Passive income strategies. To many people that statement represents an unattainable dream. Most who are asked if they want passive income answer with an excited “Yes!” to having money flow in day and night with just a little upfront work and an occasional bump to keep the machine well-greased.
Successful online affiliate marketers, bloggers, and others will tell you this is 100% achievable. But how do you get there? Which passive income strategies will set you on the right path?
One Versus Many
The #1 secret of most successful online affiliate marketers is not to send one email or share a social post on all their accounts one time. What would happen if Toyota ran one TV ad one time? Even if it were during the Super Bowl, there’s no way they would reach everyone in their audience.
While ads placed in the Super Bowl broadcast are some of the most seen in the country, not everyone watches pro football. I’m a college ball fan, myself. Some people don’t like football (as hard as that is to grasp). For others, the time wasn’t convenient and they didn’t bother to record it.
Other people don’t watch TV at all, or they only have a streaming service that doesn’t include the station broadcasting the Super Bowl. The reasons are endless.
Do you see where I’m going with this?
What must Toyota do if they want to reach every segment of their target audience with their message? Create affiliate marketing campaigns.
Affiliate Marketing Campaigns vs. One-Off Mentions
What’s your favorite way to receive information? Email? Video? Social media? Blog post? Podcast? When it comes to online affiliate marketing, there are numerous options. Some of your followers will love blog posts, but hate social media and video.
What would happen if you did most of your recommendations via video or on social media via Facebook or Instagram Live? A major portion of your audience would miss what you were saying altogether.
That’s where campaigns come into play.
Instead of posting or emailing one time in one place, successful online affiliate marketers are everywhere!
Creating an Affiliate Marketing Campaign
This passive income strategy involves choosing several places to promote. Start with these questions:
- Which affiliate product do you want to promote?
- What avenues do you have at your disposal for reaching your followers / subscribers?
- How many can you cover within a reasonable period of time?
For example, if I want to promote a course on passive income, I’ll first see if I have any super-targeted lists/groups I can approach. I have a segment of my email list with people who are interested in passive income, so I’ll definitely use that. There are also people in one of my Facebook groups who want to grow their passive income, so that’s also a go.
Other places I can promote include social profiles for Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and LinkedIn.
Then I have the ability to create a short how-to or talking-head video for my YouTube channel. And there’s the Marketing Words Blog where I can add a post.
How many can I cover within a reasonable period of time? All of them! If I use another popular strategy most successful online affiliate marketers use.
Add Repurposing to Your Passive Income Strategies
When I begin to create an affiliate marketing campaign, I start with the piece of copy or content that will be the longest and most detailed. That’s usually the blog post.
Why? Because, once I have that written, I can extract bits and pieces and repurpose them. This keeps me from needing to write every element of my campaign from scratch. If I have a 1,000-word post on my blog, I can pull email copy from it, a video script, social posts, and more.
Repurposing your content seriously helps cut down on the work!
Depending on the timeframe for the campaign, you’ll want to stagger your promotions. If you’re doing a quick campaign for a 2-day flash sale (for example), you may choose to push everything out at once.
However, if your promotion will cover a week or longer, choose the timing more carefully. I start and end with the medium that gets me the best results: email. Then I weave everything else in based on order of engagement.
Here’s a sample schedule for a week-long campaign:
Day 1: Kickoff with an email.
Day 2: Add a post to my blog. Share on all social sites.
Day 3: Upload a YouTube video. Depending on the affiliate product, I may direct traffic back to the blog post. Share on all social sites.
Day 4: Send another email.
Day 5: Get a discussion going in my Facebook group.
Day 6: Send another email.
Day 7: Send a last-call email (or 2). Post last-call notices on all social sites.
Last-Call Emails: A Critical Element of Your Affiliate Campaign
What’s a last-call email? Pretty much what it sounds like. This email usually gives a summary or wrap-up of what I’ve been talking about all week. Then it mentions that today is the last day to get the offer.
Urgency is a huge persuasion element. Statistics show that reminding followers an offer is about to expire will drive significantly more sales.
Experian (a credit reporting agency) stated that emails using urgency in the subject line had at least 14% higher click-to-open rates, 59% higher transaction-to-click rates, and twice as high transaction rates compared to their average marketing emails.
I, personally, have repeatedly seen last-call emails pull in as many or more sales than every other medium combined.
In numerous cases, I may have received 50 sales from the first email, blog post, video, and other techniques. Then I would get 50 or more sales just from the last-call email. The magic combination is to send two last-call emails (one in the morning and one a few hours before the expiration time).
Use this same approach on social media to top off your online affiliate marketing efforts.
When products from affiliate campaigns do really well, I add them to a backend funnel or even create a separate funnel just for them.
Does that mean you can never send out just one post or email? Of course, you can! But the real money is in campaigns.
Ready to create your own affiliate marketing campaign? Need help finding great products to promote and laying the foundation as a solid, commission-generating affiliate? Here is a resource I highly recommend:
- Passive Income Jumpstart (Save $10 with code PASSIVE).
Have questions about being a successful online affiliate marketer? Talk to me below!
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