First off, let me clarify, affiliate marketing and network marketing ARE NOT the same thing. As someone who has done both and done both very well, I can tell you that they are very different from each other WHEN YOU HAVE A GOOD SOCIAL MEDIA PRESENCE. Network marketing involves buying a product pack from a company (and then continuously buying those products) and advertising them in exchange for usually 15-25 percent commissions. Affiliate marketing involves the company sending you a pack of product FOR FREE because they want to tap into YOUR market. You then advertise those products for anywhere from 10-75% commissions (I've personally received both ends of that spectrum). They also continue sending you free products each month or bi-monthly, so you can continue effectively advertising.
Now, when you're brand new, so most of you reading this, it's a little different because they are likely to be very similar in the respect that you're advertising a product that you purchased in exchange for a small commission when said product is purchased. I also want to point out that yes, you can do network marketing and affiliate marketing simultaneously IF you practice curiosity marketing with your MLM company. If your page is spammy with MLM products, no reputable company will bring you on as an affiliate. You'll want to create a very solid personal brand. More on that later.
What I'm going to show you how to do today is how to:
1. Finding Companies
Before we get started, you'll want to download and print the Affiliate Marketing 101 Starter Pack I have for you today. This is totally free, and will help you get started.
Once you've printed this, take out your brainstorm sheet and start writing down everything you can think of under each category. If you're hazy with this step, make sure to watch the corresponding video that goes along with this blog post. These companies are going to be your go to because you already use these products on a consistent basis.
In addition to brainstorming, below are a few other ways you can find companies. As you're doing your research, write down any additional brands that you'd like to partner with under the "additional brands" section of your Affiliate Marketing 101 Starter Pack.
-Instagram- You can search #s related to your niche and a product you'd like to become an affiliate for. I routinely search #homeschoolgames #journalingstickers #plannerstickers #educationalgames etc. Anything that will lead me to companies that sell related products.
In addition, when someone pops up in your feed that is clearly advertising a product, go to their page and spend a few minutes scrolling. You'll be able to add a few brands to your "additional brands" section that you know partner with instagrammers. If they routinely post ads, save their page to a collection called "collab". Revisit their page every couple months and add new brands to your list.
You can also use agencies like Commission Junction, Share a Sale, Impact.com, Partner Stack, Click Bank. There are many more out there, but these are the ones I've personally looked into. We won't talk much about these because you literally just click the link, set up a free account, and walk through the steps to find brands that want to partner with affiliates. You do have to sift through what I call "garbage" and every deal has different terms, but there are good ones on there to find if you don't mind spending the time sifting.
2. Becoming an affiliate
There are several ways to become an affiliate with the companies you have on your brainstorming list. The first option is to go to their homepage and search for a "become an affiliate" link or an "affiliate program" link. You'll be asked to fill out a short survey about yourself and then emailed a response; email response times vary.
Another way is to reach out on social media and ask if the company has an affiliate marketing program. I'd suggest reaching out from your largest social media platform. If you don't have a large social media following, you can absolutely get affiliate marketing deals, but you probably won't get free product, you'll need to buy the product that you're wanting to advertise and earn commissions on. This is where your brainstorming list comes in handy because you won't have to spend any money since you already have and use the products. Unless you're wanting to buy products, I would only message brands that you already have their products on hand for this step UNLESS you've found a baby company (less than 1,000 followers) on IG and you have as many or more followers than they have that you'd like to strike a deal with. Below is a script I used when I had only a couple thousand followers before brands were paying me to post for them.
I'm reaching out because I've seen your (product or service) on my IG feed and would like to propose a business deal with you. I'm working on building my affiliate portfolio and I see that your product is one that would help my audience since majority of them are (insert audience here). Would you be interested in swapping a product in exchange for a few pieces of content? If not, no big deal! Let me know if you'd be open to more details.
This is also where you start building your online portfolio. If you have a product you like, make a couple pieces of content about it and share it with your audience while tagging that brand. It doesn't matter that you don't have an affiliate link with them. This will do 3 things.
1. Build trust with your audience for later down the road when you are being paid to promote products. They'll know you only promote products you genuinely love vs any products that you're paid for.
2. Show brands that you're talking to on the back end what kind of work to expect from you when they do decide to partner with you whether in exchange for a free product or a certain amount of money per a certain amount of content. The amount they're willing to pay will be determined by the amount of followers you have AND the quality of work you put out. Put a collab highlight on your page, so brands can easily see your work without having to search through your feed.
3. Drum up business. As brands see you consistently advertising for their competitors, they'll reach out to work with you as well.
Word to the wise: Don't waste your time making content for brands like Nike and Jc Penny's when you have 300 followers. Make content for brands that have 500-1500 more followers than you have (or any number at or below your number of followers). As you grow, you can partner with larger brands. Also, put your best work forward. When you're asking a company to pay you for content, they're going to reference your previous work. Don't put out content that is sloppy if you expect anyone to pay you for content down the road.
Yes, you're doing this for free, but you're trying to build a brand, a lot of free work goes into this. I spent YEARS creating free content before I started making an real money doing it. If you want quick money while building your affiliate marketing portfolio, check out the BossMom Creator Club and consider making a few of your own digital products. This will allow you to bring in a paycheck while building your affiliate marketing clientele.
3. Get brands to pitch YOU.
This is the fun part y'all! When brands start popping in your inbox and you can pick and choose who you want to work with and negotiate on the prices... all your hard work will be so worth it! My first brand deal was only a couple hundred dollars, but I was ELATED! Like for real thought I had arrived. It literally didn't even pay for gas for the month, but I didn't care! My hard work was finally being recognized and it felt amazing. A quicker way to get this to happen is to take all the guess work out and create a solid personal brand TODAY. This free branding worksheet will give you a head start. Stop wasting time and get serious.
Once you've got clear direction on your brand, building your portfolio is a breeze because you're only putting time into content that directly relates to the brands you're wanting to work with. This was a game changer for me. When a brand sees a little bit of everything on your page, they may work with you they may not, but the pay won't be very big unless you have tens of thousands of followers. If they see a bunch of content related to their product, it gives them confidence that your audience will be interested in their product when they see it, and they'll pay the big bucks even though you may have a lower following than Sally who throws posts on the wall like spaghetti hoping one will stick.
Remember that IG brand list we made? Time to pull it back out! Use the Brand Tracker page in freebie set you downloaded earlier (with the brainstorm worksheet) and write down all of those IG brands. Start interacting with them. You don't need to interact with all of them every day, in fact, I'd suggest against that. But once a week or so go through their stories and feed and interact on a couple of pieces of content. This will get your name popping up in front of them multiple times a month which will probably get them looking at your page. It will also trick the algorithm into showing that company your posts even if they don't look on purpose. After a few months of doing this (while you're showing up on your social like a BOSS), you can reach out and ask for a brand deal by using the script in step 2. Best case scenario? They'll have already reached out to you!
SALES SALES SALES
There's no way to sugar coat this guys, it's sales. I know your favorite mom -fluencer is just "sharing what she loves" and she makes it look so easy, but I promise you, she knows (and practices) all the sales tactics and you're buying into all of them. Landing affiliate marketing deals is awesome, but they don't make you any money unless you know how to sell the product. Below are several free sales trainings you're welcome to check out, so you can make money as you're landing deals, but also so you an make quality content instead of looking spammy to all the brands that are noticing you.
