in the trenches EP 205 - ITT 205 - 6-Figure Affiliate Marketing Strategies with Jill Stanton

Jill Stanton is the co-creator of Screw the Nine to Five with her husband, Josh Stanton. Jill and her husband are obsessive world travellers (with their little guy, Kai), say-it-like-it-is podcast hosts, lovers of quality of red wine and hell-bent on helping transform unsatisfied employees into dangerously-successful entrepreneurs!

In today’s conversation, we discuss how Jill has grown her blog to multiple six figures by selling affiliate products. We also dive into what makes a successful affiliate marketing program, how to niche down effectively and what is working and what’s not working in the digital marketing space right now.

My big takeaway from this episode is that affiliate income can be simple, easy and fun to earn, and it’s particularly suited for those people who want to focus on content creation and teaching first. If you’re already creating content and teaching and sharing great information, then you should also be leveraging affiliate or affiliate products. Because if you’re not, then you’re leaving money on the table. 

Take some notes and consider how you might be able to implement or integrate affiliate marketing into what you’re already doing.

In this broadcast, Jill and I talk about:

In The Trenches with Tom Morkes on YouTube:

How to Connect with Jill:

Get the Latest Broadcasts of In The Trenches on Your Favorite Podcast Platform:

Subscribe to In The Trenches on iTunes

Listen to In The Trenches on Spotify

Get your weekly dose of In The Trenches on Google Play

How You Can Support In The Trenches

Did you enjoy today's broadcast of In The Trenches? Please click here to leave an honest rating and review on iTunes. Your review helps me spread the word of this podcast, which allows me to line up amazing guests and continue to produce this podcast ad-free. Thanks so much in advance for your support.

michael zipursky on in the trenches - ITT 167: How to Close More Clients with Michael Zipursky

Michael Zipursky is the CEO of Consulting Success, and is a coach, consultant and author. Michael's list of clients include organizations like Panasonic, Dow Jones, Financial Times, Royal Bank and many others. He has written 5 books including “Profitable Relations: How to Dramatically Increase Your Profits By Giving Customers What They Really Want,” and “The Consulting Success System: How to Become a Successful Consultant.”

In today’s conversation, we talk about how to grow a successful coaching or consulting business. Michael imparts the four pillars of consulting success that are proven to add value for a client and create a sustainable consulting business that does not rely on its network. He also shares how to convert client consultations into long-term (and high-paying) clients, and how to handle initial intake / consultation calls, to get someone to make a decision on whether to hire you now, rather than waiting in limbo for a reply.

If you are a coach or consultant, this is going to be one of those interviews you’ll want to come back to again and again. Enjoy!

In this broadcast, Michael and I talk about:

And much more.

In The Trenches with Tom Morkes on YouTube:

How to Connect with Michael Zipursky Online:

Get the Latest Broadcasts of In The Trenches

Subscribe to In The Trenches on iTunes

How You Can Support In The Trenches

Did you enjoy today's broadcast of In The Trenches? Please click here to leave an honest rating and review on iTunes. Your review helps me spread the word of this podcast, which allows me to line up amazing guests and continue to produce this podcast ad-free. Thanks so much in advance for your support.

Passive income.

The holy grail of online (and offline) business.

Everybody talks about it, but the reality is most “passive” income isn’t passive at all – instead it forces the creator to continue to spin the wheel (at least intermittently) to keep the money flowing…

Well, in 2014 I did something mostly by accident that has led to over $6,000 in completely passive income.

And this is from just one of my books.

Take a look:

Income generated from a single book

passive_income_from_tcgtpwywThe graph above is a snapshot of The Complete Guide to Pay What You Want Pricing since my launch in November of 2013 to now. If you remove 2013 and 2015 numbers, I made over $6,000 from the book in 2014 alone.

How?

I’ll show you:

See the graph and the numbers above? They all refer to a particular phase of my book launch and promotional efforts. Here’s what happened:

#1. Book launch. This was the first month of pre-orders and the launch of the book itself. I made about $1,000 at the launch of my book. Not bad but not great – certainly not enough to retire on. Although for a first time effort (for a concerted book launch), I was pretty happy.

#2. Book promotion. For the next 3 months I promoted the book on my blog and began guest posting about the topic on other sites. This didn’t do too bad for me as you can see, generating another $1,000 in cashflow, but guest posting and promotion is a LOT of work, and as you’ll see, doesn’t really drive sales if you stop…

Here are a few examples of guest posts:

Is Pay What You Want Pricing for You? (Gumroad.com blog)

Pay What You Want Pricing – the Ultimate Sales Strategy (Medium.com blog)

The Essential Guide to Pay What You Want Pricing (MarketingforHippies.com blog)

#3. The dry spell. During this time I stopped promoting my book. As you can see, I made about $0 during this month of time. However, behind the scenes, I was working on something that would change everything for me: I decided to turn my book into a free 7 day crash course.

#4. The automated book sales funnel. Since I launched the crash course, I’ve been able to add over 1,000 people to my email list as well as generate $6,000+ in sales. This is completely passive – I haven’t touched this automated sales funnel nor put any effort into promotion whatsoever (except for the one-off podcast that asks me about PWYW pricing).

Why these numbers matter

  1. Passive income is possible, but it takes putting in the right amount of effort up front and in the right way.
  2. You can make money from your writing. I don’t believe in being a starving artist – neither should you.
  3. Unconventional practices work. I don’t use fixed prices nor do I use Amazon. Instead, I let my readers choose what they’ll pay for my books – whatever is fair to them. The results speak for themselves.

How to apply this to your book

Step 1. Write your book

Pretty self-explanatory…

Step 2. Create your book sales page

If you’re using Amazon, this would be the Amazon sales page. Or if you’re using a platform like Gumroad, you can just as easily use their sales pages…although I prefer to create my own sales pages so I can have more creative freedom in terms of design and layout.

Here’s an example of The Complete Guide to Pay What You Want Pricing sales page.

Step 3. Develop your free email series

Create a series of emails on your book topic by pulling content from your book and re-engineering it for email. This means summarizing major points and reducing total text (people don’t want to read a novel in their inbox).

Organize the points you’ve re-engineered based on a logical sequence. So for the Pay What You Want Crash Course, I lead people through a logical progression, starting with proof that it works (case study), followed by WHY it works, HOW it works, and then ways to implement it (strategies). I also throw in bonus templates so people can start putting this knowledge into action right away (highly actionable is always good).

Step 4. Add these emails to an autoresponder program

Put these emails into an autoresponder program. I use ConvertKit, but you can also use Mailchimp (about $20 / month to start), Aweber, Drip, or many other options.

Step 5. Create your signup page

A signup page is a place where people can signup to get access to your email series.

I use NewRainmaker which is an all-in-one web hosting and CMS platform created by the incredible people at copyblogger.com. Although, at $1,000 per year this is a bit pricey. So for something less expensive, I recommend LeadPages.net (where you can get a simple website or splash pages setup in minutes) for as little as $30 / month, or even less expensive (but definitely more work), choose a hosting service like Webfaction.com (about $100 / year), buy a premium theme from Themeforest.net (about $40), and host and manage your own website.

Step 6. Send people to your signup page for your free email course

I did about 10+ guest posts to spread the word about PWYW pricing, each one linking back to my free course on PWYW pricing. These guest posts are on predominant websites that drive a lot of consistent traffic my way. I don’t like to waste time creating content for websites that dont’ have engaged users (hint: look at comments on a website to determine engagement). I’ve also done dozens of interviews on the subject, as well as written some content for my own blog.

Step 7. Sit back and let the passive income roll in

Note: if passive income DOESN’T roll in, it’s most likely an issue with your (1) sales page (does this sales page make me want to buy?), (2) email course (are you creating engaging content that makes readers want more?), (3) traffic (are you getting the right people to your site?). Every month you should make tweaks until you’re making consistent cashflow from your automated sales funnel.

Free Template, Video Training and eCourse

If you’re interested in seeing the exact template I use for my own automated book sales funnel, you can grab your copy here:

The Automated Book Sales Funnel Template

As a bonus, you’ll automatically be registered for my free live workshop on book launch strategies (only people who register get access to the live event or the recording afterward).

Finally, while it’s great to put a books sales on autopilots, it helps to have a massively popular book to begin with.

This means you need to launch your book the right way.

So if you’re interested in launching your book to bestseller, checkout my new free eCourse:

Zero to Bestseller (free 5-part ecourse).

This is the exact process I’ve used to launch multiple bestselling books including: Dan Norris’ The 7 Day Startup (20,000+ downloads and still selling about 40 – 60 copies per day, more than 6 months after launch) and David Nihill’s Do You Talk Funny, among many others.

Your Turn

Now that you’ve had a peak behind the curtain of what makes many of my books run on autopilot, what do you think?

Are you going to use this for your next (or current) book?

Why or why not?  Share below!

cross