Latest / The Life-First Solopreneur / 89. The What and How of Affiliate Marketing for Solopreneurs with Matt McWilliams
Transcript
- Matt McWilliams (00:00): One of my wife and I's favorite movie is "You Got Mail." Right. And I remember when Meg Ryan logs on and it says "no new mail". When has that happened to any of us in the last 15 years? Carly Ries (00:13): Not since that movie. Matt McWilliams (00:15): Yeah. And that was about winning, unless it's been like eight minutes since you checked. You know we get bombarded with emails, so nobody goes, you know what I really would like,? Gosh, I feel like I'm not getting enough email, so I'm gonna go subscribe to some newsletters. Nobody subscribes to newsletters. There are very few industries where that actually works Intro (00:34): Bigger. Doesn't always mean better. Welcome to the One-Person Business podcast, where people who are flying solo in business, come for specific tips and advice to find success. As a company of one, here are your hosts, Joe Rando and Carly Ries. Joe Rando (00:53): Welcome to the One-Person Business podcast. I'm one of your hosts, Joe Rando, Carly Ries (00:58): And I'm Carly Ries. Joe Rando (00:59): And today I'm not gonna lie to you on our motives behind having our guests on today. We're partially selfish because we are so interested in learning all about affiliate marketing. And our guest has been a go-to resource of ours and for a lot of people. Matt McWilliams is a four-time affiliate manager of the year. Entrepreneurs and companies such as Shark Tank's Kevin Harrington, Stu McLaren, Adidas, Ray Edwards, Brian Tracy, Lewis Howes Shutterfly, and Michael Hyatt have trusted him to run their affiliate launches. He helps online business owners make money as an affiliate and leverage the power of affiliate partners to grow their business. So guess what? He's qualified. So Matt, welcome to the show. Matt McWilliams (01:41): Thanks for having me guys. Carly Ries (01:43): We are so excited to have you. This is gonna be the easiest question for you, but not for everybody listening. Can you explain what exactly affiliate marketing is and how people can make money from it? Why it's a good tactic for solar entrepreneurs and so on? Matt McWilliams (01:57): I don't, I don't know. Matt McWilliams (02:04): I'm still learning what it is, which is actually kind of cool. Nah, I kid, you know, at it's simplest form, affiliate marketing is you recommend a product or service that you believe in. And in, you know, reward and compensation for that recommendation, the merchant, the company, the person is going to share in their revenue with you, that's called a commission, right. Again, that's a very simplistic explanation. I often joke, I mean, I think affiliate marketing's been around since the dawn of time, you know? I mean, you go back 5,000 years. There are like two Roman guys. You know, I always struggle. I give this analogy and I need to come up with some Roman names, cuz the only two that I know are from the movie gladiator. So you know, Joe Rando (02:53): How about Romulus and Remus? Matt McWilliams (02:55): Yeah. Roman A and Roman B are walking down the street and Roman B says, you know, Hey, oh, you're hungry. You're looking for a sandwich. Let me take you down to the deli. You know, And I'll introduce you to... I don't know if they had deli's in ancient Rome, but I'm assuming they did. let me take you down to that deli and I'll introduce you to the owner. You buy a sandwich and the owner goes, Hey, Roman B, thanks so much for the intro, your next meal's on me. You know, that's all affiliate marketing is when you really get down to its core. As far as how people make money from it. Well, like I said, the merchant, the product owner, the company, however you wanna word it, they're gonna share a percentage of the revenue from that sale with you. Matt McWilliams (03:37): Now that's great for them because it's truly the only form of paid marketing where you pay after the sale is made. So if you think about it from their perspective, you know, if they want good old Zuckerberg to send them traffic, they gotta write whatever the company's called now, Meta, they gotta write Meta a check, so to speak. They have to deposit into their ads account $500, a thousand dollars, whatever it is, just to even get started with their ads. With no guarantee. Zuckerberg is not personally guaranteeing you're gonna make a dime. From their perspective the beauty is, they make money before they spend it. And when I go back to 2005, right about this time, I mean, we're recording this in the spring of 2005 or no, we're not. We're recording this in the spring of 2022, but if I go back to the spring of 2005 Memorial day weekend, 2005 was when I got started in this world of affiliate marketing. Matt McWilliams (04:34): We needed a form of marketing for our company where it was exactly that . We got paid before we paid. And so, you know, you bring in say a thousand dollars in sales for them. They share some percentage of that. It depends on the product. You know, in digital course world, it might be 40 or 50% in physical product world, it might be as low as five to 10%. Most things are somewhere in between those extremes. They're gonna share that with you. You make money. Now, the beauty of it for you, you ask why is it a good tactic, right? When you're first starting out as a solopreneur, let's just say you got a blog and you're producing content. You don't yet know what your audience wants. First of all, you don't know what they want. Matt McWilliams (05:18): Second of all, you don't know how to sell. You're not very good at selling usually unless you're in the sales profession. And thirdly, you really don't have the time or the money to create that good of a product. You know, I cringe when I look at the first recording of my very first course and the lighting's off, it was recorded on a camera that I think was roughly like, you know, two megapixels. It was just terrible quality. I looked like I'd woke up, got out of bed and just like, turned on my flip phone and started recording videos. It was just awful. You look at my courses now and they're well produced. Well, why is that, that cuz I know what the heck I'm doing? And so you don't have a good product. Matt McWilliams (06:02): You don't know how to market it and you don't really even know what if the product's even good for them. But with affiliate marketing, you begin to learn those things. And this is the beauty of it. I can go out and pick five different products in five different sub niches and I can promote them and see, okay, which one does my audience relate to better? I can promote two products that are almost identical in the same niche and one's a $300 product and one's a $1,000 product. So I get to test price points. I get to test things like email subject lines and marketing methods and all those things without the risk of my own products, I've got a bookshelf over here, guys that I keep in view of my office. I can see it right now just to the left of my left monitor. Matt McWilliams (06:45): That's full of products that I created over the years that I never sold or that only sold a few. I lost money on the creation of those products. And I keep it there as a reminder, that's not how you test, what's going to sell you test. What's going to sell by picking products that are similar, that are already on the market that you're gonna make money on. And it's a guaranteed profit. If I sell one, I'm guaranteed to make money. Versus if I have to buy a hundred and only sell one, I'm guaranteed to lose money. And so those are some of the benefits that solopreneurs are gonna find. Carly Ries (07:18): Yeah, absolutely. And I never really thought of the audience research part of it, but that makes so much sense and just adds to the long list of why people should consider this. And before I go into my follow up question, we are recording this basically on the eve of Memorial weekend. So happy anniversary yeah, thanks to you. That's very exciting. But my follow up to that is this sounds very intriguing. So for people who are interested, where should they start first? You touched on this a little bit, but can you elaborate? Matt McWilliams (07:43): Yeah. I mean, step one is just to find a product that you could promote that would fit your audience. Odds are, it's something that you're either currently using or you used when you were where your audience was. For example, if I'd never done affiliate marketing, where I'm at in my online business, I've been in business for 17 years. It's a very different place than where my audience is, who are typically somewhere between day one and year four. First of all, none of the stuff I used in 2005 even exists now, , It's a totally different world. But some of the tools that I use today, I would not recommend to my audience starting out. They're too expensive or they require too much expertise. They have features that a beginner doesn't need, right? Matt McWilliams (08:38): And so, odds are though, it's something that you either currently or used in the past. So the first thing I say is, look at your desktop, your literal physical desktop, and also your computer desktop. So for me, I can look at my physical desktop and I've got laying open right here, my planner, the full focus planner from Michael Hyatt, right? And this is not an ad for him. It's just that I do recommend that. When people ask me, Matt, you seem kind of organized and you've admitted that you have ADHD, so how is that? Well, this has been a huge help. And if you wanna learn more about the full focus planner, go to my toolbox page, mattmcwilliams.com/toolbox. And I write all about it, blah, blah, blah. Right? That's an easy way to do affiliate marketing. Somebody comes to you and says, what do you recommend for such and such? Matt McWilliams (09:25): And then you send them to a resources page. Secondly, look at your computer desktop. Look at what tabs do you constantly go to on your site? So for instance, I'm constantly going to ClickFunnels for our landing page stuff. I'm constantly going to Edgar, meet Edgar, for our social media stuff. I'm constantly logging into certain courses. I'm constantly going to certain softwares and things like that. So I recommend those products. So it should not take very long. If you look on your physical desktop and your computer desktop. Or if you're in a niche like gardening, I wouldn't recommend looking on your desktop. That'd be weird if you keep your gardening supplies on your desk. That's very unusual, but go out to your gardening. What do you have on your gardening table out in the garage or wherever, right? Matt McWilliams (10:15): What are the tools that you're using? What are the products that you're learning from and just start recommending those tools and products. I mean, that is the simplest way to get started. From there, you're gonna, obviously you're gonna need to apply to the affiliate program and hopefully get accepted. And I can, if you'd like, I can share a resource, that'll help with that. But you need to get accepted. And I can show you how to do that. From there you need to create a promotional plan. You need to actually sit down and just create a strategy for how you're going to promote this. Are you going to send three emails over the course of a week and five tweets and two Facebook posts, whatever it is, just create some sort of a plan. There's an old quote, I think it's MacArthur or Patten, or Eisenhower. One of the military generals from World War II that says, "no good plan survives the first shot in battle", but still, if you have a plan, it gives you a framework for how you're gonna promote it. And that's key. Carly Ries (11:20): Yeah, absolutely. It's funny. I'm thinking about my computer desktop right now, it just has a notepad up. I've been feverishly taking notes to make sure I'm getting all of this down because these are such good little nuggets of wisdom. So let me ask you. You have come a long way since 2005 and you know what works now and what doesn't. I'm gonna ask a two part question. What are common mistakes you see people make and what do successful affiliate marketers do well? Matt McWilliams (11:45): Oh my gosh. What are the common mistakes? There's so many, unfortunately. I mean, number one is kind of what we just talked about, trying to promote something that's outside of your realm of expertise. It doesn't necessarily mean you've had to have used it. That's a whole separate topic in and of itself, but it's just something that, you know, the number one question you need to be asking is, do I understand the product, right? There's a scorecard that we use. It's a 10 question scorecard. And the number one question is, do I understand the product? The number two question is, do I understand how to market this product? Do I have basic product knowledge? So picking products just for their commissions, just because you see dollar signs is never a good idea. That would be mistake number one. Mistake number two would be going back to what I just said, not having a plan, like "Hey, I'll promote that" Matt McWilliams (12:34): And it just kinda becomes this like willynilly thing. You end up sending one email and a Facebook post and you go, why didn't I make any money? Well, duh, you sent one email and a Facebook post and that was it. Matthew Kelly, I don't know if you guys know who he is, but he wrote a wrote a book called The Dream Manager and a bunch of other books. I'm gonna butcher this quote, but he was speaking at a Cutco convention like 10 or 12 years ago, the Cutco knives. And he said something to the effect of like the first time people hear it, they didn't hear it. The second time people hear it, it sort of registers with them. I forget what he says for the third time. But my favorite thing is he says, the fourth time you say something, people go, this must be important, cuz it's the second time I've heard it. Matt McWilliams (13:21): yeah. And then you go on down to like the seventh time. It finally registers with them. Wow. So if you send one email, first of all, if you send one email and a Facebook post, that means that, if you have a pretty decent open rate of 25% and Facebook happens to show it to 10% of your audience, which would be nothing short of a miracle. That means that roughly 5% of your audience has seen it twice and maybe 30% seen it once. Just rough math there. In other words, almost nobody's seen it. And so that's a big mistake I see. Just like sending out one or two things and go, "I didn't make any money". Well, of course you didn't, they're not on that fourth repetition. Just some other mistakes that I see very commonly is not taking advantage of like the lowest hanging fruit. Matt McWilliams (14:09): One of the best ways, if you've already got content out there, go through your blog post, go through your podcast episodes. If you talk about a book, put an Amazon link to it, an Amazon associates link, that's what they call their affiliate program. Yeah, You're gonna make 82 cents a sale, but it's 82 cents versus nothing. It takes an extra two seconds. If you mention a book, link to it. If you mention a product, become an affiliate and link to it. If you mention a person become an affiliate for them and just create an affiliate link to their general landing page or something where it can go to all their products. If you quote somebody, same kind of thing, not taking advantage of the lowest hanging fruit out there, your existing content. Fourthly is, I mentioned this earlier, but not creating a resources page. Matt McWilliams (14:56): If you go to MattMcWilliams.com/resources page. I walk you through step by step, how to create a resources page. And it is the third most trafficked page on my website. There's my homepage, my about page and my resources page. It gets roughly 10,000 views a month. All it is, is a page where I recommend the things that I recommend. And so anytime somebody emails me and says, Hey, Matt, what do you recommend for such and such? We say, go to Mattmcwilliams.com/toolbox. That's all of my recommended products. If it's not on there, I don't recommend it. You know, unless you ask me for like a recommendation for my favorite gingko biloba supplement, I'm not gonna put that on that page cuz it's irrelevant. I might just say it's this and recommend it to you. Jst for the record, I don't have a favorite gingko Biloba supplement. Carly Ries (15:46): I was gonna ask, where did that come from? Matt McWilliams (15:48): I like whatever one I'm taking right now. And I don't know what it is, but it does seem to work so, you know we could go down that rabbit trail, but my point is like, everything I recommend is on that page. So anytime somebody emails me or my support team or, they text me on our text platform or whatever, then we just send them to that toolbox page. And the cool thing about that, just as a side note, I didn't think about this until years later, it's an easy answer. Like I don't have to remember 52 different links for where my recommended things are like, oh, where what's your, what's your link for this book? I don't know. Just go to MattMcwilliams.com/toolbox click on the books page and you'll you'll go there. Matt McWilliams (16:32): Right? I don't know what my link is for that. So it makes it easy for me. But secondly, when they're on that toolbox page, they went there specifically say for my recommendation for my favorite email software, and then they scroll down and they see my recommendation for a podcast microphone and they go, oh, I need one of those too. I guess I'll just buy this one through Matt. So I actually end up making additional revenue just by having that one page. That's what I mean by low hanging fruit. People are already asking you, what do you recommend for such and such. People care about your recommendations? Regardless of whether you think so or not. Oh, I'm just a solopreneur, I'm not somebody famous. I only have 500 people in my audience. Okay. Those 500 people think you're a pretty big deal. Maybe seven of them are related to you. So those 493 other people think you're a pretty big deal. They think you are the world's living expert on your subject matter and your recommendation carries weight. So when you say I recommend this product, that's a big deal to them and they'll buy through you. Carly Ries (18:06): So quick question for you. You're talking a lot about promoting everything people have to hear, numerous times before it resonates. You are big on building email lists. So what are some tactic solopreneurs can use to grow that list so that they can get that message out there? Matt McWilliams (18:20): I mean, number one, you've gotta have a carrot. You've got to have a carrot for people to want to subscribe and it is not, "would you like to get emails from me?", No, I get plenty. One of my wife and I's favorite movie is You Got Mail, right? And I remember when Meg Ryan logs on and it says no new mail. When has that happened to any of us in the last 15 years? Carly Ries (18:50): Not since that movie. Matt McWilliams (18:52): Yeah. And that was about winning, unless it's been like eight minutes since you checked. You know we get bombarded with emails. So nobody goes, you know what I really would like, I feel like I'm just not getting enough email, so I'm gonna go subscribe to some newsletters. Nobody subscribes to newsletters. There are very few industries where that actually works. So I don't even talk about that. It does work in a handful of things, but most stuff, it doesn't. You've gotta have the care, you've got lead magnet, ethical bribe, opt in, whatever you call it. You know, you've got to create something that people want to download. They want to watch. They want this information. Don't have a ton of time to go into like all the specifics of that. Actually, just to give you some perspective, it's about 15 pages long in my book. Matt McWilliams (19:38): That's coming out next year. So that gives you some idea. This is not a three minute answer, but, here's the quick thing. First of all, think of the mode that you're going to deliver this, this lead magnet in. Is it a cheat sheet? Is it a checklist? Is it some sort of assessment? Is it a quick video series? Is it a template? What is it that your audience needs that's going to make their life better? It's gonna solve their number one pain point. That's the big key. This isn't how do I solve three pain points? It's how do I solve number one pain point? The second thing is it's gotta be a quick win. This needs to be something they can consume in five to 15 minutes. There are exceptions to that rule. Matt McWilliams (20:21): If you're in a niche where you're dealing with mental illness, I am not suggesting you can solve, you know, bipolar disorder in 10 minutes with a cheat sheet. Okay, please don't misunderstand me. Most of us are not dealing with that. Most of us are not dealing with that. Maybe we're in the productivity niche and we're looking to deliver five hacks that can help make you 5% more productive. Right? That's a quick win. It can solve one pain point very quickly. I told the story often of my dad. My dad passed away. Actually, about two months before that Memorial Day, 2005, he never owned a computer, never got on the internet a day in his life. Made fun of me because I had a phone, you know, a cell phone. Matt McWilliams (21:07): He's like, oh, "who needs a cell phone? Why would you ever need to talk to somebody when you're walking through a store?" I don't know, dad, I've just, it's my only phone. And that's the way it is. It was still a flip phone at the time with like the 0.2 megapixel camera, but whatever. Very high tech at that time though. It was like super fast, you know? yeah. I mean, when you flipped it, it had a qwerty keyboard, so it was pretty, pretty awesome. Oh, wow. Okay. yeah. Oh yeah. I was an early adopter on the qwerty So, my dad never owned a computer, but I think he had the best lead magnet of all time. And, this occurred to me one day, I was thinking about my dad. My dad was a golf instructor. Matt McWilliams (21:48): And so he would go out on the practice tee, if you're a golfer, you can picture this. If you're not do your best. And he would look for a golfer who, there's a specific pose, and it's the leaning on the club, just swung, hit a ball immediately. Didn't even watch the ball land, immediately head down, leaning on the club, rakes another ball over and then rinse and repeat. Hits it, head down, turns away from it. In other words, he's in pain. Now, I'm not suggesting that sucking at golf is on the same level as, you know, your marriage is about to end pain. But either way, this person is in pain. There is a pain point. If you want to go bowling and you suck at bowling, that's a pain point. Same is true of golf. And he would find this person. Matt McWilliams (22:38): Here's what to do. He'd go to them and say, Hey, can I, can I give you just a quick free lesson. He would have them do one thing. He would look for the one little thing that would give him that little glimmer of hope, it would solve the one problem they have. So their problem is not that they can't make short putts. They can't hit bunker shots. They can't hit pitch shots. They can't hit a pitching wedge on the green blah, blah, blah. They've got one club in their hand, maybe it's their driver. And they're hitting a 50 yard slice, which means the ball is curving 50 yards offline. And he would help them solve that one thing. He wouldn't help them hit it farther. He wouldn't help them do anything other than solve the 50 yards slice . One thing out of a hundred possible things that could be wrong with their golf game. Matt McWilliams (23:26): And he would solve that one problem. And inevitably they would turn him and go, oh my gosh, that was the best shot I've hit in months. By the way, do you do lessons? And he would sell them a $1,000 golf instruction package. Wow. That's what a lead magnet is when you think of it. It's that quick win, for that one pain and in some sort of a format that's easily deliverable for you. So the question you ask, why is it so important? Because if you don't have an email list, you have nobody to market to that's number one. Then as far as growing it, you've gotta develop that carrot. Then number two, you've gotta get that carrot out there in front of the right people of course. And we could talk more in depth about that, but here's the thing that I'll leave you with on this. Matt McWilliams (24:07): Your audience is already out there. All right, they're already in Facebook groups, they're already on other people's email lists. They're already searching online. They're already following certain hashtags on social media. They're already engaging with certain social media platforms. They're already listening to certain podcasts. So how do you grow your email list? You take advantage of all those things. You participate in groups, you get interviewed on podcasts, which we can certainly go into that as well. You get affiliates of your own, who can promote your products, which will grow your email list. You follow those hashtags. I did this once with Downton Abbey. I remember years ago, this was before I started teaching affiliate marketing. I was the only episode in my entire life I ever watched of Downton Abby that was live on PBS, Masterpiece Theater. Matt McWilliams (25:01): Every other one I watched on either on DVD or on the PBS app, like the day after or whenever it aired. But I watched this one live and I'd released a video like a month before with a quote from Downton Abbey. And so the hashtag Downton Abbey was trending. Three times during the hour leading up to it, during the episode, and right after, I posted a comment and it led back to that link, I got over 2000 clicks in a two hour span just to those three tweets using that hashtag. And it wasn't rocket science, I couldn't measure how many subscribers I got. Maybe I only got five subscribers, but three tweets took me like 45 seconds to write those tweets. I can't think of many other things I can personally do in 45 seconds to gain five subscribers. If I could somehow replicate that for five hours a day, I don't even know the math on that, but it'd be a crap ton of subscribers? So think of ways that you can tap into the existing audience it's already out there. Carly Ries (26:07): Oh, Matt, I said this earlier, but you've had such great nuggets of wisdom throughout all of this, I feel like some of these could even be quotable. Which actually leads me to my big question for you is "what is your favorite quote about success and what, what has driven you? " Matt McWilliams (26:20): I've got two that I've just lived by for, 20 or 30 years, since I've been an entrepreneur, at least, which come to think of it, it's been about 20 years now. One is from Michael Jordan. He says "I failed over and over and over again in my life. And that's why I succeed." And that ties, I mean, it's such a cliche when you think about it. Winston Churchill says, "success is stumbling from failure to failure" and something like that and not giving up. I butchered that one, but you know, the idea of the reason why I'm here is because of failure. I told a client earlier, we were talking about split testing. I told him I'm not a good marketer because I'm smart. Matt McWilliams (27:09): I'm not a good marketer because I get it right. I'm a good marketer because I'm willing to be wrong thousands of times. If you think about split testing, some people are like, I'm gonna split test A versus B and I think A's gonna win and if B wins that sucks. I'm like, no, if B wins, that means I would've done A, but instead I got B. That's even better. I'm wrong for three weeks and I get to be right for three years or 10 years. The second one is from Jay-Z. Actually I have to paint the picture on this because if I say it out loud, it might not make sense. He said that I'm not a businessman, one word, businessman, I'm not a businessman. I'm a business, man. Matt McWilliams (27:54): For me and just like JayZ, this is about... It sounds weird but, it's all about me. Well, that's super humble. But, it is a personal brand. I am a business. Our business, right or wrong, rises and falls on my reputation and the weight that I feel, like...note to self, don't get a DUI, that would really ruin my business, you know, but YES, that's the weight I feel cuz like our entire team is contingent upon that. I feel for them, but yeah, I mean it. The idea of that personal brand and building that personal brand is something that's really kind of an ethos I've lived by for a solid 10-12 years. Carly Ries (28:44): Absolutely. And you have done such a great job of doing that. We can't thank you enough for coming on this show. I feel like we can listen to you talk for the next 10 hours. So instead of putting you through that, where can people find all the resources you've been talking about and you and everything online? Matt McWilliams (28:59): I'll go back to the first question you asked, how do you get started? I got to barely tap into that. So I would say if you go to MattMcwilliams.com/quickstart, you can download the quick start guide to getting started with affiliate marketing. Side note, that's a carrot. I did not say, go join my newsletter. I just wanna go back to that. You are going to get an amazing resource there that's going to help you get started with affiliate marketing that hopefully will be a quick win for you. A quick solution to a pain point, which is how do I get started with affiliate marketing? And then from there, hopefully you'll wanna read some of my other articles and listen to the podcast. And then one day maybe even say, Hey Matt, I think I'd like to take it to the next level and join one of your courses. That's what I was just talking about. And so to your point, that's one of the ways you grow your email list there. Carly Ries (29:58): Well, Matt, as somebody that has downloaded that guide and a podcast listener of yours, I can vouch for both of those resources. o highly recommend our audience. Does that? Thank you so much again for coming on the show. Joe Rando (30:10): Thanks Matt. Carly Ries (30:10): And that wraps up another episode of the One-Person Business podcast. To listen to more episodes and subscribe, be sure to visit Lifestarr.com/podcast or you can find us anywhere you listen to our shows. We'll see you next time. Y. Closing (30:26): You may be going solo in business, but that doesn't mean you're alone. In fact, millions of people are in your shoes, running a One-Person Business and figuring it out as they go. So why not connect with them and learn from each other's successes and failures. At LifeStarr, we're creating a One-Person Business community where you can go to meet and get advice from other solopreneurs. Be sure to join in on the conversations at community.lifestarr.com.