What on Earth Is Affiliate Marketing?
Diversifying Income Through Affiliate Marketing
What is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is advertising for another business and receiving something in return such as commissions or a discount on a product or an exchange of some kind. To participate, we sign up for an affiliate program, market for another business and if that is successful, we receive the commission or a discount or whatever. The particular affiliate program provides details about the process.
Why Become an Affiliate?
I like to be clear with our followers. We are affiliates with a few programs. Why are we affiliates? Hey, we all gotta eat and pay our bills so I signed up for affiliate marketing while we are building our business. Here we will describe how we signed up, who we are affiliated with and so on. I will also share an opportunity for you to become an affiliate with us and help us sell our course and future courses. I am writing this under our diversify income blog because it is essentially diversifying income. We are only marketing services that we use as well and I will be forthcoming about each affiliate marketing post.
We are affiliated with Quickbooks, HoneyBook and Systeme.io and if people sign up for their programs with our referral link we can receive a commission. I am looking into other products and services too but I want to take time to try the products before advertising them.
Isn’t Affiliate Marketing Kind of Messed Up?
It can be but I believe that there are strategies to be honest and forthcoming with affiliate marketing. Back in the day, I used to think I could never be a sales person because I never wanted to be pushy as an empathic, highly sensitive introvert. But, I realized that if I’ve used the item or program and I like it and see the benefits of it, I could talk about that in an honest way and that is sales! If we are advertising something we don’t agree with just to receive an income then yes that can be kind of sleazy like the pushy salesperson trying to sell us an old used car. However, if we have used the program that we signed up for and are honest about how it works, I think we can be honest and forthcoming with this.
Substack’s Guidelines:
This came up in a conversation recently. There was some confusion in thinking that Substack doesn’t allow affiliate links. I don’t believe that is true. It looks like we can have some affiliate links but that our publications focus should not be on affiliate links. Check out this link.
And here from their content guidelines:
"Substack is intended for high quality editorial content, not conventional email marketing. We don’t permit publications whose primary purpose is to advertise external products or services, drive traffic to third party sites, distribute offers and promotions, enhance search engine optimization, or similar activities. Brands and commercial organizations publishing on Substack may be subject to additional verification."
Now to the Advertisements! And a Warning
If you don’t want to learn about what we are selling, stop here. I do also want to say, don’t try these things unless you need these services. Maybe what you are doing is good enough for now. Maybe you don’t need to overcomplicate your system.
For instance, do you need a CRM or is your excel document and email list working? Maybe your lead magnet is a PDF you created in Word and converted to PDF that you send out. Keep it simple at first. I would not advise over-complicating your business if you do not need to.
I also want to say, just because you build a course, does not mean you will be able to sell it, researching what people need is important with building a course. Often courses are a way to build an email list, not a strategy to make money so I would encourage being mindful with any of your decisions.
Do You Want to Help Us Sell Our Courses and/or Build Your Own?
First I am talking about becoming an affiliate with Business for Nerds (aka Attainable Vision LLC) and Systeme.io. In my first course, I go into detail on how to start a therapy private practice including marketing strategies that worked for me. In my second course, I provide details about diversifying income streams.
I built these courses with recording myself in MS Teams, then I created some guides in Canva. I used Systeme.io to upload it and create the modules and am using their program to sell it as well.
There is a second part to selling our course which is signing up for Systeme.io. If you want an inexpensive way to build courses, build a blog, build funnels and a community, then Systeme.io may be right for you. Also if people sell our courses with their affiliate link associated with our business, they can receive a commission from us too! If you are interested in selling our courses for a commission and signing up for Systeme.io, check out this guide. If you have any questions, please send me an email.1
Also for paid subscribers to my blog, I am offering 50% off on my courses. Check out this post for more information.
Why Is Selecting an Accountant and Bookkeeping Software Important?
Next I will talk about QuickBooks. It is important to document your income and expenses as you build your business. An Excel or Google sheets document quickly can get complicated to manage as your business grows. I have used several of QuickBooks programs from my small sole proprietorship to when I expanded into an LLC and S-corp.
What are some of the features of QuickBooks?
Here’s a bit about QuickBooks Self-Employed. If you are a sole proprietor with less complicated needs, you might check this out.
If your business is more complicated, and you need to document income, expenses, run payroll and more, you might look at QuickBooks Online.
If you click on any of the above pictures, you get access with my affiliate link to QuickBooks for 30% off for 6 months. If you want to hear about how I have used QuickBooks in the past, and my experiences, please send me an email.
Which Client Relationship Management System Do We Use?
If you are looking for a CRM that helps you build lead magnets and then connects these to projects that you can manage and also helps you build your email list, then HoneyBook may be a good choice for you.
I was able to build about half of my current email list with lead magnets I built in there. If you want an example, you can see my lead magnet for my marketing map which also provides details about affiliate marketing and helping us sell our courses.
And here is a nifty advertisement from HoneyBook. If you click on any of the pictures, you will be taken to my affiliate link for 25% off for a year. There is also a 7 day free trial.
My current Electronic Health Record
For my therapy private practice, I use Intake Q. Here is my affiliate link for that. It looks like you can try it out for free for 2 weeks.
So is Affiliate Marketing Icky?
So again, it can be icky if you are super salesy and tricksy,
BUT, if you are transparent about what you are selling and why, I think it can be okay to be an affiliate marketer. But this is my opinion.
And it is likely biased because I am human and am an affiliate marketer myself.
Sooo…
What are your thoughts about affiliate marketing? Please comment below!
Please send me an email with any questions.
Dr. Brie-Anna Willey, LMHC, CRC, CTP, CPC, QS
This was very helpful to read and learn about. Thank you!