Matt McWilliams: Lie number two. You have to know lots of people, the right people. You got to do a lot of reciprocal promos. In other words, it's only for the cool kids, right? You got to have the right connections. You got to have, if you're going to get affiliates, you have to burn your list promoting everyone else's stuff all year just to get your own affiliates.
When I first started our business, we knew absolutely no one. No one. In fact, none of us did. We weren't the cool kids. We didn't have dads who had the right people. We started with nothing. 18 months later, we're doing over a million dollars a month. So in a moment i'm going to show you how to get affiliates even if you literally don't know a soul in your niche What I'm about to teach you has worked for so many other people.
Literally thousands of people that we've coached. One of them, Alex Putnam. I'm going to show you a quote here. He took this one strategy I'm about to share, went from complete nobody to industry leader in about nine months, nine months, nine months. He went from knowing No one to doing over 360, 000 in affiliate sales.
He didn't burn his list doing reciprocal promotions. He didn't know anyone. Can you see yourself doing this? Can you see yourself doing 360, 000 in sales in one launch, say nine months from now? So how did he do it? That's the first strategy I want to share with you today. Here's the thing. What I'm about to share with you
is so simple, so obvious, so elementary that you might feel tempted to brush it off. All right. But you know what? It's also my company secret weapon because I know that no money, no matter how many people I share this with, most people won't execute on this. I'm just going to be brutally honest.
And it seems so simplistic that it can't be that easy. Trust me. I know because I do the same thing. I do the same thing all the time. Now, enough disclaimers and all that here is how to recruit affiliates. There are three things we need to consider when to begin, where to look, and then the tactical side.
Where, how do I actually do the recruiting? We're going to start with where. Or when to begin, sorry. This is one of the biggest mistakes I see people making. They simply wait too long to start recruiting, but if at all possible, as Alex did, you need to start at least six months out, at least six months out.
Simply put, if you ask somebody to promote you next week, two weeks from now, even a month or two from now, they probably already have stuff on their calendar. So we want to start at least six months out. Another time is if you just did a promotion or you just did a big launch. This is a great time to start promoting because the iron is hot strike while the iron is hot, right?
You're a somebody at that point. They might've accidentally seen one of your emails or social media posts. Might as well take advantage of that and then always be recruiting. It never ends. Literally right now, while I'm talking, I guarantee you, I, one of our virtual assistants is doing what I'm about to teach.
They are literally executing on our playbook right now. We are recruiting affiliates right now while I'm talking, even though I'm not the one doing it, it never ever ends. So it never, ever, and it's always be recruiting. All right. Lastly. Or nextly, sorry. Nextly, I don't know if that's a company in Anderson, Indiana that makes chocolate.
Where do we look, where do we find these affiliates? First of all, start with who, most of you aren't where I was there, I was at 13, 18 years ago. Now, someone who would make a good partner, someone, do you know, at least one person who can make a good partner? Start with them.
Write that name down right now that we're going to get to the, but I don't know anyone part in just a moment, but this group of folks, these are the ones who are going to promote you because it's you because they know you, they like you and they trust you, right? Always start with these people because they're going to give you the most grace.
If you start with affiliate marketers that you don't know, something goes wrong, you burn that bridge forever. If you start with your friend, one of your mastermind buddies, and it doesn't go well, they forgive you and they'll give you another chance. You haven't burned that bridge forever. So here's what I do.
I want to take one minute once you try to write down at least three names. Think of people in your mastermind. Think of people. I said, we'll go back to the one minute mark. Think of people in a mastermind you're with. Think of people that you're friends with on your social media buddies. Think of people that you're in a group with.
I know I have people that have promoted me that are in Fort Wayne. Like I'm real, I'm friends IRL with them like in real life. And then it turns out they have a small email list. 2000 people, there's 2000 people. They'll get five or 10 people to buy something from me. That's pretty cool. I make 000 bucks and they make, half that.
That's a really cool thing. People who are in groups you're both in a Facebook group or I don't know. You're on this training today. Write down some people that you have a relationship with currently and take some time after this to write down some names as well. Okay. So start with who you know.
All right. What if you literally know no one, if you're in the same position I was one of the ways is to watch other affiliate programs, watch other launches like literally join their affiliate programs. They publish leaderboards of their top affiliates. I'm going to just leave that one there. Cause I could talk for an hour on how exactly to execute on that.
But I think you can figure out some of that stuff on your own. Watch other programs. They tell you who their top affiliates are. Use them forums and groups. I just mentioned this, but like different forums, different groups that you might be in. They tend to be rather homogenous in a good way.
What I mean by homogenous is most people in a say. Organic garden, urban gardening group, we know something about them. They live in an urban area and they like gardening and they're probably disproportionately one gender or the other. So use that to your advantage. They're just like you, which means if you have an audience, they probably do, too.
And they're probably pretty similar. So work together. And then Google, raise your hand if you've ever heard of this Google. I don't know, some of you are like either living in a cave or you're lying, but how do you use Google to find affiliates? This is exactly what Alex, if you remember him from earlier, this is exactly what he did.
I'm going to walk you through this whole process. Now, first of all, you go to Google. I haven't actually been to Google in years, but you go up to the top and I'm going to pick a random industry here. Something I'm clearly very familiar with, which is endurance running. Just take one look at me and go, he is not into endurance running.
And we're going to look at the top companies out there and we're going to find their affiliates. Now, if you know the names of your competition, start there, but I know this is shocking. Like I said, I'm not all that familiar with this war. So I've got to dive deeper. And I found this company here, 80, 20 endurance.
And right here is a treasure trove of information. First of all, why would I not sign up for their affiliate program? I just talked about that. Watch other affiliate programs. I'm going to sign up for their affiliate program. You can call it whatever you want. Leaderboard watching, competitive espionage, whatever.
You can learn a lot from watching the competition. I'm going to watch what they're doing. I'm going to watch for affiliates who get mentioned. I'm going to watch for ideas on graphics and promotions and contests, but for now, let's just focus on the fact that this site clearly has two things going for it.
Number one, they know what the heck affiliate marketing is. So when I reach out to them and talk about possibly promoting, they're not like total news, right? Secondly, they show up fairly high on Google for some good terms. And they offer an opt in. They have a way to join their email list. So they probably have a decent sized email list.
Third, there's an opportunity for you to promote them first and build that relationship. So how do you reach out to them? I don't have a ton of time to go in like the step by step, but let me make this very clear. You can find anyone's contact information. It's not that hard. All right. Now, once you have the contact information, this is where a lot of the secret sauce is.
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