Conventional wisdom tells you that the right time to start promoting affiliate offers is after a certain point. One year of blogging, 1,000 subscribers, after a certain number of this or that. I’m here to tell you conventional wisdom is all WRONG!
The Brick and Mortar Approach
Imagine you had a brick-and-mortar store. Would you wait a year to start selling something? Would you even wait a week?
Of course not!
Would you wait until the 1,000th person walked in before you sold something? No.
Would you wait until your store was more famous? How absurd!
You’d start selling something…anything…RIGHT AWAY.
And most (or none) of those products wouldn’t be made by you.
So you’d sell other people’s stuff and get to keep a percentage of the revenue for yourself (sounds an awful lot like affiliate marketing doesn’t it?).
Consider this…if Sam Walton had waited until he had a better reputation, more followers, or more potential customers to sell his first product, Walmart wouldn’t be around today.
Better think like Sam.
My First Affiliate Promotion
A few years ago, I promoted my first affiliate product, Michael Hyatt’s 5 Days to Your Best Year Ever.
I had about 600 email subscribers and had been blogging for only a few months. Conventional wisdom says that it wasn’t the right time to promote an affiliate offer.
But I did anyway. (I am stubborn like that)
I remember setting a goal of 2 sales.
Yeah, I know, that was incredibly ambitious, right?
But two sales meant that two real people trusted me with my recommendation for Michael’s course and that was significant to me.
I signed up, promoted it as best I could, and waited for the results (Michael didn’t have a fancy affiliate system back then).
Weeks later I got a PayPal deposit for $586! I’d made 7 sales!
Earlier that week I received a check from a client for more than $20,000, but you’d think from my reaction to that $586, that I’d won the lottery.
I was that excited.
Fast forward to the next two promotions and I’ve made more than $37,000 in commissions and prizes from Michael’s launches.
That is the power of starting small.
Why Being Small is an Advantage
Many people think that being new, small, or unknown is a disadvantage when promoting affiliate offers.
Don’t get me wrong…if given the choice between being obscure and having 200 people on my email list or being well-known with 100,000, it’s not much of a decision. But, there are three incredible advantages to being small and getting an early start on affiliate promotions.
1. You get to practice with your best people
Think about it. Your first few hundred subscribers are usually a tight-knit community. You probably know many of them by name.
What better group of people to practice on than those who won’t hold it against you too much if you do something crazy or stupid?
2. Everything is an experiment
The smaller your subscriber base is, the easier it is to try new stuff. The risk is simply not as big.
Test out things like:
- Email frequency
- Subject lines
- Length and style of emails
- Products and offers
- Bonuses
- Close methods (more to come on this soon)
- Anything you can think of
3. Your mistakes are small
There will come a time (or three) when you pick a bad product to promote. We’ve all been there, and I’ll cover what to do when that happens in the coming months.
You’ll also mess up your promotion from time to time.
You’ll send some bad emails. You’ll offer some bonuses that flop. You’ll make mistake after mistake.
But the more you do this (like anything), the better you’ll get at it.
When you first start promoting affiliate offers, you’ll suck at it. Like you do anything the first time.
You have to put in the repetitions to see what works and what doesn’t.
I, for one, would rather make the bulk of my mistakes in relative obscurity than in the spotlight.
Why NOW Is The Right Time To Start Promoting Affiliate Offers
Regardless of whether you are brand new to platform building or a seasoned vet, if you aren’t promoting affiliate offers, now is the time to start.
As the old Chinese proverb goes:
The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago – The second best time is now.
If you have 50 subscribers, start now. If you have 5,000, start now.
If you’ve been blogging for two weeks, pick something to promote and go at it with all your might.
If you are looking for great offers to promote, just click here and I’ll send you some great opportunities.
You’ll only be small once, so use it to your advantage.
If you are already promoting affiliate offers, when did you start? If not, what is holding you back?
Questions?
Text me anytime at (260) 217-4619.
Or…check out some of my free reports to help you get on the right track:
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here here! Amen to this, Start small with greatness and you will be great with growth! A book I just finished is called “Greater” by Steven Furtick talks about this. Here are his top quotes in the book.
“The reason we struggle with insecurity is because we compare our behind-the-scenes with everyone else’s highlight reel.”-Steven Furtick.
Another one
“Great moves of God are usually preceded by simple acts of obedience.”-
That first quote reminds me of something Jon Acuff said once.
“We compare our beginning to someone else’s middle or end.”
In other words, we can’t all be Jeff Walker’s on day one. But we can make our FIRST sale!
I just posted on a page at my website my first Amazon Affiliate yesterday. A blog post links to that page and on that page is the Amazon link. As you can see I am just beginning and I have a lot to learn.
But dude…you are starting. Congrats!