As well as launching sales directly to your social media and newsletter lists you should look at running an affiliate campaign in parallel.
Affiliate marketing is basically having other people recommend and help you secure sales and giving them a percentage of the sale.
For example I might charge $200 for a course and offer a 50% affiliate offer.
If someone shares information about my course and drives traffic to my sales page that converts into a sale then I pay them $100 per sale. I collect the remaining $100.
If they send me 10 sales they get $1000 and I get $1000.
Generally affiliate payouts are 30-50% depending on the niche and your relative positions in the marketplace.
If you are brand new in the market then offering a higher affiliate payout like 50% is a good way to get people interested. If you have a long track record of making sales then a lower percentage is normal.
Gumroad has built in affiliate marketing thankfully, making setting this up simple.
It is however a little bit hidden. Let’s dig it out.
In the bottom left of the screen you should should your profile pic. Click this and then Affiliates.
Here you can access your affiliate sign up page as well as manually add affiliates.
In both cases we need a source of affiliates!
First stop is definitely pre-existing customers. If they have purchased from you before and enjoy your project then see if they want an affiliate link so that they can share products with their friends and also get paid. However, if this is your first launch we’ll assume there aren’t any pre-existing customers.
Therefore, second is your newsletter. Your affiliate programme is a great thing to mention in your newsletter footer or in a P.S.
Third is reaching out toe influencers in your space. This may be the most fruitful strategy because influencers already have large audiences.
The basic idea is to reach out to people who have audiences that would be interested in your offer.
X is great for this. Refer back to your Dream 100 from Module 1. You’ll have lists of accounts that you engage with - these are the accounts you want to reach out to.
Don’t just shoot them a DM out of the blue asking them to sell your stuff! They don’t know you.
Make sure you first have a relationship with them by engaging in their content and chatting to them on X. Do this in preparation for launching your affiliate campaign.
When you are ready to get them on board send a quick DM like this:
Act as a cold outreach expert.
Write a short Twitter DM to ask if an influencers is interested in promoting my product.
The product is [name] and its about [description]
Mention audience overlap and the product being of interest to their audience.
Mention that the price is [price] and affiliate cut is [%] and give illustrative examples of how 1% conversion from their [follower count] followers would lead to a certain profit.
Plug in the required details, including their follower count.
Make sure to adapt this to make it as personal to them and their content as possible. Refer back to previous times you interacted with each other - this is a relationship, not just a transaction.
If you don’t think they are particularly money orientated drop the reference to cash amounts.