Yes, you read that headline right. In fact, you might even want to read it again.
You can totally get affiliates to PAY YOU for the right to send you buyers.
I ran across this a couple of years ago, and I have to say I was impressed. In fact, I just about joined this myself, and I’m a seasoned pro. This was done by a group of seasoned marketers, but there’s no reason why a new marketer or marketers couldn’t do it, too.
Last time I checked, this funnel I’m about to describe is still up and running and going strong. I don’t want anyone to actually steal their exact system, sales copy and funnel, so I’m going to just give you the highlights and you can fill in the rest:
First you start with a sales funnel. You’ve got a squeeze page offering a terrific little “how to do marketing” type of lead magnet. Once visitors grab the lead magnet, or even if they try to click away without picking up the lead magnet, they are then directed to a sales page for an online marketing membership site.
The membership site has several levels, with the lowest level being free to join. Of course they highlight the free level in the headline to keep people on the page, and then they extoll the virtues of the other levels. Each level has more and better content, better support and so forth.
The free level is fairly basic, but does give enough info for a newbie to make a start in making money online.
And of course each level is more expensive than the previous level, with the prices skewed a bit to encourage visitors to choose the highest level.
I’ll give you an example of that pricing to give you an idea of what I’m talking about:
Level 1: Free
Level 2: $29 per month
Level 3: $44 per month
Level 4: $49 per month
These aren’t the exact price points they used, but you get the idea. You see there is very little difference between level 3 and 4 in terms of price, but in terms of content there is a big difference.
This is a great psychological strategy, because it gets the prospect to study the differences between levels 3 and 4 while forgetting all about level 2.
And of course if they’re going to get a paid membership, they’re most likely to choose level 4.
The content is drip fed each week…
…and if you’ve been paying close attention, you’ve realized I haven’t really shown you anything new yet.
Here it comes, so hang on to your seat, because THIS is how you get affiliates to PAY you to send you a list of BUYERS:
(I love this bit!)
All of the levels offer a built-in affiliate program that sets the affiliates up to sell their own memberships for all of the levels they qualify for.
This means if they are a level 2 member, they can give away level 1 and sell level 2. If they happen to sell level 3 or 4, they still get paid, but not as much.
But if they are a level 4 member, they get to sell all four levels and KEEP ALL the money.
That’s right – they get to keep 100% of what they sell if they are level 4.
I hope this is making sense. It sounds complicated at first, but it’s actually fairly simple once you understand the concept.
Thus you’ve got affiliates paying (in our example above) $49 a month for the privilege of selling memberships and keeping all the money.
That’s a great deal for the affiliates, right? Absolutely. You can see why I almost jumped on it.
The affiliates don’t have to worry about hosting, fulfillment or any of that stuff, because the membership takes care of all of that.
The affiliate gets a unique sales page URL, squeeze page URL and membership area.
The content is automatically drip fed into that member’s area. The subscriptions are managed for them, the levels are managed for them… all they have to do is make sales by promoting their squeeze page URL.
The affiliate gets to build a list of prospects and buyers simply by promoting the URL, and of course they are earning residual monthly income, too.
The list of prospects and customers stays in the system and cannot be exported. Affiliates can only email their lists from inside the system. So if they drop out and stop paying their monthly fee, they lose their lists.
This can make for some very sticky affiliates who never leave.
Now for the icing… in the terms and conditions, it is made explicitly clear that the membership site operator(s) have access to all of the prospects and customers who sign up.
This means they can email prospects and customers any time they like, making any offer they like. PLUS the site owners can also place offers in the membership area as well.
Now think about what I just said… affiliates are paying you $49 a month (or whatever price point you choose) to be able to build you a list of prospects and customers.
And the affiliates are getting a terrific deal, too, getting 100% monthly commissions and the ability to email their customers and prospects from within your website.
It’s a true win / win for everyone involved, and done correctly it can yield a tremendous amount of prospects and buyers for you, as well as excellent monthly income to pay for a very nice membership site and have money left over.
When I heard about this, they were making five figures a month from the membership site fees alone. This doesn’t include what they were earning from mailing to their ever-growing email lists, or from the special promotions they continually placed in the members’ area.
Imagine if you were earning 5 figures from your membership site AND having a team of affiliates working hard to build your list of prospects and buyers. Sweet.
I wish I had started my first site this way – I’d probably be retired today.
