Product launching is a highly lucrative ‘business model’ in the ‘make money online’ niche. This a multi-million-dollar industry has been around for years, and its popularity shows no signs of waning.
Every single day, several info products/software tools are launched and affiliates scramble to promote these products to their email subscribers/tribe hoping to make sales and commissions.
While this industry gets a lot of flak because of scams, shoddy products, disreputable vendors, etc. one truth remains – the marketplace is thronging with hungry buyers.
With the skyrocketing cost of living and the soul-sapping jobs around, millions of people come online hoping to find a side hustle that will supplement their income, while others hope to generate a full-time income so that they can escape the rat race and work their own hours (FREEDOM!).
So, whatever the naysayers may say, this opportunity has been ripe for the plucking for years.
However, while many affiliates will try to promote products, only a small percentage of them succeed while the rest see dismal results.
Why is this the case?
The answer is simple. The successful affiliates follow a few time-tested and proven strategies that make them sales repeatedly.
This article will shed light on what these strategies are… and while they may seem simple, they aren’t exactly easy. You’ll need to put in the work. There are no fast profits online.
Work is crucial… but if you work the tips below, they’ll work for you. Let’s begin!
1. Build a Tribe / Audience / Email List
You may have heard the saying ad nauseam, “The money is in the list!”
And it’s true. Having a list of email subscribers that like and trust you is one of the best ways to drive lots of high-converting traffic to the affiliate offers you’re promoting.
To build a tribe, you’ll need to drive traffic from whichever platform you choose to a landing page. You could easily build a landing page with a tool like Systeme.io.
Even with their free plan, you’ll be able to build pages and an email list.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re using Facebook groups, a blog (SEO), Instagram/TikTok marketing or YouTube – links from all these different properties should ultimately point to your landing page.
You’re always trying to siphon traffic from these high-traffic platforms to build your email list, which is the one asset you truly own. Every other platform is rented land, and you could lose your accounts at any time – but you’ll always have your email list.
2. Build a Good Relationship with Your Subscribers
To build trust and loyalty with your list, you’ll need to deliver value and have integrity.
Always remember that your subscribers who read your emails are real people. They’re not ‘cash cows’ to be milked every single day.
Avoid promoting rubbish products. Once you lose trust, it’ll be next to impossible to build it back. Your conversions will suffer, and you won’t make sales because people won’t believe your recommendations.
Let’s pause for a moment…
You cannot be a top affiliate if you don’t have people to promote to. Before even promoting launches, you should be actively building an audience and an email list. These are the cornerstones for a successful affiliate marketing business.
All the tips below are contingent upon you having an audience that you can market to. So you’ll need to get this right first.
Too often, newbies focus on promoting products when they’ve not built an audience and established trust yet. They are focused on the money aspect of the business instead of the ‘human’ aspect.
They’ve put the cart before the horse – and their abysmal results reflect their flawed business strategy.
Now let’s look at more affiliate marketing strategies!
3. Be Prepared
Most of the popular online marketing product vendors list their product launches on Muncheye. You’ll want to scan the events at regular intervals so that you’re aware of what’s going on in the marketplace.
Preparing for a product launch ahead of time will allow you to plan your promotional strategy ahead of time. Jumping on a launch at the last minute will mean that you’re not as prepared as the other affiliates who may easily beat you in the JV contests.
Several product launches have contests where affiliates battle it out to see who can push the most copies… and the winners are usually rewarded with monetary prizes which could be hundreds of dollars.
So, if you wish to maximize the revenue generated from your promo, it’s best to prepare well in advance.
4. Create Buzz
In the image below, we’ve circled a launch, “Power of Journaling PLR Bundle.”
You’ll notice that this product is launching on 7 December. Instead of emailing your list on the day itself, it would be better to warm up your list to the offer first.
This can be done by emailing your list the day before and tell them that you’ve come across an offer that will be of use to them, and you’ll ‘talk more about it tomorrow.’
By dropping hints and creating buzz, your subscribers will be primed to see the offer. In fact, this technique will spike their curiosity and make them look forward to seeing your next email.
Like Terrence Howard said, “When there’s buzz around a beehive, you know they’re making honey in there.”
5. Offer a Bonus to Incentivize Your Audience
Offering bonuses when promoting a launch has become so commonplace these days that buyers expect one before they’ll purchase a product.
The sole blame for this ‘expectation’ falls squarely on the shoulders of marketers who have been ruining the market by offering insane bonuses where they throw in everything including the kitchen sink.
This has led to a situation where subscribers ‘bonus shop’ by looking at what the different affiliate are offering and buy through the affiliate that has the best bonus.
Subscriber loyalty goes out the window and you can rest assured that your subscribers will do what’s right for them as they try to get the most bang for their buck.
Since this is the current state of the scene, if you wish to make a lot of affiliate sales or win the JV contest, you’ll need to play the bonus game too.
Offer a bonus that’s RELEVANT to the offer you’re promoting. It should be complimentary to the product they’re buying.
For example, if they’re buying the journaling PLR mentioned above, you can offer a set of journaling PLR articles as a bonus.
If they’re purchasing a guide on creating children’s books, you may offer graphic template packs with drawings people can use in these books.
Your bonus must be congruent with the offer, if you want it to persuade potential buyers.
On a final note regarding bonuses: Don’t overdo it. If the product costs $17 and you’re getting a commission of $8.50 per sale, don’t spend weeks creating a bonus that only gets a handful of sales.
Your time and effort are money, and the juice must be worth the squeeze. Find the right balance here.
6. Build a Bonus Preview Page
You’d think that having a bonus would be good enough, but that’s not necessarily the case. You’ll need to ‘package’ your bonus too… and the best way to do that will be to create a product mockup of your bonus in Canva.
You’ll then want to build a bonus page in Systeme.io and embed your mockup on the page.
Give your audience a sneak peek into the offer you’re promoting but focus on showing them exactly what they get in your bonus.
Add your affiliate link to the buy button on your bonus page. This will take the visitor to the sales page and after purchase, they can access your bonus.
Alternatively, you could use a tool like Commission Gorilla to drag and drop bonuses on to a pre-built page. This tool simplifies the entire process and hosts all your pages for you. It’s all you need when it comes to bonus pages.
7. Find a Flaw with the Offer
Generally, most affiliates will praise the offer they’re promoting to the moon.
They’ll make it look like the product is the next best thing since sliced bread – and it supposedly ‘makes their heads spin’ with the possibilities and ‘profit potential’ that the product is capable of.
Avoid all this cringey hyperbole. Your subscribers are already rolling their eyes.
To make your promotion seem more believable, you’ll need to mention a few shortcomings in the product. They must be accurate but not deal breakers.
Following the earlier example, if we’re promoting the journaling PLR bundle, we can mention how it’s all written content – but a few videos would have been nice.
See, it could be better, but it’s still good.
Sometimes when you see an offer, your gut instinct may conjure up a few thoughts in your head. Pay close attention to these thoughts.
- Maybe the sales page doesn’t look great
- Or the sales copy isn’t that good
- Or the sales video may be boring
Whatever initial thoughts you may have, you can rest assured that some of your subscribers may feel the same way. These are all OBJECTIONS that can cost you the sale.
So, you must pre-emptively address them so that it’s all out in the open.
If the sales copy is amateurish, you could mention that “The sales copy isn’t great, but don’t let that discourage you. The product itself is fantastic. You’re buying the product and not the sales copy.”
When you deal with the objections, you’re persuading your audience to overlook them.
At the end of the day, what truly matters is that the product MUST be good. Everything else is just noise.
8. Compare it Against Another Product
How do you decide who’s the winner of America’s Got Talent?
Well, you compare the contestants against each other to see who’s the best singer.
Similarly, you can make a product seem better by positioning it against another similar product.
For example, you may be promoting a page builder software being sold on WarriorPlus which can be used to build landing pages, sales pages and so on.
You could compare it to other page builders such as OptimizePress, Thrive Themes, etc.
- Maybe your offer is more affordable
- Or it’s easier to use and has a shorter learning curve
- Or the pages load faster
By positioning the offer you’re promoting against reputable competition, you elevate the status of the offer – and make it seem better.
In all fairness, OptimizePress may be the superior page builder, but it costs $199 a year for 1 site. The page builder you’re promoting only costs $47 a year for unlimited sites.
Such a situation will demand some honesty from you. Let’s not get carried away now.
You may tell your followers, “While this page builder can’t beat OptimizePress, you still have all the necessary features you’ll need to build awesome pages – and you won’t need to pay close to $200 a year for just one site!
You can build as many pages as you want on as many sites as you want.
This offer is far more affordable than OP3 and won’t put you in a situation where you’ll need to take a mortgage on the cardboard box you’re living in! “
9. Show Them How to Use the Product
One of the best ways to get the sale and convince your audience that the product delivers what it says on the tin will be to show them that you are using it successfully.
Promoting a page builder? – Build a page with the software and show it to them.
Promoting a guide on creating products using public domain content? – Create a product with such content and let them see it.
The proof of the pudding is in the eating, and when you can show proof that the offer you’re promoting works, your followers will eat it up and buy through you.
10. Promote Other Products
While promoting one offer, you can also promote other offers on the backend.
You’re probably thinking, “Wait, what?”
Let’s assume Bob has seen your bonus page and bought the product through your affiliate link.
On the product access page, he’ll be able to download your bonus. Most affiliates will just use a direct link to the zip file which contains the bonus.
If they’re using the WarriorPlus platform, here’s where they’ll add the URL to the bonus…
To promote other relevant products, you’ll need to create a bonus download page where they can access the bonus… and on that page, you can list 1 or 2 other affiliate offers that they can buy.
Of course, you’ll use your affiliate links to those products and get more sales/commissions.
11. Email Marketing Rules
It goes without saying that the best time to email your list will be the moment the launch goes live. That’s when everyone will be frantically mailing for the offer.
It’s also the best time to get the most sales.
After your first email, it’s inevitable that a certain percentage of your subscribers will miss your email and not open it.
Remember to email these un-opens about 8 hours later just to increase the chances of people seeing the offer you’re promoting.
Do email the entire list 24 hours after the first email, just to remind them of the offer. Use scarcity to get them to jump off the fence.
If the product is on a dime sale or if the price increases after the launch, remember to mention it.
Depending on the duration of the launch, whether you send follow up emails after that is up to you… BUT always send one final email on the day the launch ends.
Some people like to push their decisions until the last minute and when they know the launch is about to end, they’ll rush to get the product.
12. Post on Social Media
This is straightforward. If you have a Facebook group or an Instagram profile, you may make posts there about the offer you’re promoting. Remember to add your affiliate link for people to click on.
13. Run Ads
If you’re familiar with paid advertising, you may run paid ads to promote the offer. This can be tricky because the ad costs can add up fast. So, you’ll need to know how well the product is converting and so on.
14. Short Run vs Long Run
There are 2 points to note here…
The first point to note: If a product converts well for you, do not forget about it just because the launch is over. You can still:
- Promote it on your blog (blog post)
- Mention it in your lead magnets
- Add an email in your autoresponder sequence promoting it
- Create a YouTube video that promotes it
The life of a good product extends well past the launch dates. Most affiliates are myopic and forget a product once the launch is over. They quickly move on to other newer offers.
A wise affiliate mentions the product that did well for him/her at intervals and gets sales for the product long past the offer date.
As long as you’re adding new leads to your list, there will always be people who have not seen the offer and will still buy it, if you promote it.
The second point to note: When it comes to email marketing, you’ll need to find the right balance. The product vendor will tell you to email often and email hard during the launch.
They don’t care. They just want the sales.
But the people on your list will care.
If you’re emailing them incessantly every few hours just to get sales to win a contest, you’ll aggravate many of them – and they’ll either start ignoring your emails or just unsubscribe.
You must take a sensible approach. Don’t get so wrapped up in the hysterics of winning a JV contest that you get greedy. Don’t let the vendors goad you into emailing hard or ‘crushing’ your email campaign.
A lot of these vendors have unresponsive lists and need affiliates to get them sales – because of their blatant disregard for their subscribers’ sensitivities. Don’t be one of them.
In all things, exercise moderation… and always remember, winning a JV contest is not a big deal. Most vendors will have another launch a month later and there will be a contest for that too.
It never ends. These are just JV contests. It’s not the Oscars.
Contest prizes and bragging rights are temporary; a solid reputation is forever.
Let’s wrap things up!
The 14 strategies mentioned above really get the job done. This is real-world information that works.
Apply them and you’ll see your affiliate sales increase exponentially.
With a responsive email list, a solid bonus, and a few great emails – you can generate a lot of sales and win several JV contests easily.
Master these strategies and you’ll be a super-affiliate in time to come.
