AMY PORTERFIELD: Hey there, Amy Porterfield here, and welcome to another episode of The Online Marketing Made Easy Podcast. Today’s going to be a lot of fun because we, my friend, are going on a treasure hunt.
Now let me give you a little backstory before we get into this. When I was little I used to read this book series called Piggle Wiggle. Piggle Wiggle was a story about a mom with a bunch of kids and they lived in an upside down house. When money was tight for Mrs. Piggle Wiggle she would send all of her kids through the house to find gold or hidden treasures.
When I was little I thought, “This is so cool! If I ever need money all I have to do is go through my house and just find it everywhere.”
If it was only that easy, right? But as an entrepreneur, this story has actually stuck with me because I firmly believe you have hidden money opportunities throughout your business that, if you just dig a little deeper, you could easily find them.
As an entrepreneur, there are going to be times when cash is tight. Maybe you’re just starting out, your business is not exactly where you want it to be right now, so you are a little concerned about the cash flow. Or, maybe you’ve been at if for a while but you want to invest in some kind of new business tool or business opportunity and you need a little cash before you do so.
If that’s the case then these hidden money opportunities will definitely speak to you. So throughout this entire episode I’m actually going to reveal five very specific hidden money opportunities that I’ve used in my own business that you too can model to see a quicker cash flow instead of having to work on something for months and months to realize the actual revenue flow from it.
Also, as always, I’ve been having a lot of fun with these freebies that I’ve been offering with every podcast episode and I think you’ve been enjoying them too because the feed back and number of people that are opting to get my free PDF giveaways has been amazing. As you know, each podcast has its own very specific PDF giveaway and I’m going to tell you all about the free guide in this episode when I dive into the very first hidden money opportunity. So listen for that because it’s a good one and I think it’s very valuable for where most of us are in our business right now. So I’ll give you the freebie in the very first hidden money opportunity.
Before we dive in, this episode is brought to you by Lead Pages, the only tool I use daily to grow my email list. Lead Pages is the easiest landing page generator I’ve ever used. I love it because no coding or design skills are needed. If you want to come behind the scenes with me and see which three landing pages have skyrocketed my email list and watch me actually set up a lead page in less than ten minutes, download my mini training video at http://amyporterdev.wpenginepowered.com/newleads. It’s totally free. I’ll see you there.
Let’s go ahead and dive into Hidden Money Opportunity #1: This one is all about finishing your online training program. Notice I said “finishing” because this hidden money opportunity is for those of you who have started an online training program, have been working on an idea for one, or you are almost finished with one but it still hasn’t been put out there to the world.
If I could steal a term from Seth Godin, “ship it!” Get it out there. The thing is, it’s sitting there. It’s not done yet, and you could be getting so much momentum from this online training program.
Even if you need to put it out there in a beta test and get some feedback from people, that’s even a good thing to do. I’m currently doing that with a Facebook Ads program I have. I haven’t started selling it but before I work on it anymore I wanted to make sure I got feedback and I wanted to make sure it was right for my ideal audience. So I put it in a beta test.
You can do the same. The thing is, if this is a training program that’s been on your mind for a while but you just haven’t actually gotten it out there to everybody, remember that you do not need a million bells and whistles to make it great.
If you’re anything like me, you might have a whole bunch of online training programs in your digital library. And, if you’ve purchased some really quality ones, that might be intimidating you because I’ve seen some really “pro” online training programs, ones that look amazing and there are a lot of bells and whistles to enrich your experience throughout the program. I love those programs.
But that’s not where you need to start if this is your first online training program. I say start with an introductory product; maybe a few videos, transcripts, maybe a PDF of your slide decks, and maybe some supporting documents and that’s it.
If you really know your content well, if you have something to teach and you know you can add value to your ideal audience, you do not need all of those bells and whistles. So I want to make a challenge for you. If you’ve been working on a program or you have an idea for one and you know you can get it done, set a completion date.
For those of you that want to be really aggressive, set a completion date to get that online training program done in 30 days. Then, if you need to work a little bit on the promotion of it, give yourself 30 days to work on the promotion of it and get it out there. It doesn’t need to be a huge launch.
My business dramatically changed when I finally just got a product out there. My very first online training program actually had nothing to do with Facebook. It was a program to help authors launch their book online. I had worked with some authors and knew some things that could really help so I put a program together.
It took a long time to get it out there and I wish I had done it sooner. Once it went live I got great feedback. I knew what my audience liked, what they didn’t like. I knew instantly that I didn’t necessarily love that topic. So that was a big eye opener for me. And I knew what I needed to do next time.
You’ll never move forward if you don’t get something out there and just get the feedback that you need. Plus, you’re going to sell some of these programs. So, because of that, it’s the instant revenue that you’re looking for.
If you’re struggling to get the project done, I want to tell you about a brand new resource I’ve been using. My friend Devin Duncan sent me this book called Scrum. This book is all about project management. I really instantly fell in love with the process.
I’m a process kind of girl. I love project management systems. I like organizing data. So that’s kind of in my blood anyway. But even if it’s not part of your DNA, I think this book could be very valuable to get things done. In the book the author talks about these two-week sprints where you only focus on specific tasks for one week or two weeks and that’s all you do.
Your goal is to completely complete them so that they can stand on their own. Then you come together with your small team or big team (I have a really small team so it might just be me and my assistant, Trivinia). We come together and say, “Okay, what did we get done.” We review it all, we talk about where we might have had a challenge, where we can improve. It’s a 15-minute conversation and then we go on our next one-week or two-week sprint.
I like to do one-week sprints because as an entrepreneur building an online business I think things move a little bit quicker in shorter spurts. So I do one-week sprints with my team and with myself.
What I love about this book, it has allowed me to not multitask as much as I have been. I am super guilty of doing a million things at once and really, if you get down to the core of it, it makes me not enjoy any of it because I can’t really put my heart and soul into anything when I’ve got 12 things I am trying to do at once.
I did that this past week, this book is something I just recently read, and I am obsessed with it now. You would be amazed how much more quality work I got done when I was just focusing on what was in my sprint for that week. My assistant Trivinia loves it as well. So if you can get you and your small team onboard with this process of Scrum I think you will be pleasantly surprised in terms of how much you get done.
If you’ve been sitting on an online training program for a while this book is going to speak to you for sure. I think you will be just as excited as I was when I started to really dive into it. Let me give you one more tip. I’m going totally off my outline, this is not something I put in my outline, but I was very proud of myself recently because sometimes business books don’t hold my full attention.
This business book, although it was really good, was written by a guy in the military and a lot of his examples were about government and military and that doesn’t necessarily get me excited to want to keep reading. I just don’t relate completely. So there are parts of the book that were not necessarily keeping my attention. But I knew the content was so good I had to go from start to finish in this book and really get it.
What I did was get the Audible file (I belong to Audible and get one book a month) and I actually had the physical book because my friend, Devin, sent it. I put the Audible version on and I put it at 1.25. I made the guy talk a little bit faster than he was because he was pretty much of a slow talker so I put it at 1.25. Then I just followed along in the book.
I was listening to someone read the book to me but I was also following along because sometimes when I want to really understand a book and I just listen to the audio I miss so much of it because I start daydreaming or trying to work on something while I am listening to it and it doesn’t get my full attention.
I needed to follow along in the book, I needed to take notes and highlight and all that good stuff. But because someone was reading it I stayed fully focused in my head. I got through it in just the weekend and I’m so glad I did. So if you ever need a little extra incentive to get through a book because you know it’s valuable, but it might not be fully entertaining to you, listening to the audio and following along in the book just might be your ticket to success. I know, it sounds kind of weird but it works really well.
Let’s get back to Hidden Treasure #1, finishing your online training program. If you have not thought about adding an online training program to your whole business model just yet, if it’s not something you’ve really taken any action on just yet, then this is not the hidden treasure for you.
A lot of work goes into these online training programs. It’s not something I suggest you create over the weekend. So if you haven’t yet gone down this road, I think you would be very interested in the free PDF giveaway that I created for this episode.
It’s called A Course Creation Starter’s Guide. Basically, I created it to get you moving in the right direction for your program. Quite honestly, even if you’re already working on your online training program, there’s a section in this guide called The Seven Power Tools. They are the seven tools I use with every single online training program I create.
If you’re looking for some ways to be a little more efficient in how you deliver this program or how you create it, you definitely want this freebie as well. Again, it’s all about creating an online training program just to get you started in the right direction.
If you want to get your hands on it, all you need to do is go to http:// amyporterdev.wpenginepowered.com/46download. Or you can text 46download to 38470 and I will send you access right away. It’s a really good giveaway. It’s very valuable. I spend a lot of time creating these free giveaways for you so hopefully you’ll grab yours and let me know what you think.
Now let’s dive into Hidden Money Opportunity #2: Creating a mini promotion and making an offer instantly. Inside this hidden treasure I actually have three different ways you can do this. The first way is a webinar.
If you’ve ever followed any of my content you know I am a huge proponent of using webinars to build your business. But they don’t have to be so overwhelming and stressful as you might think. So if you’ve been thinking about possibly creating a webinar for one of your existing programs, products, or services then this one might peak your interest.
You can do this live or you can do a version of this called evergreen, or an automated webinar. First, if you are doing it live, you either want to use GoToWebinar or Google Hangouts. There are actually some other live tools you can use but I haven’t used them so I won’t recommend them.
If you want to do an automated webinar, meaning you record it in advance and then let people sign up for different dates and times because it’s already recorded, I use Evergreen Business Systems. There is a tool called Stealth Seminar that you can us as well.
If you’re thinking about doing a webinar there are some very specific areas that you want to spend the most time and focus on. I thought, to make this more actionable for you, I would give you some specifics in terms of how to create and promote a webinar.
The first thing you want to think about when you are doing a webinar is, of course, the content. Spend some time outlining the content and in my world I usually do a webinar for about 90 minutes. The first 60 minutes, or at least the first 45 minutes, is your content.
If the program is more expensive, like $1,000 program, I will usually do 60 minutes of pure content where I am explaining that I know the challenges they are facing, I am setting things up in a way that they really understand where the opportunities are. I am teaching them something they can walk away from my webinar and get action with. My goal is always, if you don’t buy my program at the end of the webinar, you can still apply some of the content that I taught you and get results.
I really, really spend a lot of time on the free content that I give away in that webinar. So you want to focus on the content. But you also want to focus on the flow of the content inside your webinar. There is truly an art and science in terms of how you set up a webinar.
The science is basically the strategy you are using to go from content to a sales promotion. So you really want to get specific and strategic about how that works. I’ll talk about that in a moment. But the art, to me, is the flow of the content. That includes using images, not putting a bunch of text on a slide, and the number of slides you are using makes a huge difference on whether that webinar is going to convert.
In the very first webinar I did I had about 25 slides for a full 60-minute webinar. That was not nearly enough. If you have 20 to 25 slides for a 60-minute webinar you likely have way too much text on each of those slides. You definitely don’t have enough imagery and you’re going to overload people per slide and you will lose their attention because when you stay on a slide more than about a minute they will start multitasking.
Your goal is to be switching slides regularly, pretty consistently. Use a lot of imagery, not a lot of cheesy stock photos, but there are some great sites out there now where you can find really beautiful imagery. BigStockPhoto is one of the tools I use. I think they’ve got some good imagery in there. But you want to be using a lot of imagery.
If you are doing a 60-minute webinar you want at least 80 slides. Did I just freak you out? I know that’s a lot. But a slide might have one or two words on it just to punctuate your point. You don’t want basically your entire script on the slide and you just read it word for word. You want people to engage and be with you so you are constantly switching slides and keeping their attention. That is just something to think about.
In addition, what I mentioned earlier, you want to make sure you are aligning your content with your sales offer. At the end of the webinar you are going to promote a program, product, or service. Let’s pretend it’s a $97 product which is usually how I use my webinars.
You want to make sure the first 45 minutes is all content. For at least the last 15 minutes you will be talking about your program, product, or service and what’s in it for them. Then I encourage you to open it up for Q&A. When you are actually going into the sales process what I like to do is say something like:
“Do you see just how powerful Facebook marketing can be for your business? There are so many different things you can do with Facebook marketing to get real results. But now you have a choice. You can either do it yourself and probably stumble along the way because Facebook changes all the time, or you can use me as your trusted advisor, someone to hold your hand along the way as I show you step by step how to do some of these major strategies that I just showed you in this webinar.”
In the webinar I’m giving them the “what”. What is it, why is it important to them, where in this whole process should they care about Facebook. I give them the “what” and my program teaches the “how”.
That’s the distinction you want to make. But when you are doing the “what” you are giving them some really solid data that they understand. They get the importance of it and they see how it can work in their business. So going from a content-rich webinar to the sales process is definitely a fine art that you need to ease into. It takes a little time. My first 20 webinars were ridiculous compared to how easy I can get into the sales process now.
In the sales process you want to make sure there is some scarcity. When you are promoting on your webinar one of the things I love to do is actually embed a countdown timer into my Keynote slide. I use Keynote, I don’t use PowerPoint but you can do this in PowerPoint or Keynote. Just research it, Google it to find out more. But you can put an actual moving timer in the final slide.
I always say, “For the next 15 minutes I’m going to take some live Q&A and I always have a few questions on the side ready in case people aren’t ready to ask questions. I know the questions most people ask so I get those ready in advance. I let them ask questions and say, “For the next 15 minutes, if you buy while we are on this webinar, you get this fast-action bonus.”
I make it worth their while to take action now. I don’t want to lose them. I don’t want them to get off the webinar and think about it later. I want them to make that fine decision now because I know my program will get them results. I always offer some kind of fast-action bonus like a cheat sheet or a check list or something related to what I just taught them so that they have an incentive to buy now. The countdown timer, the fact that it’s moving, really gets people to take action.
Lastly, if you’re going to create a webinar it is extremely important to have an email series that follows after the webinar. I typically send out a replay. That is usually my first email. But in that replay email where I am linking them to check it out if they missed it or want to watch it again I always say, “And on the webinar I mentioned my brand new program, here’s what it’s about.”
I use that very first follow up email to talk about the program I promoted on the webinar. Then I send a series of probably three more emails that encourages them to buy. I talk about the benefits of the program, what’s in it for them. I give them case studies. The emails that follow the webinar are all about why they can’t live without my program or product. See how that works?
There are a lot of cool things you can do with webinars. I know that sounds like a lot of information but this is something you can do within a week. If you already have a program or product you want to promote, a webinar can be put together within a week, for sure. That can be the hidden treasure to get that cash flow going sooner.
I wouldn’t do an automated webinar if you want to do it quickly. The live webinars are easier because you will obviously set a date, you will fill up the webinars, and one way to do that is with Facebook ads. I use Facebook ads to fill up all of my webinars and what I do is create a very specific post called an unpublished page post ad and I use that to promote my webinar.
In the show notes at http://amyporterdev.wpenginepowered.com/46 I’ll show you an example of an ad I’m running right now for a program called Jumpstart Your Facebook Marketing. It is my Facebook 101 program that I just recreated and I’ve been running ads to it consistently.
This one happens to be an Evergreen webinar. It is a recorded webinar but if you want to see how this process is done you can actually sign up for my webinar. Not because you want the product, but because you want to see how it’s all done. I’ll add a link in the show notes so you can sign up for my webinar, watch the webinar, and then watch how I weave the content and the sales process. Really pay attention to the emails that follow.
I am making about $2,000 a day from this webinar using Facebook ads, promoting it, filling it up, growing my list daily because of the Facebook ads. This stuff works really well. I’m not saying you are going to make $2,000 a day in the beginning, but there is a process here that I just kind of outlined briefly that you can follow to get that consistent revenue going.
If you want to check it out, I’ll definitely give you all the details in my show notes because you’ll want to study that one a little bit to jump into it.
I actually said in the beginning of Hidden Money Opportunity #2 that there are three ways to create a mini promotion and offer something. Webinars are the first way. I went into more detail there because that’s what I know the best. But you can also do a live mini training.
This is something you can truly do next week if you already have a program, product, or service ready. About a year ago, David Siteman Garland and I did actually worked together on a process that worked really well for both of us. It was a way to build your email list and sell something fairly quickly.
We used Facebook ads and we used another strategy to do it. We actually had a full overall strategy that we wanted to teach people from start to finish. We decided to create a two-hour live training where David and I did it together. We charged $297 for it and we both emailed our list.
Even if you have a small list, which at the time David’s list was a lot smaller than mine, and he did really well with this. I think he did equally well as my own list because David has a very, very responsive list. He’s worked really hard on making sure he has a connection with his audience. Even small lists do well with this kind of thing.
We created a very specific training. We did it with GoToWebinar. Then, when we did it live we recorded it and whoever signed up, even if they didn’t make it live, as long as they bought a ticket to the live show they got the recording, they got the PDF of our slide deck, they got the audio, and they got some support documents like cheat sheets and checklists to help them along the way.
It was a live mini training that we did on a specific date for two hours. We sold tickets to it and then we recorded it and gave the recordings to anybody that enrolled in the live training. It was really, really valuable. I think it made probably $60,000 or $70,000. It took us about one week to create the live training and one week to promote it. In two weeks we were able to do this.
What’s great is we did it together because we have very, very similar audiences that are aligned. David and I kind of do well together in terms of riffing off each other so we have a good energy. So it was a really great partnership. I’m not a huge fan of doing tons of partnerships in my business but something like this where it’s a quick in and out are a great idea.
You can do it alone too. You don’t have to have someone do it with you. But live mini trainings that you sell tickets to and then give the recording to are really great. Just for the record, when I say “live” I don’t mean in person. I keep saying we are selling tickets so that sounds like you are doing an event. I just mean online live event. I’m sure you knew that but I just wanted to clarify.
The third way for you to do a mini promo and then make an offer is through what I call the 30-day challenge. I have never done this but I am such a fan of these and I definitely want to do this down the road. A 30-day challenge is where you get people enrolled in a kind of movement with you. They opt in to go on this journey with you for 30 days and then at the end you promote whatever it is you want to offer.
I’m going to give you three examples of really great 30-day challenges and then, of course, you can go to my show notes and click on these links and check out how they’ve done them. I will say that 30-day challenges are live for a certain time and then they are not. So a few of them might not be live. So I’ll link to some examples of what it looked like when they were live.
One is from the ladies at Simple Green Smoothies. They do a 30-day challenge for creating a green smoothie every day for 30 days. They do really, really well. They run Facebook ads to the challenge. They build up their list like rock stars and then at the end, of course, they promote an eBook or some kind of guide for smoothies. They do super, super well.
Another one is the Money Love Challenge from my good friend, Kate Northrup. She just recently did this and she said she has had amazing success. She had tons of engagement. People are excited about it and she actually did this one, not to sell something at the end, but to just start building her list with quality people that actually care about what she is putting out there. But she could definitely promote to them at the end.
My good friend, Natalie Lussier, does a 30-day list-building challenge that I think is fantastic. I’ll link to all of those 30-day challenges and they are a lot of fun. You can use imagery and hashtags and all of this good stuff to get people around this movement you are creating. I think you’ll enjoy it just as much as your audience will as well. So that’s another way to do a mini promo where you offer something at the end.
Moving on to Hidden Money Opportunity #3: Creating a four-part email sequence that leads to an offer. Before you start to say this one is not for you because you don’t have a big list, you do not need a big list. In fact, I want you to try this one when your list is still small because you’re going to learn a lot from it, get better and better at it, and then as your list grows these four-part email sequences are going to crush it for your list.
These sequences are just what I’ve said, they are four emails that get sent over a short period of time and your goal is to paint the picture of a challenge you know your audience is facing and, of course, your program is that solution. You have four emails to do it. So, in that first email you are just easing people into the idea that you know there is a challenge and you have the solution.
But you need to make it really actionable. Let them learn something in that first email so you get their attention and they know you are there to offer value. Before I get into the specifics of this four-part email sequence, the reason this one is so powerful is that people on your list might have already received an opportunity to buy your program but they didn’t buy.
We all buy at different times. And most of us need a few different opportunities to buy before we even make the decision that we want to do it. So don’t be afraid to put this out in front of people who have already seen your program promotion because maybe they just weren’t ready to buy then.
Let’s get back to how this would work. You are offering value from the get go. Email #1 is a content-rich email where you give value in a way that helps your audience and in that email you are going to gently mention you have a program that they can take advantage of to get results. You are offering value, it’s content rich, and you are painting the picture of the challenge you know they are facing. Then the solution is your program.
From there, the emails that follow will be a little more aggressive in terms of selling the program. You are not going to be aggressive in a spammy way. You are going to tell them that you’ve got a program and here’s what is in it for them. You talk about the benefits, not the features, not the fact that it’s three videos and transcripts and audio.
You are talking about the benefits. It is going to help them do XYZ. It’s going to solve the problem of whatever it is you solve. It’s going to take away stress and overwhelm around whatever it is. You are filling in the blanks here but you are making it about them and you are really telling the story of the benefits so they get why they need it.
You can use case studies. You can use stories. You can use examples. These emails are meaty. They are not just really short emails that have a link to your sales page. They are meaty emails that actually paint the picture. You can use images, different screen shots from inside your program, if that would make sense to you.
You are going to use all of your different ideas you have to promote this program and you are going to make them into these four different emails. You are leading people to the sale in each of the emails. That final one is going to be the scarcity, the one that has the most scarcity. You can actually say that you are running a special promotion with a discount or free bonus when they purchase by a certain date.
You can do this either Evergreen and have it going out to all the new people that join your email list after a while, after they’ve gotten some value. You can program it that way or you can make it very time sensitive where you will start a promotion today and tell people, “by Friday this offer is going away.”
That’s going to definitely get you that instant cash. With the final email, you are going to tell them, “This is the final email I am sending about this opportunity. You are not going to get another opportunity to get this bonus when you purchase.”
You can even put a countdown timer inside an email. It’s HTML. You’ve got to Google it but you might have seen some of my emails come out during Profit Lab. When we are down to the last day you open your email and you will see an actual moving countdown timer. The seconds are moving as you are reading the email.
That’s another thing you can do. Scarcity is so important for all of these hidden treasures because my goal for you is to make money now. Get that boost of instant cash so you can do what you want to do or fund that business that might be struggling a little bit right now because you haven’t taken action recently. Just think of it in that way. A four-part video series could do just that.
Moving on to Hidden Money Opportunity #4: Offering your services to your audience. There is a huge caveat with this one so stay with me here. I am passionate about teaching you how to build a business that does not rely on trading your time for dollars. I’m not a huge fan of the service model of business. One, it just doesn’t work for me. I really enjoy creating online training programs and having a more automated business that I still get to connect with my audience, just not on a one-on-one service- based level.
That might be your business and that might be working great for you. I love that. Do what works best for you and what you enjoy. But if you’re trying to build an online business where you are not trading dollars for hours but are looking for faster income right now (a boost of revenue) this might be the way to go.
I want you to look at this one as a temporary opportunity to a select few on your email list. What you are going to do is if you have a special skill or a knowledge base (which I know you do) that your audience could take advantage of, you can create an opportunity to offer your time and services to this audience for a premium. Again, you would only do this for a small group of people.
Let me tell you how I did this in my first two years of business. I set up an opportunity where I would review your Facebook marketing strategy. I would go on your Facebook Page. I would review that. I would review your profile. I would interview you to ask questions about how you are using Facebook and about your program or product and how that’s coming into play on Facebook and all that good stuff.
I would do this audit of your Facebook marketing. Then I would go off and create a report. I had a template for it so it wouldn’t take me hours and hours. I would create the report to offer you insight in ways you could make your Facebook marketing better, how to brand your Facebook Page in a different way to get a bigger impact, all that good stuff.
I knew Facebook so well that this didn’t take tons of time and energy. But it was really valuable to my audience. For a while I actually sold this service. It ranged from $97, for a really light audit, up to about $300. I would only take on a few a week but that was instant revenue that I needed as I continued to build my online training programs.
I love this model when it is temporary. It’s premium and it’s to just a select few based on your opportunity or availability to spend time on this. This is not something I want to take over your business so that all of your other projects are derailed while you start offering a service.
This is a little bit on the back burner for a little extra cash. Do you get it? I know I’m really drilling in on that but I don’t want you to change your business model for this hidden money opportunity. But we all have skills like consulting and coaching. Maybe you are a nutritionist and you can help people make a 30-day meal plan. That’s something that is definitely duplicable. You can have a template for that.
Just think of your niche and decide what you can offer that is not going to derail you on the projects you are working on but will help boost revenue for a short time as you get things going. Offering a service is definitely one way you can do that. Just promise me you won’t let it derail you from getting that online training program done or writing the email sequence you know you’ve been wanting to write forever. That stuff’s the most important but this is definitely a hidden money opportunity for a quick win.
We are moving into the final Hidden Money Opportunity #5: Becoming an affiliate to somebody else’s program or product. This isn’t a new opportunity. You’ve heard of this one before but have you actually done it and have you done it right?
I saved this one until the end because you can become an affiliate of somebody else’s program or product or service and use some of the opportunities I talked about, the webinars, the 30-day challenge, the mini live promo that I told you about, the four- part email sequence. Those can all be used as an affiliate as well.
I have been an affiliate for many years for different programs and products and I am a huge fan of this model. I don’t let it take over my business and I definitely never want it to make more money than my own programs because my brand and what I teach is most important to me.
It definitely compliments all of the stuff I am doing on my own. B School, you probably heard me talk about that in Episode #45, is a huge part of my affiliate revenue. I am a proud member of B School and I promote it any chance I get because I know it changes lives and businesses.
I am also an affiliate of Lead Pages which you heard about earlier in this episode. They do amazing things and they have changed businesses quickly based on how easy their tool is. There are a few other programs and products that I will definitely promote because I believe in them.
I want to give you three smart tips for affiliate marketing. That first tip is basically what I just alluded to. You have to believe in it. You have to have used it, know that it works, have your own results that you can talk about, and be so excited to sing its praises. You know you’ve made a good affiliate marketing partnership or connection when you tell everybody about it even if you’re not going to get money for it.
I’ll be at an event and I’ll tell somebody, “You’ve got to go get Lead Pages.” I don’t give them my affiliate link. I don’t tell them where to go on my website. I could. But in those moments that is sometimes a little awkward. I just tell them they need Lead Pages. If you’re going to tell people about something whether you get paid or not, that’s when you know it’s a really good affiliate connection.
Another thing to think about is, again, what I mentioned at the beginning of this hidden treasure, build a funnel with your affiliate promo. You can do a live event with Lead Pages. I do that all of the time. We do live webinars together and they work really well.
One of the main people, Tim Page at Lead Pages, is an amazing webinar host. So I bring him on, I fill up the webinars with people I know will find it valuable. He pretty much runs the webinar and I just pitch in and jump in once in a while. It is a really great webinar for me and incredibly valuable.
Webinars, four-part email sequences, and mini trainings all work. Also, if you go to http://amyporterdev.wpenginepowered.com/newleads that’s an affiliate promotion but I did a training for it. I literally walk you through how to use Lead Pages. I am never going to ask you to use my affiliate link and purchase something if I don’t first offer immense value.
For B School, I have an entire B School bonus experience; five bonuses you can’t get anywhere else, including the live two-day event, including a special Facebook ads program, including my new webinar program that’s not even out yet. But you get this stuff in B School when you use my affiliate link.
You’ve got to make it worth their while. So you’ve got to do the work. But, affiliate marketing is so much more streamlined for a business that’s just starting out because you don’t have to create the program or product or service. This is a great thing to do when you are still working on your own online training program.
It doesn’t have to be incredibly cheap or incredibly expensive. The price point is not necessarily what you want to look for when you become an affiliate. You want to make sure you believe in the product. B School is $2,000 and Lead Pages is a few hundred dollars. That is dramatically different. You just want to appeal to what you know your audience will find immense value in. That is just something to think about.
The third affiliate marketing tip I want to give you is to check out a really great article that my good friend, Pat Flynn of Smart Passive Income, has on his blog. It’s actually not a brand new blog post but is still incredibly relevant. The date doesn’t matter.
It’s called Five Ways to Unbox the Mystery and Increase your Affiliate Income. I thought it was a really smart strategy for affiliate marketing, especially for those just starting out. Definitely check that out. Oh, and he has another great article, How to Stop Hoping and Start Earning. He is definitely the go-to guy when it comes to affiliate marketing because he’s all about passive income. So he’s a great guy for that; definitely check that out, it’s worth the read for both of those blog posts.
Before we get into the final wrap up, I want to review the five hidden money opportunities that we went over today.
- Finish your online training program. As Seth Godin would say, “Ship it!”
- Do a mini promotion and make an offer. That’s where the webinars, the 30-day challenge, the live trainings come into play.
- Create a four-part email sequence that leads to an offer. It doesn’t matter how big or small your list is.
- Offer your services at a premium price to a select group of your audience. Don’t let this one take over your business.
- Become an affiliate to someone else’s program or product that you believe in and you are passionate about.
I’m looking forward to hearing which one you choose.
I hope this episode has inspired you to find some hidden money opportunities in your own business. I can’t wait to hear what you find. So when you do find that opportunity that’s right for you, make sure to post it on my Facebook Page and let me know what you’ve done because I’m always so curious how my listeners actually use these steps and tips and strategies that I put out there. Keep me posted.
You can get all of the links to the resources I mentioned in this episode, and there were a lot of them, at http://amyporterdev.wpenginepowered.com/46. Lastly, if you want it, don’t forget to download the course creation starter’s guide I created to get you moving in the right direction with your program creation. This is the free PDF giveaway that I mentioned in Hidden Opportunity #1 about finishing your online course.
Even if you are already working on your online course there is a section in that guide called The Seven Power Tools. I use these to create all of my online courses. That might be really valuable to you as well. So you can get it instantly. All you need to do is go to http://amyporterdev.wpenginepowered.com/46download. Or, if you like to text, just text 46download to 38470 and I’ll send it to you right away.
I cannot wait to hear about everything you create so promise to stay in touch. I hope you have a fantastic week and I can’t wait to connect with you again soon. Bye for now.
