previous Episodes of The Affiliate Guy
New Year’s Resolutions for Affiliate Managers
The Future of Affiliate Marketing: 2026 Edition
How Affiliates Can Make More Money This Holiday Season
The Affiliate Manager Holiday Survival Guide
Why Every Author Should Be Using Affiliate Marketing
2026 New Year’s Resolutions for Affiliate Marketers
Matt McWilliams: Let me ask you something. What if 2026 is the year you stop hoping affiliate marketing works and start treating it like it actually matters? Not more random promos, not more last-minute emails. Real commitments that change how you show up, how you promote, and how you get paid. In this episode, I’m sharing the affiliate resolutions that actually move the needle from building systems and tracking results to selling with confidence, creating bonuses that stand out.
If you want this year to be different, this episode right here, it’s where it starts. So first off, welcome to, uh, the final episode of 2025. Um, I want to do something. I don’t have it done in a few years because it’s actually, it’s been a couple of years since we had an episode like we had just a couple of episodes ago that really, really blew up. the, episode I did on predictions, the episode that I did on, uh, my affiliate marketing affiliate industry predictions a couple of weeks ago, just blew up.
And, and so then the next episode was, was almost as big. And so long story short is picked up a ton of subscribers and, and so I want to welcome you, those of you who are new. This is maybe your second or third or fourth, maybe you went back. I also noticed it’s been very interesting over the last couple of weeks, the number of downloads I have of like the first 10 episodes, especially episode one, uh, and like, you know, just random episodes here and there, like really spiked. And so it’s been kind of cool, uh, to see that.
So, you know, hey, I’m your host, Matt McWilliams. Welcome to the Affiliate Guy podcast. So if you caught the last episode, uh, we talked all about new, uh, Year’s resolutions for affiliate managers, how to set yourself up to lead your program better in 2026. Whether that’s, you know, we talked about tracking and recruiting, communication, just, you know, just not winging it. Next year, that episode was for the folks running the affiliate programs.
But this week it’s time to flip the script. And this one is for affiliates. Those of you who are out there promoting products and building your audiences, and you’re trying to turn, you know, As I talk about, turn your passions into profits, turn your influence into income. And if that’s you, I’ve got some powerful resolutions to help you take your affiliate marketing to really some new levels in 2026. Now, for some of you, that might be to go from making $0 to making your first thousand in 2026.
That would be your resolution. That would be your goal for 2026. I want to make $1,000. Maybe it’s to go from zero to 2,000. It’s probably not to go from zero to 250,000.
That’s usually not realistic. For others, it’s to go from that 2,000 mark to the $10,000 mark, or from 5 to $10,000 to 60 to $75,000, where it’s like, you know what? This is almost a full time income for me just from affiliate marketing. In fact, it probably is. Assuming that you have some products of your own, some services of your own.
If you’re making 50 to 75,000 from affiliate marketing, you’re probably making 75 to 100,000 from your overall business, maybe 125 or 50. Now you’re full time. Maybe that’s your goal for 2026. Whatever your goal is, these habits, these mindset shifts, these strategy changes, they’re going to make this your best year ever. Not just in terms of commissions, but in terms of consistency, in terms of momentum, in terms of purpose and meaning, and just really making an impact on your industry, your community, your audience, and ultimately, you know, your bottom line.
Which means your family, you’re in, you know, your, your, uh, your bank account, your family tree. You know that like, really man’s going to impact my family tree? Yes. Some of this stuff can be very generational if you really do it right. And so we’re going to talk about treating affiliate marketing like a real business.
Planning your year out instead of just kind of flying by the seat of your pants. Going all in. On fewer promos, we’re going to talk about a whole lot. Some of these might challenge you. A few you might be like, yeah, yeah, I know that.
Questions?
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Okay, you know it. But my challenge would be, did you need that reminder? Have you been executing on it just because you knew it? Have you been executing on. It’s like, you know, I could do an episode how to lose weight in 2026. Eat less. Okay, well, you knew that one. Exercise more. Okay, got it. Nobody’s.
Oh, that’s new information. I didn’t know that I have to burn more calories than I consume. Yeah, we all know that, but are you executing on it? And I bet we’ve got 15, 16 of these resolutions. I bet one of them, one of them, I don’t know which one it’s gonna be for.
You will completely shift how you approach your affiliate work this year. So let’s dive in, let’s jump into these resolutions, starting with a big one. Treating affiliate marketing like a business. So, resolution number one. I will treat affiliate marketing like a business.
Listen, if you want affiliate marketing to pay you like a business, you want to make money like a business, you have to run it like one. What that means is no more random posts, no more, sure, I’ll promote that real quick. No more last-minute emails, no more hoping something sticks. A real business has a plan. A real business has priorities.
And, and I don’t like this one because this is not how my natural mind operates. But a real business has systems. You know, if, if you’re familiar with the disc profile, right? Disc, um, um, my natural disc profile is very high D and high. I, I, I have almost, I think I have 0s and like 1 out of 20 on the C.
I’m like 19D, 18I 0s, 1C or 2C, something like that. I have very little SNC. But what’s happened over the last 15 or 20 years? So I first took the disc profile when I was just out of college, I uh, think 24. And that’s exactly what it was.
I took it again when I was 28, and it stayed exactly the same. My natural and my adaptive styles were identical. What that means is the way I’m wired and then how I adapt were exactly the same. Round 35, same thing. I took it again, exact same thing.
Over the last decade or so I have shifted my adaptive style. I’m now at like ah, a 10 on the C. My I and my D have both dropped just a little bit, especially the D side. And what I thought back in the day when my adaptive and my natural were identical is that uh, look at that, I’m true to myself. Here’s my natural, here’s my adaptive.
I don’t adapt. And I looked at that actually as a positive. Now I say, when I say I don’t adapt with that kind of sounds really negative all of a sudden. And it was, I was saying I’m true to myself. Look at that, my scores are the same on both.
That just means that I’m true to myself and I am who I am, and you know, pat myself on the back, right. The problem with that was I wasn’t adapting. And so what’s happened over the last about 12 years or so is I have slowly adapted to a higher C and I’ve created systems and plans and spreadsheets and all these things. The things that I hate, I have created because they’re necessary to run my business properly. And that is true for you and your affiliate marketing efforts.
Uh, if you, if you want to succeed, I want you to resolve to put structure around your affiliate marketing. Create a simple content plan that you’re not. So you’re not reinventing the wheel every week, right? Weekly KPIs, email sent content published clicks, generated promos, plan. It doesn’t matter what things you track.
I, um, would rather you track fewer data points and, and actually track them all 52 weeks and hit 75% of your goals than have 25 data points and then you just give up by March. That was something I was talking with a client today about. Like, guys, we need five data points that we track like our lives depend on them. And if we track those consistently for four months, this was in mid December and we’ve been tracking them for like two weeks. I said if we consistently track those for four months, it gets us through Q1, then we can add two, we can pick two more that we track.
But right now let’s track five and track them like our lives dependent on them. So block time on your calendar specifically for affiliate work. That’s the other day. It’s like, oh, I’ll get around to it. No, you don’t do affiliate marketing.
When you get to it, you do affiliate marketing from 1 to 3 on Monday, Wednesdays and Fridays because that’s what your calendar tells you to do. You have set a meeting. Oh, can you meet one? Can you meet at 1:30 on Monday? No, I have a meeting then.
And don’t feel guilty because you have it on your calendar now. If a, if like, let’s say it’s what, can you interview me Wednesday at 2, and you’ve got blocked off from 1 to 3? Absolutely. I can interview you Wednesday at 2 because that’s my time to do affiliate marketing and interviewing you as part of that. So most affiliates don’t fail because they’re bad marketers.
They don’t fail because they write bad emails. They fail because they treat affiliate marketing like a side hustle instead of an actual part of their business. When you build systems, even the simplest systems, stress goes down, consistency increases and consistency compounds. Is it going to mean that your January is your best month ever? Probably not statistically, but it might be.
I mean, it could be. I’m not saying it won’t be, it just probably won’t be. But it compounds. And I can promise you your year will be your best year ever if you do that again. You don’t need complex spreadsheets, you don’t need fancy dashboards, just intention.
You, you decide what success looks like, you decide how you’ll measure it. Then show up like a business owner, not a hobbyist. That’s key. Resolution number two is I will track my results religiously. Again, like your life depends on it.
I quote, unquote. I think that promo did pretty well. That is not tracking. That is not a strategy, it’s a guess. Guesses don’t scale, zero doesn’t scale, and guesses don’t scale.
So this year you have to do this to do number one. It’s part of number one in a sense. In a sense resolve. To track what actually happens when you promote. You need to know those key metrics, know your open rates, know your click through rates, know your EPCs.
Even basic tracking will put you miles ahead of most affiliates. So after every promo, as you line these promos up, get, put it on your calendar. When does the promo in March 17th? On the 19th if it’s a weekday and you know, if you don’t work weekends, okay, the 20th, whatever. I want you to take 10 minutes and write down what worked.
I want you to write down the stats and track those things like did you have an exceptional open rate on an email? Did you have an exceptional click through rate on an email? Which email or emails worked best? You set the baseline. So for instance, we have a baseline number.
I don’t care if any email is within 2% of that baseline. In terms of open rate, I don’t care if it’s within 0. 5% of that baseline, above or below. In terms of click through rate, I don’t care if it’s, you know, 0. 3% lower than normal, don’t care, 0.2% higher, don’t care. I have my baselines. I want to know which emails crushed it and which ones bombed. Really? I want to know about the upper and the bottom, 15 to 20% and then I want to learn from those.
So which emails did the best, what subject lines got the best open rate, what bonus moved the needle and why added, ah, this bonus. Um, and you know, sales skyrocketed that day. Okay, that’s, that’s an insight, that’s a data point. Write what, like just write down what works Best in terms of, you know, subjectively. And I felt like the live stream went really well.
But here’s what I could have done a little bit differently. Just take 10 to 15 minutes to brain dump and then learn this. This isn’t about necessarily beating yourself up about things that didn’t go well. It’s about learning. It tells you where to double down, stop, and then what’s to, you know, stop wasting time on, um, what is it?
Stu McLaren. I’ve quoted this many times, says, you know, do less of what’s not working and more of what is. And I butchered that quote. He probably said it much more profoundly and succinctly. But over time, patterns emerge and those patterns become your advantage.
The affiliates who make real money aren’t guessing. They are paying attention to what’s working and what’s not. Make this year. Make 2026 the year you stop relying on memory. Start relying on data resolution number three.
I will build my list. Like it pays my bills, because it does. I will build my list. Come on. Social platforms change.
I. Algorithms shift. We are seeing that accounts get throttled. Everything. I got my, my LinkedIn account banned a few years ago.
I had had that account since 2005, I think 2006. I didn’t even use it that much, but I, I posted something that I didn’t even think about and they’re like, your account’s banned. It was, uh, I had a, I did a giveaway on my site. I didn’t. I mean, I posted like once a month on LinkedIn when I remembered to.
And I have posted, I don’t know, 500 things over the years and I had thousands of like, legit real connections and it, uh, poof, just went away. Now, thankfully, I downloaded, I had my VA go into my account like once a quarter and download my contacts list. But still, like, you can’t do that with some platforms. Email, you own it. It is the most reliable asset you can build.
So I want you again, One of your KPIs definitely needs to be around email list growth. I want you to actively grow your email list every single week. Not someday, not when you have the time. No, it’s every week, every day. That might mean creating new lead magnets, it might mean creating new opt in bonuses during promotions, might mean running some check challenges, uh, adding content upgrades to your posts and videos.
You know, I want you to tie your list growth to your affiliate efforts because the more people you have, I mean, if you go, if you grow your list from 5,000 to 10,000. You might not necessarily double your affiliate marketing commissions, but you’ll probably increase them by 90 to 95%. And you actually might find that it’s even more than that because as you grow it and now you start making real money, you’re like, oh my gosh, I gotta, I’m going to do more work on this. Your list. It gives you control.
It gives you control. So I’ve got a couple of resources for you. I’ve got a video that I just recorded uh, with Kit formerly known as ConvertKit. It’s about an hour and a half long. It is a full training onto everything we do with our email list.
How we’ve grown it, lead magnets, how we run it on the back end. Like it’s super deep. Robby, who is our tech guy and runs all that stuff is on there and he, you know, does most of the talking thankfully because he like nerds, he’ll nerd you out. It is a super, super like ridiculously deep dive into our KIT account. And we did that with Kit and it’s totally free video.
Like you can just go watch it anytime. So I’ve got that for you. I’ve got links to our list launch challenge. If you want to grow your email list for I don’t even know, it’s under 50 bucks. You can grow your list with list launch challenge.
And if you uh, cheapest way you want to know how to grow your list, go grab turn your passions into profits. Passions into profitsbook. com I’ll put the link in the show notes. Less um, than 20 bucks probably right now on Amazon. Uh, go to that link because you get some bonuses.
Passionsintheprofitsbook. com and read chapters. Read the whole book. Start with chapter one because it’s important to do chapter one through three before you get to chapter four. But then chapter four and then chapter ten, uh, are all about list growth and content.
So like the tools are there, right? The tools are there. If you’ve read turn your passions into profit, you know this, now it’s time to live it. Treat your list like income producing asset. That is like I said, the tools.
It’s so easy now. Tools like Kit and there’s other tools, but we just prefer Kit. Easier than ever to grow an email list. Resolution number four is I will go deeper on fewer promotions. When you promote everything, your audience begins to kind of tune out.
So I want you, unless you already are promoting six or less. If you’re promoting seven is kind of like that. You know, maybe it’s the right number. But I’ll put it this way. If you’re promoting nine or more promotions, I want you to reduce it.
If you’re promoting promoting 9 or 10, I want you to promote 1 less. That’s it, just 1 less. If you’re promoting 10 to 12, I want you to produce, promote 2 less. If you’re promoting more than 12, I uh, want you to promote 20% less. So that’ll put you at 3, you know, if you’re somehow promoting 30 things.
And I’m not talking about passive promotions like a resources page or social media posts that you, you know, you schedule and like I’ve got some stuff that I promote once every two or three months on social media and it’s not that big of a deal, it’s all automated. That’s, I’m talking about active promotions. And instead of going half heartedly on 20 things, I want you to go wholeheartedly all in on 12 or 13 or 14 things. Offers that you really, really believe in offer that you are so excited to talk about. And then when you do that, you show up with energy, you create multiple pieces of content, you tell stories, you answer objections, you follow up, you promote like you actually mean it.
And depth. You know, what’s the old saying? Um, you know, an inch wide and a mile deep is better than a mile wide and an inch deep. Depth beats breath. Every time when you go deep, your messaging improves.
And so what happens? Not only do you build more trust because your audience know you’re not just chasing commissions, but, but what happens is, let’s just do the math. Instead of 12, you do 10, but you may, so you’re promoting, you know, two less. And let’s just say hypothetically, you made exactly $10,000 on each of those 20, you know, or those 12 promotions last year. And this year you promote 12 or you promote 10 but you make 15,000 on each one you made $30,000 more.
It doesn’t mean you’ve got to be spammy, you know, just go all in. It just means being intentional, really serving your audience through a, ah, promotion instead of kind of dabbling and then, you know, just doing these little promotions here and there. So if you want to, if you want better results, stop spreading yourself thin, stop going an inch deep and a mile wide. Go all in. Go really deep.
Number five. I talked about this a little bit earlier in the, you know, treating it like a business. See that’s kind of the core of all of this. If you only had to make one resolution that would Be it. Because it would almost encompass all of the other ones.
I will plan my year in advance. And I mean plan the year in advance. Even a rough plan makes a huge difference. So identify. Let’s say you want to promote 12 things.
Maybe you’ve promoted 15 in the past and you’re like, I’m going to promote 12 this year, whatever the number is. You made commitment number four, Resolution number four, and you’ve determined the number that you want to promote. Maybe eight. Whatever it is, let’s go with eight. That’s one every six weeks, basically.
And you go ahead and plug in your big ones, key launches or evergreen promos, things that you know maybe are seasonal, right? Like you all. Like, this thing is just going to be huge at the beginning of summer and I want to promote it. Or this thing is going to be perfect for back to school. I want to promote it.
Then you go ahead and put the big ones on the calendar. So if you’re going to promote eight things, maybe right now at the beginning of the year, you can put five things on your calendar. That’s perfect. You can go ahead and prepare early and prepare content and bonuses and things like that. And it gives you a little bit of breathing room because now you only have three things to plug in and hopefully one of them is not, at least for a couple of months.
And then you plug those in and it gives you some wiggle room. Because then if something comes up and you get really excited about it, you can still add it. But you’ve got most of the year planned out. And so it gives you that breathing room. It allows you to warm up your audience, it allows you to coordinate content, allows you to avoid overlapping promotions.
That just destroys results. It’s like, well, If I promote two things and each of them does 10,000, that would be 20. It’s usually not it. You do one thing, you make 15 and you promote two and you make 10. And it’s like, well, how do they make less money promoting more things?
Because it’s dilution. So again, you don’t need a perfect plan. You just need some general direction. Like you put in as much as you can, even if it’s three of the eight right now and you’ve got those locked in. Great.
This is the year you trade that typical chaos for a, uh, for some planned clarity. Resolution number six. I will use stories to sell. We know this. Stories work.
That’s why I had Don Miller on Donald Miller on a few months ago to talk about his book Building a story brand 2. 0. The features don’t sell, uh, the ingredients don’t sell, the specs don’t sell. Stories sell. So this year, resolve to, to tell more stories when you promote.
This is one of the things that makes that little difference between you and AI because stories create connections, stories lower resistance. They help people see themselves in the outcome. Bullet points are great. They inform stories, persuade. So share.
How do you discover the product? What’s the mistake you made before using it? Share the moment that something clicked for you. Share that thing that’s unique to you. It’s that little thing.
And you know, it doesn’t mean you can’t use AI, but you need to feed AI the stories and then AI can fill in the gaps. If you use AI to create your content, there’s nothing wrong with that. By the way, you know, I use it all the time to write a better sentence. You know, I just don’t want to write the whole email with AI because AI doesn’t know my stories. And I’m the only one who can be like, you know what that reminds me of?
That time in seventh grade when such and such happened. Or that reminds me of that thing that happened last week. Or, you know, here’s an idea. I just noticed this. There, uh, was something I got an email the other day and, uh, I’m gonna do.
I’m pulling the email up to remember what it was. I’m going to do an, uh, episode on this in the next few. Yeah, here it is in the next few months. Probably the worst affiliate management email I’ve ever got. I can’t zoom in for some reason on my phone.
Why is it not working right now? And it was basically, they’re trying to get me to promote and it is just so poorly written. It’s so bad. I can’t wait to read it and share it with you guys. AI doesn’t know that.
So if you want to actually make more money without being salesy, tell more stories. If you want to convince more people you want to guide them, stories. Stories guide better than facts alone. Especially they don’t have to be like dramatic transformations either. I use this to lose 87 pounds.
No real honest experiences work better. Struggles, doubts, mistakes, they can be powerful. So make this the year your promotions feel human, okay? They’re not scripted, they’re not robots, they’re human. That’s your stories.
And sometimes it’s other people’s stories as well. Number seven, I will test a new platform. Okay? Growth requires experimentation. Comfort zones are another thing that don’t scale.
So I want you to resolve to test one new platform. No, this doesn’t go against abandoning what works. We talked about that. Uh, do more of what works and less of what doesn’t. This isn’t about doing less of what doesn’t.
You don’t know. We’re going to try one new thing. Just one, that’s all. It could be YouTube shorts, uh, LinkedIn threads, I don’t care, Pinterest, pick one. Commit to testing it intentionally.
Again, does not mean abandoning what works. It means allocating a small percentage. 2%. I’m going to spend an hour a week consistently on YouTube shorts. That’s 2.
5% if you work 40 hours. 2. 5%. Like if you can’t find 2. 5% of your work week, uh, you need to free up your schedule a little bit.
I want you to, you know, spend the first month learning and then post consistently for a set period of time and evaluate how it’s going. Some platforms are not going to work for you, and that’s okay. Try it for three to six months. It doesn’t work. Start a new one.
Testing helps you find out what works before you invest too much time. And sometimes it reveals something that maybe works really well. I have a friend of mine who started doing, uh, you know, long form YouTube videos about two years ago and he did them because he just enjoys doing them. And he had, he got like a real quick 300. He was getting like 300 views per video, which believe it or not is actually higher than like 99.
9% of all videos on YouTube. But he got like 300 views and it just stayed there for like a year and he kept doing it. And then he had a video that kind of went like mini viral and got like 5,000 views. But then, you know, it dropped back down. But it didn’t drop down to 300.
It dropped down to like, now all his new ones are getting 600. That’s double what he was getting. So I’m going to fast forward this story that his average video right now is doing about 20,000 views in a pretty niche market. And almost 1% of those views each video are resulting in email subscribers. And about 5% of those people are buying something.
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It’s now getting like 10 buyers per video. This is a high ticket offer too, by the way. You know, high ticket in the, um, you know, it’s not like 50 bucks, it’s over $500 and. But it took almost two years for it to finally start really, you know, feeling like, oh, gosh, this is worth it. So it, you know, experiment like.
Affiliate marketing rewards those who experiment. So try something new this year, but do it strategically. Going back to what I said, measure the results, see what works. Then within that platform, do more of what’s working and less of what’s not. So in that platform, if longer videos are working, do more of the long ones.
If shorter ones, do more of the short ones. If this interviews, whatever, something’s working, do more of those. Alright, resolution number eight. I will ask for better assets and tools. Too many affiliates stay quiet when the assets they’re given aren’t that great.
And this year I just want you to resolve to speak up. If the swipe copy sucks, ask for some alternatives. If the bonuses don’t resonate with your audience, ask for something better. Create your own. If you need testimonials, ask.
Affiliate managers should. Although some suck at their jobs, they should want you to succeed. Most, not all, will gladly help. If you communicate what you need clearly, the worst they can do is say no. I mean, asking is not complaining, asking is collaboration.
Asking is the professional thing to do. And your job is to serve your audience well. So if the tools you’re given don’t help you do that, advocate for better ones. Make this the year you stop settling and start asking for what you need. Resolution number nine is I will build post promo funnels.
Here’s the thing that I have observed over the last 20 years or so. Most affiliates, and I’m guilty of this by the way, just as much as anyone, most affiliates stop the moment the cart closes. So if you’re promoting anything that’s time bound, a launch or you know, any type of, you know, one week promo or whatever, you just stop when it ends. And that’s a mistake. So I want you to resolve this year on at least two promotions, I want you to build a post promo follow up.
I said funnel, I meant follow up earlier. So I want you to create a wait list for people who missed out or promote an evergreen version of the offer. If it’s available, recommend a related product, something right. These post promo follow ups, they extend the life of the promo. You warmed them up, you got them excited, you got them close to the finish line and then you just poof, you just disappear.
So even a simple follow up email can make a huge difference over time. These systems, if you add this to your checklist for each promo, they add easy income without a lot of extra work, almost marginally no extra work. And so I, uh, want you to just pick two this year and test like what did you do and what worked? Did it work? Was it worth the time?
I’ve seen it be worth the time. It’s one of those things like you increase the work by 2%. You know, it’s kind of like building a house and then going, you know, should we put a window in that one hole in the house that has a spot for a window? Nah, uh, we did all this work and then you ruin it because you don’t put a window in. You know that not having that window will obviously increase your heating and air costs and all that.
I’m just going to stop with that example. You get the idea where I’m going with that. But my point there is like we don’t do that final 2% that can make us an extra 10 to 20% more money. And it’s so simple to do. So build those post promo follow ups number 10 I will automate where it makes sense.
Okay. Automation equals laziness. True or false? It’s false. Automation equals being smart.
So I want you to resolve to build just simple automation that works for you in the background. Whether it’s some nurture sequences or some evergreen content with affiliate links retargeting ads that are automated, automation frees you up to focus on creative ideas, relationships instead of just repeating the same task. So one example is just building in. If you know that like you’re going to promote something once a year, every year, and it’s not a launch, it’s just an evergreen thing. Don’t promote, uh, don’t do live launches or don’t do live promos.
Build it into your automation. And so we have one thing that we actually put in that we promote like on day 85 is like day 85 to 92 after somebody signs up for my list, we promote this thing and then we promote it again 365 days later and we actually have this sequence built out to like 10 years, you know, and it was just easy and now it just sits in, it runs and then like sure enough, like every two weeks, you know, I make a, it’s a 50 buck commission. You go whoop dee doo, right? Well it’s over a thousand dollars a year that I’m not even doing anything. It’s just sitting there.
And the cool thing was because it runs once a year, I’ll go ahead and let you in on a little secret. I don’t update the emails like the emails. We wrote them once and then they’re the exact same the following year. But it feels like A live launch to those people. And that’s an example where, I mean, I’m making over $1000, probably 1200 to 1500 bucks a year for doing literally nothing at this point.
That’s the kind of stuff you want to do. Can I do that with everything? Of course not. Can I do that? Um, you know, would I do that with certain products when I do that?
With launches? No. With actual live launches? Of course not. Will I just copy and paste the same emails five years from now for the same launch?
No, because things have changed. You know, we’re acknowledging that there’s new technology, but with those emails, we made them pretty evergreen and we haven’t had to update them. That’s just one example. We’ve got a couple others of those that are, you know, making us even a little bit more money. But that’s a great example.
It’s an easy product, and it just. It just runs and it’s per subscriber. So they’re only getting launched to quote, unquote, every year, once a year. Number 11, you will resolve. I will resolve to create awesome bonuses.
Okay? Bonuses are a differentiator. You guys know this. So I want you to resolve this year to create bonuses that actually matter. So I want you to think of how, like, think of when you’re thinking of bonuses.
Number one, what’s a friction? What’s a pain point that they have in buying the product? How can I address it? That’s number one. Number two, how can I help them get results faster?
Number three, how can I address. How can I take this product and make it more specifically for my audience? So if you’re teaching people, I’ll give an example. Uh, if I’m promoting a copywriting course, I’ll say, here are my lessons taken away from this course specifically for affiliate marketers. Like, the goal is not to add more stuff, it’s to add the right stuff.
And so a strong bonus. I’ve talked about this in probably half a dozen episodes. Give people a clear reason to buy. Through you, they can increase urgency and loyalty, which are great as well. So if you want to stand out, stop offering generic kind of lame bonuses and create something your audience cannot ignore.
So this is the year that you’re going to make your bonuses be freaking awesome. Number 12, I will study what top affiliates do. Success leaves clues. I think it was Tony Robbins that said that, right? So I want you to Resolve.
Study. Pick 10 or 15 affiliates in your niche, maybe a few outside of your niche. Pick some people who consistently perform well. If you’re, if you’re, you know, affiliate programs that you’re a part of, publish leaderboards, go take a look at some of those top affiliates and I recommend sometimes not looking at like the very top. I recommend taking the top 10 and using social media as a proxy for other things like email list size.
So what I do, if I really want to study the out, I want to study the affiliates who outperform, they out punt their coverage, so to speak, right? I’ll take the top 10 affiliates and I’ll go usually have like my VA go make a spreadsheet. Number of Facebook followers, number of Instagram followers, number of followers on Twitter X number of followers, you know, on TikTok, maybe like the top five social media platforms. And then I’ll look at that and I’ll find the one who’s like I want to look for that person who’s in fifth place but has the 10th highest follower count or they’re in third place with the ninth highest follower count. Basically I don’t want to look at the number one affiliate if they also have the number one follower count.
I will look at the number one affiliate if they got the seventh highest follower account or even the sixth. And I want to find those affiliates and maybe sometimes you might have three of them out of the top 10. Great. Those are affiliates that I want to follow and I want to subscribe to and I want to study them. I want to look at their subject lines, I want to look at their angles, their bonus strategies, their follow up and learn.
Pay attention to patterns and then adapt what you learn to fit your voice and audience. Of course. But like the top affiliates aren’t magical, they’re intentional. Study them. Study them.
That’s where so much of what I get on the show comes from, is just studying what other people are doing. So again, easiest way to do that, go find four or five of your affiliate programs that you’re a part of and look at who are the outliers in the top 10. Again if they, if they’re number nine but they’re, you know, their follower counts, the eighth biggest, you don’t want that person, you want the one with the biggest, the two or three affiliates or maybe sometimes just one with the biggest gap between their follower count size and where they’re at on the leaderboard. Number 13. Resolution for 2026 is I will repurpose more content.
Very simple. One idea should never live in one place. This is like working smarter, you know. So resolve to repurpose everything you create. Turn emails into posts, videos into clips, stories into reels, podcasts into blogs.
Repurposing saves time, increases reach. You gotta remember, oh, uh, we’re in a video first. It’s not yet. We’re in a video first. It doesn’t mean nobody reads.
Doesn’t mean blogs are dead. Just because, well, blog traffic is down 60%. Well, that means there’s still the 40%. So I still want that 40%. I don’t want to just be like, uh, well, it’s down 60%.So I’ll just go with zero. Know, like, we still have a lot of, like, blog posts. And I’m not just talking my blog because my blog includes podcast episodes and videos. But, like, my blog posts still get over 35,000 views per month that we can actually track. You know, that’s.
That’s not zero. Did it used to be higher? Yeah, used to be over 60,000amonth. It’s now down to 35. That is almost.We’re almost at a 50% drop for me personally, but I still want that. I don’t want to just abandon the 35,000. That’s still a lot of money. And I’m fulfilling what they’re looking for. Because some people are readers, some people are listeners.
I’ve mentioned so many times I am an auditory learner. I read for fun, but I listen to learn. So I read fiction and listen to nonfiction because I don’t need to learn anything. You know, reading fiction usually, although I sometimes do. Uh, especially as I’ve been reading more fiction, as I’ve been becoming a fiction author.
Um, you know, I’ve been reading more fiction and learning some things. But, you know, anyway, the idea here is just to also reinforce your message across platforms. So you have an idea, you have a concept. You know, this 16 resolutions for 2026. Like, we will turn this into a lot of content, but we’re going to squeeze every last drop from every idea.
We work way too hard. You work way too hard to come up with a title and a hook and the 16 things for, like, an episode like this or the top 10x to then just have it be like, one TikTok video and be dead. No, repurpose. Repurpose. Repurpose.
Number 14. Sort of talked about this a little bit earlier, but I will lean into my strengths. Just said we’re going to repurpose. I talked about trying a new thing. You don’t need to be everywhere.You need to be effective where you’re the best. So resolve to lean into your strengths. If email Converts for you. I want you to double down. If video.
Video is your thing, go big. Like, maybe that’s your thing is okay. Video is big for me, but I’m not doing YouTube shorts. Okay, then start doing YouTube shorts. If writing is, use it.
Right, Whatever. Yes, test a new platform, like I said earlier, but don’t abandon what works. Testing should be a small experiment. I said earlier, 2. 5% of your workweek, one hour a week, not a full pivot.
We’re not gonna be okay. TikTok’s big for everybody else. I’m gonna go everything over. No, don’t do that. I see that so often.
Then, oh my gosh, the number of people I talk to on a yearly basis. If this is you, yes, I am making fun of you. Stop doing this. Well, you know, well, I tried. I tried TikTok for three months and I tried this, and then I tried this.
How many of those did you keep doing for one year? Well, none of them. Well, there you go. That’s why you sucked at every single one of them. So, um, lean into your strengths.
Don’t abandon what works. Okay. Drop what’s not working over time. Like, I can tell you right now, if this podcast stopped working. I mean, this is episode 679.
I’ve been doing this for a decade. If it stopped working and I stopped doing it, it wouldn’t be because, oh, uh, I quit on it after three months. I’m like, I stopped doing it because it stopped working. So, yeah, keep dropping what’s not working. Like analyze it.
There’s something that’s taken 12% of my time, but producing 2% of our results. Probably should stop doing it. Reinvest that 12% in something that produces a greater like that you could actually grow. Alright, number 15, I will build affiliate SEO assets. Okay.
I talked earlier about Evergreen traffic from those blog posts, right? Those alone, those 35,000 visitors a month easily make us. And uh, not all of those are affiliate. Like probably I’d have to look. It’s somewhere in the neighborhood of 15,000 of those visitors are affiliate related.
Like meaning we’re. They’re one or less or two or less clicks away from an affiliate offer. Not you know where. Yeah, if they click on this one post and then click here and then click there, they can eventually end up getting an affiliate offer. But they are one click away from an affiliate offer.
A review post, things like that, a blog post that’s specifically about a product or a comparison, a YouTube video, whatever it might be, product review of some sort 15,000amonth. And those generate us, uh, in excess of $25,000 a month consistently. So the math is pretty good, you know, buck 50, buck 75 a visitor, that’s pretty darn good, you know. So Whether it’s again, YouTube videos, blog posts, tools like Review Post Pro make this so much faster and so much easier by helping you create that optimized content. Because the key is you have to rank, but you have to convert.
In my free report, 75 Powerful Lead Magnets, I show you exactly what types of lead magnets actually convert and lead to explosive list growth. Grab your copy here!
If all you do is rank high, like people land on the page and like this is garbage and then you don’t convert them. And if all you do is convert but you don’t get any traffic, well that doesn’t work either. So you don’t need, you know, hundreds of posts. We’re getting those 15,000 from about 15 to 20, you know, pretty consistently drive a lot of traffic. Just like SEO, especially on the affiliate side.
It’s just a long term play starting out. It is not dead. People say, oh, SEO’s dead air is killing SEO. No, it hasn’t killed it, it just, it’s made it smaller. But what I found is the people who, I haven’t noticed a decrease in income, I’ll put it that way.
The people who are still searching are like really there. They’re looking for, not for AI to tell them what the top five are or uh, what to buy. They’re looking for AI, ah, to tell them what the top five are and then they go research those top five on their own. That’s how I use it. Actually.
I don’t necessarily ask AI to like here’s the thing to buy. Unless it’s like, you know, I needed a new back wiper blade on my wiper on the back of my car and I’m like, I just need to know like, what do I buy? And just tell me what to buy. Like, I don’t know how much those cost. I have no concept of any of that stuff for a wiper blade.
And it’s like here, this one rates 5 stars and it costs this much and here’s the link to buy and it can be there between 4 and 8 in the morning. Perfect. That’s a great use of AI. I don’t need to go read 15 reviews for a $10 wiper blade. You know, so but for a lot of products people do and so they ask AI to kind of give them like the top three to five recommendations and they dig in and they read the reviews.
So again, Review Post Pro is a great tool for that. I’m going to put a Link I just put a link to that shows. I just got an email the other day from this person who was just raving about it. And they literally, they were like, they said that they usually spend 15 to 20 hours creating a, uh, pretty lengthy review post. And they’ve cut it down to two to three because they still like to create some of the assets for it and format it.
Like really format it and things like that. It was like, you know, it just writes it for me and it writes it so well and I. They trained it in their style and you know, they’ve already written hundreds of blog posts. They just uploaded those blog posts and trained in their style. But it’s trained in how to format it, how to lay it out.
And you just answer a few questions and it’s like he’s like, in 10 minutes I wrote the post and then the other hour and a half, two hours was spent just making it pretty, you know, and like doing things that he want and adding internal links and stuff like that. But it’s, it’s really, it’s really a cool tool. So go check it out. Uh, I’ll put the link in the show. Notes to review Post Pro.
All right, finally, number 16, I will focus on selling, not just sharing. I said earlier I’m gonna focus on stories. But you gotta make the call to action, right? I want you to resolve to sell. You still.Yeah, you’re gonna tell stories, but you still need to use things like urgency and emotion in stories, of course. And clear calls to action. Selling, like change your mindset. If you think selling is manipulation, it’s not. It’s helping people make decisions.
If you believe in the product selling, as Zig Ziglar always said, selling is service. Stop just letting people know about stuff. Start inviting them to act. Your audience expects you to lead them and one of the ways you can lead them is to sell with confidence. It also happens to be one of the ways you can make a lot more money.
Alright, so Those are your 16 affiliate resolutions for, for 2026. Some of these might feel like these small little tweaks, right? Others might feel like a total mindset shift. Like the last one. Uh, if you can stick.If you can do four of those, I promise you’ll see a big difference. If you do eight of them, you’re gonna have an amazing 2026. If you do 10 or more, look out, look out. It all starts with that first one, though. Treat affiliate marketing like a real business.
All right? That’s number one. Number two, track your results. Number Three, build your list. Number four, go deeper on fewer promos.Number five, plan ahead. Number six, Use stories. Number seven, Try new platform. Try a new platform. Number eight, Ask for what you need.Get stuff from your affiliate manager. Number nine, build post promo follow ups. Number 10, automate where it makes sense. Number 11, create those standout bonuses. Number 12, study the pros.Pick a couple to study this year. Maybe 10 or 12 or 15 to study. Uh, number 13, repurpose everything. 14, lean into your strengths. Number 15, SEO.
Build those SEO assets in 2026. And most importantly, number 16, sell, sell, sell, sell. Don’t just share. So here’s your next step. I want you to pick three, just three, three of those resolutions.Maybe narrow it down. The way I usually do this is there’s a couple out of those 16, there’s a few. I’m like, I’m not doing that. I’m just not gonna do that this year. Um, you know, if I had to, if I had to look at it for me, I’m like, I’m just not gonna do that this year.
I don’t know which one I would pick. What is the one? Usually though there’s some. Or like I’m already doing it, I’m not gonna do it. I’m already, we’re already tracking things, already treating affiliate marketing like a business.Um, but what are the things? Like I need to do more. So for me, I’ll go and say I need to focus more on list growth. That’s number one. I need to go deeper on.
I need to, I need to reduce our affiliate promotions by one to two and go deeper on them. That’s two. I um, already do a great job of planning ahead. I need to use more stories. Definitely.
I need to try a new platform. That’s number four. I need to do better at building post promo follow ups. Uh, let’s see, we need to do more automation. We’re doing some, I talked about it earlier, but we could do more.And uh, some already studying, already creating good bonuses. Okay, so that’s six, right? I have six things. Oh, we need to repurpose more. I already said we’re doing a pretty good job, but we need to do more.
So that’s seven things. Now I’ve identified seven. Now I gotta go down from there. What are the three? So pick those three.
Just three. Write them down. Go ahead and list four through seven as well. Order all seven, focus on those top three, commit to them. Set up time right now to work on those three and then eventually you can get to number four and number five and number six, number seven, maybe even 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 and 13.
You know, we’ll go and all the way down to 16 and don’t go it alone. Okay. Share this episode with some somebody that you know. Share this episode with a fellow affiliate. Hold each other accountable because the future favors the prepared and this is the year to get serious.
Speaking of preparation, by the way, make sure you hit subscribe so you don’t miss next week’s episode or any of the other ones coming out in the new year. I’ve got some good ones. I’ve got an episode coming up and I’ve talked about one episode coming up in a few weeks that kind of funny and will help you learn how not to write an email to your affiliates. But I’ve also got one coming up pretty soon about AI and the you know. Is AI the death of affiliate marketing?
I’ll give you a little hint. It’s not. But you know, hey, talk about SEO. That’s going to be a good one. But actually you want to listen, so I’ve got some good stuff coming up.
You don’t want to miss it. So make sure you hit subscribe and like I said, don’t go along. Share um, this episode, go through it, have the other person pick their three and hold each other accountable. Okay, if you’ve got questions about anything I shared today, you can text me directly 260-217-4661. I’d love to help however I can.
And if this episode helped you take a second, leave a rating and review wherever you’re listening. It helps more than you know and share it with someone who could use it and I’ll see you in the next episode. Oh, and hey, Happy New Year. Let’s make it a great one. Thank you so much for listening today.
If you know someone who would benefit from hearing this episode, make sure to share it with them. And if you have a question, you can ask it at asktheaffiliateguide. com Questions make my best episode and it’s a great way to get featured right here on the podcast. If you’re loving what you’re hearing, please take a moment to leave a rating and review that helps others find this content so we can all benefit from it. See you soon.