Jeffries We Discuss Successful Affiliate Marketing Strategies

How you can use the power of affiliate marketing linked to right strategy SEO to market your online course Using FREE Or Very Inexpensive methods

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Here’s a Full Transcription Of Our Interview With Greg

Jonathan: Welcome back folks to the WP-Tonic Show. It’s episode 305. I’ve got a great guest here. I’ve got Greg Jeffries of SEO Affiliate Domination. Greg, would you like to quickly introduce yourself to the listeners and viewers?

Greg: Yeah, sure. Thanks for having me on your show, first of all. Yeah. It’s great to be here. I’ve involved in the Online Marketing space for about 10 years now. Like we were saying before the call, it’s been kind of a longer journey for me but everybody’s got their own little timeline of getting to where they’re at and it just took me a little bit longer than most people. All that matter is that I’m here now so it was totally worth it.

Jonathan: That sounds great. Before we go into the main interview, folks, I would like to tell you about one of our great sponsors of the show and that’s LifterLMS. LifterLMS is one of the premier plugins to help turn your Membership website, if you’ve got a large one, it’s a Learning Management System plugin and I would say it’s one of the best ones on the market for WordPress at the present moment and they’ve got a great team as well. Basically, they have different bundles of premier add-ons and they’re offering a 15 percent discount if you go their website and use the word WPTonic, all one word and you’ll get 15 percent off everything on their website and that’s a pretty good offer. So use that folks. So, Greg, Affiliate Marketing, obviously, we have a bit of an emphasis around Membership sites, Learning Management sites, the owners. How can somebody that’s got a Membership site utilize Affiliate Marketing to help that kind of business, Greg?

Greg: Yeah. So it really just comes down to creating content. So whether it’s maybe a YouTube Channel or whether it’s hosted on WordPress or another platform out there that’s like a Kajabi or something that has a blog element tied to it. You can create blog posts. From having that content out there that’s going to grab organic traffic and pull it to the site and then, of course, it’s there on a page of your site or your blog the root domain that will kind of lead them back to the root domain which could be the course and so that’s a really simple way to drive organic traffic. So whatever it is you’re teaching about, whatever that niche or topic is, so you can just write content about that particular topic.

I like to focus on longer tail keywords. So you can use a tool like key word tool.io to just type in like a root keyword. It’s going to give you a long list of long-tail keyword suggestions that people are actually typing into the search engines and you can use that as a starting point to create the titles and the content of your blog posts or your YouTube videos. I just think of them as tiny little hooks and the more hooks you have out there the more fish you’re going to catch and the more visitors you’re going to pull into your site. It’s really that simple.

A lot of people just overlook the longer tail keywords because they think that because they get a little bit of traffic that they’re not worth going after but everybody is always asking you the same questions like, how do I get started with very little money? And that’s the way. By going after a lot of lower competition keywords, naturally, you’re going to start to rank for more competitive ones because it’s almost like because you are drawing in traffic from or just getting traffic period, it’s like Google sees that and it rewards you by sending you even more traffic that’s sometimes a lot more competitive.

Jonathan: That’s great Greg. I’d like to focus on the Affiliate Marketing side of it. If you’ve got a reasonably priced course, how can you use Affiliate Marketing to help you, Greg?

Greg: Yeah. Again, it’s pretty much the same thing. Just create just lots of long-tail content, whether it be YouTube videos or blog posts about that content and basically just provide value. People are typing in those specific search queries because they want a solution to their problem and if you can kind of briefly address it to the best of your ability and then kind of lead them back to your course like, if you want more information about a full course on how to do X, Y, Z, answer this 5-minute question.

But if you want a full A to Z training on how to whatever, maybe make a full-time income doing Affiliate Marketing then check out my course, click the link below or whatever to find out more. You’re creating a pipeline or a funnel to funnel people from the search engines to your website or search engines to your YouTube video to your course. So you’re just building a massive pipeline and eventually, it’s going to bring in steady results.

Jonathan: Yeah. Have you got any experience about, you know, somebody’s got a reasonably priced course and they offer a bit of commission for other people to promote their course and be an affiliate marketer for that course, have you got any experience in that area, Greg?

Greg: Yeah. Absolutely. That’s what I do. I have a course and I have an affiliate program as well. I teach people how to do Affiliate Marketing through SEO and so, naturally, since I’m teaching them how to do that and I have an affiliate program, I want them to promote my course as well.

Jonathan: Well, that’s great. Have you got any insights about some of the mistakes people do that you see a lot of people do quite often when they’re initially getting in, looking at setting up an affiliate scheme to try and promote their course and product, got any mistakes that you regularly see people making?

Greg: Well, SEO’s kind of a long-term game so think of it like that. A lot of people want to, they want quick results and while you might can get quick results with SEO by doing more kind of like shadier, black hat. What I translate black hat stuff is basically creating content in a way that it looks unnatural or back-links that look unnatural. So, as long as you’re creating and producing and publishing content in a natural way or building links in a natural, consistent way, I don’t care how many pieces of content or how many links you’re building, as long as it’s consistent, it shouldn’t raise too many red flags. But I think where people get messed up when they start with SEO is that they get really sloppy. So, as long as you’re producing quality content consistently, you’re going to be good for the long-term, which is the whole goal of SEO anyway.

It’s going to take time so you might as well build it right from the beginning and you don’t have to really over think optimization and all that stuff. Make sure your keywords that you’re targeting are in the title of the YouTube video or the title of the blog post and really just create content for humans. So, whether it’s the video or the blog post, I don’t over think or over optimize on how many times the keyword is used in the blog post itself. I just try to answer that question to the best of my ability and write for a human. I’m not trying to keyword stuff for a robot or anything like that. It’s just write it for a human, create value and that’s going pay off in the long-term because people can tell the difference between something that was spun or written for a robot and something that was actually written like me talking to you.

Jonathan: Yeah. That’s great. In our pre-live chat, I think we had some agreement about where WordPress fits in with these fully hosted Learning Management Systems or Membership portals. Would you agree with what I said to you before that I actually think that you might be better off looking for a fully hosted solution initially than go with WordPress? What’s your thoughts around that?

Greg: Yeah. There’s a lot of great solutions out there like the Kajabis and Teachables and Thinkifics and stuff. So, I would definitely recommend starting at one of those places and then you can always transition later to a self-hosted WordPress solution. It’s kind of the same thing as you mentioned E-Commerce or Dropshipping. So, you know, it’s easier to get into the game by Dropshipping or using a platform like Shopify. But eventually, once you find something that’s working, you want to keep more of the profit so you want to like eventually manufacture the things yourself and bring everything in-house so that you keep more of the profit. So it’s the same concept. You may not want to be paying Kajabi a couple hundred dollars a month when you can buy a WordPress solution that maybe is a one-time price and be done with it and you keep more of the profits and stuff.

Jonathan: Do you think there’s any kind of SEO consequences in utilizing some of these fully hosted solutions?

Greg: I don’t think so. I don’t look at things that closely but I really don’t think so. I mean, the way I see it is content is content so as long as there’s relevant content on the page, that’s content’s going to get indexed and if there’s no other content on the Internet for that and that’s the best piece of content for that search query, Google should rank it.

Jonathan: And, what kind of, the volume of content, what have you found based on your own experiences? How much time and effort around content production do you really have to or be realistic about how much content? I suppose you’re going to say the more you can do it the better but just seeking some parameters really.

Greg: So, yeah. Like you said, the more you can do the better. There’s a couple of different directions. So, really the two I kind of narrow it down to is you can either write smaller pieces of content but larger volume or a spend a lot of time on writing a really long, well thought out piece of content but that takes a long time. So the longer pieces of content may be one a week. So it comes down, in my experience, to consistency. So I don’t care if you’re writing a post a day or a post a week, just stay consistent. Google seems to like and reward sites that are updated frequently. I prefer to write smaller pieces of content just because it’s easier for me so I can stick to that schedule every day so I can write like, we’re talking about maybe a couple hundred words. I don’t generally write like a 5,000, 10,000-word article just because it takes a longer block of time for me to sit down and focus and do that. So I can crank out a couple of hundred word article in an hour or so and I can do that every single day. I can stick to that schedule basically. So, you really just have to decide what works best for you. I know a lot of people on this call, they probably have kids and a full-time job and stuff so it’s probably going to be easier from them starting out to just produce maybe one or two smaller pieces of content a day or every other day. But as long as the stick to that consistent schedule, eventually it’s going to start to compound and if they just stick with it, it’s going to continue to grow. But the way that people mess up is they write one piece of content and they wonder why they’re not getting traffic. It’s one piece of content. You need more than that to get the ball rolling.

Jonathan: Oh, that’s great. We’re going to go for our break folks and when we come back, we’re going to be delving into Affiliate Marketing some more and some other interesting subjects. We’ll be back in a few moments.

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Jonathan: We’re coming back, folks. We’ve had a bit of chat with Greg. We’re going to delve back into Affiliate Marketing because a lot of people hear about Affiliate Marketing. Let’s say you’ve got a course for $500 and you want to promote so basically you offer like 20 percent or 30 percent or a fixed amount if somebody can, you give them an affiliate link and somebody goes to your website and then buys that course, they will get a percentage. Can you go into the mechanics of setting up something like that and what some of the WordPress plugins that you can utilize to help you do that Greg?

Greg: Yeah. I mean there’s so many different options out there for setting up your own affiliate program. You could either self-host it. So there are solutions like, I’m trying to think of it, I forget but there’s some self-hosted solutions if you want to manage that program yourself.

Jonathan: I think the, is it AffiliateWP? Isn’t it?

Greg: That may be one of them. I’m trying to think of another one. I think it starts with a ‘D’ or something but can’t quite think of it. You can self-host it or you can go on these networks like ClickBank or Commission Junction or ShareASale and the cool thing about tapping into one of those networks or signing up with one of those networks is that you get access to a network of affiliates rather than having to manually go out there and recruit them yourself. You show up in these affiliate network marketplaces and people can find you, so it kind of helps. If you want to go a step further, you can hire an affiliate manager or an affiliate management company to go out there and recruit affiliates for you but you may not have the resources or budget in the beginning so you may want to do one of these self-hosted solutions.

Jonathan: You gave us about three names. Is there one particular one of those three that you mentioned that if you were starting off that you would start off with or do you think they’re all very similar?

Greg: I think Commission Junction is probably the biggest. I like ShareASale. With ShareASale, it’s mostly physical products. And then, digital, if you’re going to go like all digital of a product like an information product or a Membership site, ClickBank might be a good option. They have a lot of digital products. I like those platforms from an affiliate side and also from kind of a vendor side because it kind of takes the load off of you having to manage the payment side.

As an affiliate, I know that I’m going to get paid from ClickBank, I know that I’m going paid from Commission Junction, ShareASale because I’m getting paid through the network, not through the company directly. As an affiliate, one of the frustrating things is sometimes you’ll promote a product or service and if it’s self-hosted, you’re kind of at the mercy of that company, aka maybe like one person that runs that plugin to pay you and they may or may not pay you. So, I feel a little bit more confident in networks because they’re generally going to pay you so I have that confidence. Another network is JVZoo. They have a lot of digital products and software and stuff. But the downside to JVZoo is you’re usually dealing with individuals. I’ve got a lot of pending payments that I haven’t ever been paid out and so it’s really frustrating. So you promote something, you make a sale and you never get paid. So that’s kind of the bad side of Affiliate Marketing.

Jonathan: Some of these companies that we’ve mentioned, I thought you were the guide and you’ve just shown that you are to give some really great advice on this but I think what you’ve been saying, you definitely want to go with one of these companies if you can afford it because you’re just exposing yourself to an enormous network of people that could promote your product and your course, aren’t you?

Greg: Yeah. And as far as the commissions, generally, if it’s a digital product, the standard rate is about 50 percent. If you’ve got like a SaaS, maybe 40 percent. But some of these digital products like on ClickBank, they sometimes payout even higher like 60 or 75 percent just because, you know, it’s a digital product, it doesn’t cost me any more money, it’s delivered and as the affiliate, I want to incentivize you to promote it so I want to give you as much of that as possible because I’m not paying anything to advertise it. So, even if I get 25 percent, that’s 25 percent extra that I didn’t have to pay to paid advertising.

Jonathan: Yeah. That’s true. You set yourself up with one of these networks but the affiliates in these networks, when I new course or a new digital product is promoted, I would imagine that they’ve got a section for new products that have come on board that month or that week. I don’t know. What gets you excited about a particular, if you’re looking at a new digital product that you might decide to promote as a professional affiliate? What would get you to think, “Yeah. I’m going to try and plug that.”? Is it really good graphics, good descriptions, the basics? Do a lot of people not provide really good graphics?

Greg: Yeah. I mean I look at kind of everything but mostly I look at kind of like the long-term use of the strategy if it’s an information product or if it’s a software or plugin. How I can use it as part of maybe a bigger strategy. One of the most effective ways to promote products and services as an affiliate is to provide some sort of bonus. So, if I can come up with a unique bonus to give them the strategy for how to use that plugin rather than just say, “Go buy this plugin. Good luck.” It gives them more of an incentive to buy it because they’re like, “Oh, Greg’s going to give me a really cool strategy of how to use it to therefore make more money, ideally make way more than my money back that I spent on it so I want to buy it through Greg’s affiliate link because he’s going to give me this awesome bonus.”

Jonathan: As you were speaking Greg, I was wondering how that could work with an online course. But I was wondering if this might have any relevance really. Let’s say you had a course on photography, digital photography, very popular, isn’t it, and you’ve got a really great course about a specific model camera or a technique and you’re promoting that. As the affiliate, would you look at similar courses and do a write up of the three best digital online courses and acknowledge you thought the person that you were linked to, affiliate, was honestly the best course? You can then say, “Yes. I’m getting a commission from it but this is honestly I feel for these reasons,” which you map out in your article, “This is the best course on the market at the present moment.” Am I on the right track there?

Greg: Yeah. I don’t like to think of myself as a salesman and that’s probably what scares a lot of people away from Affiliate Marketing but you don’t have to be. Everybody is naturally a good storyteller and a seller of things that you like anyway. So if you really enjoyed a movie or your really like a particular restaurant, you naturally share that with somebody. So if you’re passionate about photography or Affiliate Marketing or whatever, or something, you’re naturally going to talk about that thing to other people. If you find a good product or resource that compliments that skill or that niche, then it’s just natural to tell other people about it. Talk about it like you’re sharing it to a friend and if you’re passionate about that thing, then you can wholeheartedly endorse and recommend this particular product or service or Membership site.

Jonathan: How big has YouTube got? Do you see a lot of people in this area, you know, they make income by writing about, do you see a lot of them also going into YouTube and making videos?

Greg: Yeah, tons. And there’s a massive edge for people that decide to go into YouTube because most people are too scared to make a video. So, for the people that actually take action and follow through, even if they don’t think they’re very good, they’re way ahead of the people that are too scared. The competition is really small is what I’m trying to communicate because most people, they’re either too scared or maybe, for whatever reason, they think they don’t have the money for a microphone or screen recording software. There’s all kinds of excuses. So, if you just take the leap of faith and just start creating content, you’re going to get better over time and you can edit out all the ahs and ums and your mess ups and stuff and just keep creating content and eventually you’re going to get some tractions. So, yeah. There’s tons of people doing affiliate marketing with YouTube videos because it’s a very interactive, engaging medium as opposed to just text on a page on a blog post.

Jonathan: I think that’s great. We’re going to wrap up the podcast part of the show folks but Greg’s been generous and he’s going to stay on and we’re going to delve some more in this area that I don’t know that much about so I’ve been fascinated by this conversation actually. Greg, how can people get a hold of you and learn more about this whole subject and what you’re up to basically Greg?

Greg: Yeah. So if they want to learn more about Affiliate Marketing and how to make money with Affiliate Marketing with SEO, they can check out my course. It’s called seoaffiliatedomination.com, so you can just go there and if you have any questions, there’s places to reach out to me on the site.

Jonathan: That’s great. I really enjoyed the conversation. And if you want to learn more about WP-Tonic and how we manage to help you with your Membership website or Learning Management System, go to the WP-Tonic. We’ve got a load of new articles coming up. I just published one great article last week but we’ve a couple other articles coming up and we’ve had some great interviews recently. Just go to the WP-Tonic website. It’s all there for you. You can feast on it. And if you’re feeling really generous, give an iTunes review for the podcast. I just love reading them and it does really help the show and iTunes just loves it. So, we’ll see you next week where we’ll have somebody doing something interesting with WordPress, Online Marketing or Membership websites. We’ll see you next week folks. Bye.

Here’s the main links that we discuss during the interview

SEO Affiliate Domination

AffiliateWP

Clickbank

Commission Junction

ShareASale

JVZoo

Every Friday at 8:30am PST we have a great and hard-hitting round-table show with a group of WordPress developers, online business owners and WordPress junkies where we discuss the latest and most interesting WordPress and online articles/stories of the week. You can also watch the show LIVE every Friday at 8:30am PST on our Facebook WP-Tonic Show page. https://www.facebook.com/wptonic/

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