Enjoyed this interview with Miles Beckler (veteran digital / affiliate marketer). Love his enthusiasm for what he does.
For me personally, this episode puts affiliate marketing in a new light. A far more value add way to diversify income. Especially for service based businesses.
The interview is not only focused on affiliate marketing and has some good discussion on content and building an audience for it.
Lessons learned
Affiliate marketing is a way to monetize a segment that many business owners neglect - the ones that don't want / can't afford the service, but want to learn to do it themselves. It goes like this:
- I use this tool
- I get great results
- Let me show you how I use it
- Click here if you want it too
- Fully disclosed affiliate link. No BS and nothing sneaky.
- Affiliate marketing done wrong is thinking and acting like you're just a middleman.
If you're using social networks for distribution, plan for them to pull back on organic reach. It always happens:
- In the early days they need content creators to help them grow.
- When they hit network effect there's enough content being shared so don't need to help boost the creators.
- Always be building your email audience. It's the only one you really own.
- BUT... the money isn't in the list. It's in the relationship.
For getting started creating content and building audience:
- Choose a medium - audio, video or written.
- Force yourself out of your comfort zone. Do a challenge for 90 days and stay consistent.
- Don't focus on too many learning curves at once. Focus on one.
- The process of doing something everyday will make it better and better (everyone's first podcasts, videos or blog posts aren't great. Yours will be terrible too. Own it and keep going anyway).
- Simple frameworks and constraints mean one less thing to think about (Miles talking about his short, sharp YouTube intros)