- Affiliate marketing has had a huge impact
for us at Primal Video.
We're now generating over 10s of thousands of dollars
per month in passive income.
So in this video, we're going to show you
how you can start affiliate marketing for beginners
and share our top tips so that you can
build your own sustainable passive income,
the smart way, step by step.
Hey, it's Justin Brown here from Primal Video,
where we help you amplify
your business and brand with video.
If you're new here, make sure
you click that subscribe button
and all the links to everything we mentioned in this video,
you can find the link in the description box below.
So let's jump into it.
Affiliate Marketing is an incredibly powerful way
to generate passive income, and in this video,
we're going to run through everything
that you need to know to get started
and to scale your new revenue streams fast.
And if you stick around to the end
I'm also going to share with you some of our
top affiliate programs revenue wise
to give you some ideas on where to start looking.
Now firstly and really importantly I do want to stress here
that this is not a get rich quick video.
This is a get rich smart video,
with the lessons that we've learnt
from a ton of trial and error
and years figuring out how to make money online,
and how to make money that is truly passive.
So to be clear, despite what a lot of people
are out there saying that passive income is a myth
or passive income isn't possible.
With the systems that we've set up,
we make money online 24-7, while we're asleep,
whether we work or whether we don't,
and affiliate marketing is a big part of that.
And you'll see why in this video.
Now, I also want to stress here
that while passive income is amazing, and it is possible,
but what most people don't realize
about creating passive income is that there is
actually nothing passive about creating it.
It does take work, does take time,
and it requires you to add and to create
real value for your audience or for your customers.
But the good news is,
is that that's what we're going to show you
exactly how to do in this video.
And I also want you to realize here
that this is a long game.
You really need to focus on your audience or your customers,
and the bigger the impact you can have on them,
the more you're able to help,
them the more value you're giving to them,
the better this is going to work for you in the long term.
Okay, so what is affiliate marketing?
Well, it's essentially where you are paid a commission
or a referral fee for referring a sale.
So where you're recommending a product or a service,
when whoever you've referred that to
makes a purchase or signs up,
then you receive that commission
or that referral fee for driving that sale.
Now, we absolutely love affiliate marketing
because it is a win, win, win scenario.
It is a win for your audience,
because you are helping them.
You are recommending them products, tools, services,
resources that are going to help them
achieve a specific outcome.
So it's a win for them because you're making
that decision making process much, much easier.
And you're referring or recommending the products
and things that you use,
and that you know will be of benefit to them.
It is a win for the company that you are recommending
or the service that you are recommending
because you're driving them referred traffic.
It's not like you're sending them a heap of people
that may or may not be interested,
you're sending them people that you know are interested
in achieving that result or that outcome.
In which case, they're more likely to sign up and to buy.
So it's a win or a value add for your audience
or for your subscribers.
It's a win for the company because you're driving traffic,
but it's also a win for you because you receive a commission
from someone signing up
after you have referred them through.
And that's really what makes
affiliate marketing so powerful.
So how it actually works.
You will go and register for an affiliate program
or a partner program for a product or service
that you use and that you
would recommend to your best friend.
Then once you've registered with that company,
you are given a unique link that is tracked back to you.
You then post that link or mention that link,
could be in your YouTube videos
or in your YouTube descriptions.
People click on that link.
When they buy you receive a commission,
because it is tracked back to you
and your unique link.
So in a nutshell, the quick version.
That's how affiliate marketing works.
Now in regards to the actual commission's themselves
and how much people typically pay out.
It really comes down to
the individual affiliate program themselves.
Some affiliate programs will pay you
a fixed dollar amount for referring a sale.
Others might give you a percentage of the total sale
or of the total amount of items in the checkout,
you might receive a percentage of that entire sale.
So some of the affiliate programs
that we're a part of will pay a fixed rate
$100 commission for everyone that signs up using our link.
Whereas others then like Amazon,
we are receiving a percentage
based on anything that is in their checkout,
at the time of them purchasing.
So it's not just the one link
to the product that we mentioned,
and just getting the commission on that.
In Amazon's case, you're actually getting a commission
from anything that they have in their checkout
at the time of buying.
Obviously, your link needs to be the last one
that they click at that time,
for you to receive that commission,
or for that to be tracked back to you.
So that's typically how it works for a one time purchase.
But if you're referring people and recommending people
purchase an ongoing subscription
or something that has a monthly fee,
then the Commission's for that could either be
a one time fee as well,
or it could be an ongoing monthly commission
that you receive for the length of time
that the person you referred
remains with an active subscription
or remains an active purchaser of that service.
So an example like that could be something like
Ecamm Live which is our top recommended
live streaming platform on Mac.
They have a monthly subscription or monthly fee.
So anyone that we refer to them that signs up,
we receive a percentage of their fee every month
for the length of time that they are an active subscriber
or a paying member to access Ecamm Live.
Now I can't stress this enough.
You really want to come from the place of integrity
with the products and services that you are recommending.
And come from a place where you are looking
to add value to others and yourself
by recommending things that you already use,
the things that you know, the things that you like,
and the things that you trust.
And the things that you know,
are going to add value to other people as well.
There is no point recommending products and services
just because they have the best commissions.
That's what a lot of the sleazy salesy,
and people that are giving affiliate marketing a bad name,
that's what they do.
And the flow on is,
it's like you're referring your best friend
to something that isn't any good.
Your friend isn't going to be happy with you,
because you've recommended
that they purchase something that isn't good.
So you really want to come from that place of integrity,
and look at the value that you can add to people
with these recommendations.
So what you're doing here is helping people
make a decision based on you knowing
what is going to help them achieve a specific outcome.
And you're also going to save them a heap of time
going out there looking at all the different options
and making their own decision.
You can refer and recommend,
which are the ones that you use and why,
which is going to help them as well.
Now one of the biggest questions that we have
come up all the time around affiliate marketing,
is people asking if this will work for them in their niche?
Well, this is the biggest discussion point
with people thinking,
that's all right for us in our business,
but it won't work for them in their business,
or in their niche, or in their industry.
So for us, we recommend things like
gear to shoot videos, cameras, lenses, tripods, microphones.
We also recommend software, video editing software.
Any other tools or other programs,
that are going to help people create better videos faster,
and see return on implementing video in their business.
Also services and tools, like Tubebuddy.
It's an amazing tool
for helping you grow your YouTube channel.
And we also recommend things like Kajabi,
which is the coolest membership platform
that we use to host our Primal Video accelerator membership.
Or even other people's products or courses
that we know are going to help people
achieve a specific outcome.
So it's not just about being an affiliate
for the really obvious things, gear and tech,
but think bigger than that.
What are the other services and tools and things
that you use that you would recommend
to your ideal clients or customers, or to your best friends.
So to give you some ideas in other industries,
if you are a dog trainer, this could be the dog treats
or the dog toys that you recommend
that people use when they are training their dog.
Or it could be a specific course that you recommend
someone take to maybe stop things
like their dog barking at the front door.
So something specific, but something again,
that's going to help people achieve a specific outcome.
If you're a personal trainer, it could be the gym equipment,
it could be the weights, it could be the protein powder,
the nutrients, the supplements, all the things that you use
that you recommend people use
to get a better outcome or specific outcome.
If you're in the craft space.
It could be the specific dyes, the fabrics, the wool,
the knitting needles, all the specific things
that you use, that other people will be able to use
to again achieve a specific outcome.
If you're an entrepreneur.
It could be the books that you like
that have changed the game for you,
or that you recommend people read.
It could courses that you've taken.
It could be services that you use
in your day to day life for planning your day.
That could be something like a journal,
like the 90X planner, to help people
plan out their next 90 days.
Whatever things you were using
that you know will benefit your ideal audience.
So then how do you actually
start with affiliate marketing?
Well, the first thing to do is to write out a list
of all of those ideas, all of those products and services
that you use day to day that you know
are going to be of value to someone else.
So you want to write out a list.
It could even be a spreadsheet that you're filling out here.
And then you want to go and do a little bit of research
and find out if those products or services
actually have an affiliate program already.
Now to do this, it can be as simple as
just going to Google
and typing in the product or service name,
along with the word affiliate,
affiliate program or partner program,
they all mean the same thing.
In a lot of cases, if they've got one,
you should be able to find that they're linked in Google
or head over to the front page of their website.
Usually scroll to the bottom.
And they should have some mention
of affiliate or partner program down there.
If they do, you want to go ahead and apply
and sign up or register for that affiliate program.
Once you've been accepted, you'll be able to log in
and grab your own unique tracking link.
And then all you need to do is to share that link out.
And that's where you can put it in the description
of your YouTube videos, you could put it in your blogs,
in some cases, you could put it in your emails
and those sorts of things as well.
Now going back to your list,
if there's any that you can't easily find
if they have an affiliate program or not,
you could reach out to that company
or to that brand and ask them.
In some cases, they do have them
and they're just not public on their websites.
In others, they might be some other ways
that you could work with them
if they don't have an affiliate program right now.
Now one really important thing
I do want to mention at this point,
is that you want to be familiar
with the terms and conditions or Terms of Service
of each of the different affiliate programs.
Most of them out there are pretty straightforward,
but some of them do have some strict requirements.
Even things like Amazon a very specific around
when you can and can't include their affiliate links,
and even have some text and a bit of a disclaimer
that you have to include with an affiliate link.
Now, I don't want to scare you off with that,
but it's definitely something you will want to be aware of.
Now to really ground this and make it real for you.
I'm going to jump across now and show you
behind the scenes of some of
the affiliate programs that we are part of.
Just so that you can see what's possible.
So that you can see that this stuff does actually work.
Alright, so this is the dashboard
on one of the affiliate programs that we are a part of.
This is set to report for year to date.
So we've got everything back here to January.
You can see that we referred 417 clicks
and $200 worth of commissions.
So this one here pays a flat rate
$100 per conversion or per sale.
So you can see here the number of sales, 2, 6, 5, 5, 11.
And the dollar amounts on this end.
$200, 600, 500, 500, 1100.
Right through to this month so far, at 700.
So that's one program that's a fixed rate per sale.
Okay, so we're inside another one now.
This one is set to show the last six months.
So for May 349 clicks, 10 signups,
eight customers, brought us in $219.
This one here is a subscription based service.
So you either get the choice to pay monthly,
or you can pay for an annual subscription.
And we get a percentage based on either of those.
So you can see here as well
that the amount of clicks or the amount of traffic
that we're getting on our videos over time is increasing.
That could be because our videos are
increasing in views on YouTube,
and increasing in popularity,
or maybe we have created more content
or have more links out there now that people are clicking.
But last month 568 clicks, 13 people signed up,
which was 13 customers, bringing us in $321 US.
And this is another one here.
You can see total with this affiliate program,
we've earned $22,967 since signing up
towards the start of 2016.
If we come down here and have a look at the recent activity,
you can see someone signed up and purchased six hours ago.
We got $14.70,
19 hours ago, $8.70.
6 days ago, $8.70,
10 days ago 53.70.
Now all of these here, this is another monthly subscription.
So all of these amounts, are now dropping in monthly.
So obviously the new ones that get added in here,
just add to the base pool that we are accruing every month.
And then there's even some bigger ones here, 545.
And again, this is pretty consistent month on month
and it's growing.
And here's another one here now
again showing year to date,
from January through to now in October.
You can see the amount of clicks that we're having.
You can see the number of sales here,
and then you can see our commission's
that we've received for each of those months.
So you can see with this affiliate program,
year to date, we've done $12,842.
So you can see how these things add up
and stack up over time.
These are just a few that I've shown you.
Some of the bigger ones and some of the smaller ones.
Now I have a massive pro tip for you here as well.
That's going to change the game
with your affiliate marketing.
And it's going to save you a heap of headaches
as you grow with this stuff.
And that is to use redirect links or to own your own links.
And what I mean by this is instead of just sharing out
your raw affiliate link, that you're grabbing
from each of the different products,
or each of the different programs that you're a part of,
instead of just sharing out that link
and putting that link in your YouTube description
and on your blog and other places,
you want to make sure that you are using a redirect link.
So for us, we use
primalvideo.com/go/ the product or service name,
and that is the link that we are sending out.
And then we're using a plugin for WordPress
called thirsty affiliates, which redirects people.
So whoever goes to one of those links,
primalvideo.com/go/product or service,
they are then redirected to
where we want them to go, to our affiliate link.
So they're still taken to the same place
but there's two main benefits in this.
The first one and the main one
is that if that are affiliate link changes
and we have been a part of affiliate program
that update their links from time to time.
If you've got that link pasted everywhere,
multiple YouTube videos, on your websites
and those sorts of things,
it would be an absolute pain to go back
and to replace those in all of those different places.
Whereas if you're just sharing your own redirect link,
all you need to do is to log into your service
like thirsty affiliates, and update the link to the new one,
then across all of your videos
or anywhere that that link is already placed,
everyone that clicks it will be taken
to that new link or that new location.
So that's going to save you
an absolute ton of time and headaches.
But also, it's going to make your links look a lot better,
especially if they're branded for your company,
or your channel name, or your business,
like ours primalvideo.com/go.
So it looks a lot better, and it's also a lot shorter
than some of the affiliate links
that you will get out there.
Some of those can be ridiculously long.
So thirsty affiliates is the WordPress plugin
that we use to do that,
but you could also use any of the other
redirect services out there to manage those links for you.
Now earlier in the video, I mentioned
that I would also share with you a few of our
top affiliate programs, and why they work so well.
So the first one is pretty obvious one, and that is Amazon.
Now Amazon, as you know, they pretty much sell everything,
which means that you can sign up
for their affiliate program once,
and then you're able to use that affiliate program
to drive people to an absolute ton
of the products that you recommend.
So for us, that's things like microphones, cameras, tripods,
any other tools that we can recommend
people use to get a specific outcome.
And again, the other big benefit with Amazon
is you're also able to receive a commission
from anything that someone has in that checkout
at time of purchase, not just
for the one link that they clicked
or the one product that you referred them to.
And another one that I've already mentioned in this video,
is Ecamm for their live streaming software Ecamm Live.
Again, that's the live streaming software
that I actually use
for any live streams that we do,
and it makes it really easy for us
to recommend to our audience.
And they have an ongoing monthly subscription,
which means that our commissions or our referral fees
from them are ongoing monthly commissions as well.
So the cool part about that is
we're receiving ongoing commissions from them every month.
Now two others that I want to mention
are for Active Campaign and ConvertKit.
Now, these are both email platforms.
And these are both products that we've used
and that we recommend to our clients and to our audience,
to help them grow their email list.
And to manage everything and build out automations.
All to help them grow their business
and grow their revenue online.
We have a big focus on helping people
with this stuff at Primal Video.
So while the two of those are very similar, and yes,
there's a lot of overlap between them,
we actually recommend them to different people.
If you're an absolute beginner
looking to grow your email list,
ConvertKit is probably going to be the one for you.
If you're someone who is looking for
more advanced automations and advanced features,
and those sorts of things,
then that's when we would recommend Active Campaign.
And both of these are a monthly subscription service,
so people are paying monthly to use these services.
We are receiving a percentage
of what they're spending monthly,
as our commission or as referral for referring those sales.
But they also make it so easy for us to promote
because these are the tools that we know
are going to make the difference for our audience
and people who are interested in using them.
So those are some of our top affiliate programs.
But there really is no limit to how many
affiliate programs you could be a part of
as long as you're coming from that place of integrity.
Now, if you're someone who is really serious
about growing and scaling your affiliate income,
then having an email list and growing that email list
is one of the most powerful ways to do it.
So linked on screen is a free training workshop
that we put together showing you how you can
grow your email list organically using YouTube.
There's also a link in the description below.
So make sure you check out that training.
And I'll see you in the next video.