Are you trying to squeeze more conversions out of your affiliate campaigns? Neil Patel is going to teach you unique ways to double your affiliate sales from your marketing spend.

Speech by Neil Patel | Co-Founder, Crazy Egg, Hello Bar, Quick Sprout & KISSmetrics

Neil Patel Speech Transcript

How you guys all doing today? Good?

So you guys are, how many of you here are affiliates? Good amount, alright.

And from your affiliate revenue, how many of you are generating it through Facebook Ads? Good portion of you.

The ones, whether you’re generating from Facebook Ads or not, how many of you are generating the revenue through advertorials? Good portion of you.

So today, I’m gonna show you how to generate more revenue in sales from your advertorials.

Here’s my Twitter handle. You can use that hashtag.

And the chances are, as you mentioned, you guys are driving sales through a page that looks something like this.

Example: Skin Cream Page

Now, this is in Spanish. But this is an example of a page, this is for skin cream, I believe. And it keeps going. More images, more text. It doesn’t matter if you guys could read this, you know what this is about.

Keeps going there. Talks about the product, talk about how you can buy it. And you know what? These advertorial pages aren’t done unless you include, Oprah.

Oprah loves it. Do you know who the other guy is? Dr. Oz. I know you guys know who he is.

Yeah, this guy here, you have Dr. Oz on your pages, don’t you? No.

And just to show that this is real, then you have a ton of comments. Looks about right?

Well, do you want to learn how to make more money from a page? Right, here’s the version in a long format. It just keeps going and going.

Look they even have celebrities on there too. Tom Cruise uses it, you should too.

So, I’m not gonna tell you what you’re doing is right or wrong. I’m just gonna show you how to make more money from doing whatever you’re doing.

Sound fair to you? Does that work? Alright, let’s get started.

How You Can Increase Your Conversion Rate

Here is how you can increase your conversion rate. In general, for every dollar you spend on advertising as an affiliate, you’re making at least $2, right? Yes?

Raise your hand if you’re making less than that? Few of you, that’s not good.

You should always be making at least double your money. In general, you should be making triple your money.

For every dollar you spend, a decent campaign should be generating you $3. A great campaign will be generating you, roughly, $4. Does that sound good?

If you’re making, how many of you guys are making $4 for every dollar you’re spending? Few of you guys.

You guys are doing a good job. And, have you guys been able to scale it to at least a few $100,000 a month in spend? That’s good.

So let’s get started.

#1. The Money Is In The People Who Say No

The money is in the people who say no. In general, when you have a page, 2 or 4, if you’re lucky, out of a hundred visitors who land on your advertorial page will buy.

That means the majority of the people that are visiting your page are not buying.

So, what should you be doing? You can try to get more to buy right away. But conversion optimisation doesn’t work like that.

It’s kind of like dating.

So, you see this lady here, she’s taking pictures of me. What’s your name? Veronica.

Well because you’re standing here, Veronica, you’re gonna be the lucky lady of the day.

Conversion Optimisation

Now Veronica, if I ask you right now, will you marry me? You gotta give me answer. Will you marry me?

Wait, there’s a catch. With the prenup, with the prenup.

She’s on offense. That’s a nice way of saying no, but “I don’t want to embarrass you because you’re on stage.”

Alright, well if Veronica said yes, what would that tell you about Veronica? She’s crazy, right? No one in their right mind would say yes. Veronica’s not a crazy person. She’s smart, lovely, beautiful lady.

But if I asked Veronica. “Hey will you go on a date with me to coffee?”

Now, I’m not gonna ask her this. Let’s just assume she says yes to make it a bit simpler. So, Veronica says yes. We go on a coffee date, it looks like this.

Although, I’m not white, but let’s imagine we’re a white couple. We’re drinking some wine. The reason we have wine there is because I need to get her drunk. So she’s happier on the date.

If she was sober my chances of getting any further would be slim to none. But let’s say I get her drunk, she’s having fun. And then I ask her on another date and then that goes well.

We date for a bit more, then we decide to date exclusively. Then, we date for another 6 months, we decide to move in together.

Eventually, that I meet her parents, she meets my parents. You fast forward, 3-4 years, we’re having a good time. And now, I say Veronica, if I ask you, “Will you marry me?”

What are you gonna say? You don’t need a pre-nup now, it’s good. Right?

Build The Trust

Now I have a much better chance. Why is that? Why do you think she’s gonna say yes over time versus if I ask her to marry me from day one?

Trust. That’s right.

When someone comes to your website and you tell them to buy right away, most people say no.

Why? Because they don’t trust you.

That’s why most of you guys send them to an advertorial with the picture of Oprah. It helps build up trust, kind of. You know, after they buy the product they may not be happy, but it’s building up trust for while they’re reading the article.

What ends up happening though is, still, the majority of the people don’t convert right away because they still are wary.

They’re not sure if this product is a good fit for them, or if they should buy. So, what should you be doing?

You should be building up your email list.

The majority of the people who say, come to the mailing page, won’t buy. So, if you can convince them over time to buy, you will generate more sales.

Newsletter Boxes

You can do newsletter opt-ins in the sidebar on your news looking site. And, you can do opt-ins and offer PDFs courses, ebooks.

You can even offer something that teaches you how to reduce your wrinkles without home remedies, without spending any money. And after they download it, then you can send them back to trying to buy again.

You can even do pop-ups.

So here’s what we learn by doing emails, we tested this out. We test this out on a weight-loss advertorial page.

And, we didn’t just use the celebrities saying, “Hey how they’re gonna lose weight or Dr. Oz.”

Case Study: Affiliate Selling Weight Loss Pills

What we found is for every 100 emails or 100 visitors, you should collect at least 5 emails. And this didn’t affect the number of people who are buying right away.

For every 100 emails, roughly 1 to 5 should convert into a sale. Then, from there, you want to drip them into 7 emails. And, I’ll give you examples of the emails.

You also want to warm people up before you make them purchase. That way they build a trust. Then, you don’t want to send them back to the same page.

If I went to that advertorial page, and I didn’t buy right away, then you collected my email.

You email me a few emails, and then you want me to buy again, would you send me back to the same advertorial page that caused me not to buy in the first place? No.

You got to switch up the pages, the offers. That’s how you generate the most amount of sales.

You also want to promote multiple offers to your email lists, that’s how you also maximise sales.

Examples Of Emails

Here are some examples of emails we are sending people, right.

This plant food harms your metabolism and your heart. Talks about how you can gain weight.

Here’s another one. Two simple steps to remove belly fat. Another example, this is all educational material that’s training, educating, teaching people.

Here’s another one. Seven fatty foods for a flat stomach. This is telling them that you can eat fatty foods and get a flatter stomach.

This is all legitimate, real content that’s true. It helps people by doing this and then putting links for them to buy.

This affiliate got another 21.19% increase in revenue from their ad spend. That’s good, no?

I would want another 21%.

#2 Quiz Your Email List

Let’s get to number two, quizzes.

Have you guys heard of Revolution Golf? If not, look them up. They make $20,000,000 a year teaching you how to improve your golf swing.

Do you know how they generate all their sales?

They first make you take a quiz that breaks down how you’re screwing up with your golfing, and how you can improve it.

So you take this quiz. They customise the results for you. And then boom, they tell you which product you should buy after based on the responses you took.

Here’s an example of a diet quiz. Which diet is right for your personality?

“I hate dieting. It’s never a good fit for me. Oh but now, I can find a diet that’s best fit for my personality, my activities, the hours I stay awake, my exercise routine.”

It’s customised. People want that personalised experience.

Diet Quiz

I enjoy cooking, mostly in the mornings, when I’m cooking for others. I prefer to order whatever I’m craving. This is an example of a quiz.

We use a tool called LeadQuizzes. It’s not mine, it’s just some random company.

Use the tool. Then, when someone gets to the end, we show them the offer that they should be buying based off of it.

Quiz Rules

So here are some general rules with your quizzes.

Only start with 5 questions, not more, not less. You can add in more later on or less. And, you can start testing, but start with 5.

You want to use images when possible to describe the question that you’re asking.

So, you want to limit your choices per question to 4. That way you’re not overwhelming people. You want to show a progress bar, so that way people know how far they’re progressing.

And you want to pitch the product at the end, that’s most relevant to that person, that way they’ll convert.

We did this. 8.37% increase.

We are even starting to have people take the quiz, then send them to the advertorial and then having them buy. The extra step increased revenue. It’s not too shabby.

You may look at this, you make 8% here 20% over there. This is not much, but if you do a combination of all these things, it adds up.

You can double your revenue from your affiliate marketing campaigns.

#3 Get Personal With Your Copy

Number three, get personal with your copy.

This image look familiar? Victoria or Veronica? Did I get your name right? That’s bad. I asked her to marry me and I don’t even know her real name.

But getting personal. I learned this from the dating websites.

Back in the day, I use to work with Match.com, eHarmony, some of these dating sites. And I was going through their analytics and numbers.

Do you know what the number one thing that helped cause conversions from them? How many of you guys live here in Germany? Decent amount.

So, let’s say we’re in Berlin right now, which we are. And someone comes to a landing page and this is a dating website.

I would say something like “There’s 5,368 single people in Berlin. What are you waiting for?” I would translate into German, but I don’t speak good German.

But imagine that in German. So, you have people coming to a landing page with all these single people, it’s like “Wow, there’s other single people like me? I should join. Let me sign up.”

That’s making people feel warm, special.

We started do this. One of my buddies, Tim Sykes, he’s in the info product space. He has affiliates, people driving traffic.

“Will It Be You?”

And, I was in Las Vegas. I was sitting in Las Vegas, visiting one of his landing pages. We set this up and it says, “I’m Determined To Create A Millionaire Trader In Las Vegas, My Only Question Is Will It Be You?”

I feel like, “I’m in Las Vegas, why can’t it be?”

Let me shoot the guy an email and let me see if he’ll accept me. I did this with one of my landing pages. “I’m looking to help the business in Las Vegas grow, my only question is, will it be yours?”

Then, I got people, let’s say this was Berlin, I got people when I would put in Berlin because I would change up the geo, the city based on where they live.

And then, instead of Berlin, it may say Frankfurt, and people would be like, “I don’t live in Berlin but I’m close enough, I’m a plane flight away. Can I qualify too? Please, I’ll do anything. Accept me.”

I was getting people to beg me to take their money because they felt it was personalised due the fact that I put their city in there. It’s not too shabby.

We started doing this with sales copies, advertorials, and checkout pages. Why not?

Personalised Copy = Converts Well

You see those testimonials you put on those pages, why can’t those testimonials be from other people within the city?

It makes them feel more special.

How many of you guys are selling flashlights right now? That means all of you guys don’t want to raise their hand.

Okay, so you know what flashlights, a lot of people sell flashlights for survival, right? You guys agree with this.

So then you can start using copy like, what’s a German name? I don’t know, Marcus? Let’s go with Marcus because I know a German named Marcus. That’s kind of Americanised too, but let’s assume it’s German.

Berlin had a massive, what’s like a crazy event in Berlin? “Chaos happened in Berlin and what Marcus did to survive will shock you.”

Right, it’s not the best copy but I’m pulling it out of my butt.

And then we talked about how Marcus survived a zombie attack with a flashlight. It works.

People were like, “I live in Berlin. If there was a zombie attack, shit, I need a flashlight. Give me one with the knife built in too.”

That one cost extra $10. But yes, you can get that. That’s the upgrade, that’s the upsell.

The point I’m trying to make, it’s using personalised copy, converts really well. Especially when you integrate the city in there.

Survival Life

Survival Life, they talk about knives and camping, they’re big on Facebook. It’s owned by DigitalMarketer or the Ryan Deiss team.

They crush it and they do things like, “Are you prepared for an attack in Atlanta, Georgia? One may be happening sooner than you may imagine. Click here if you’re not doing one of the few following things.”

And one of them could be, “Do you have your flashlight?”

All I’m saying is, when you’re doing these ads, don’t target people in Las Vegas. I don’t want to read them all day long, cause even I click on them.

Copy Ideas

So, if you incorporate things into your headlines, your testimonials, your copy, you will see an increase in sales.

We usually see anywhere from a 12.49% to a 27.57% increase.

This stuff works. Get creative. Do you guys see how this stuff is intriguing and it can make people want to click more?

Yes, I know with affiliate marketing, you just want to crank it out and create a lot of these pages. And just make money as quick as possible with the least amount of work.

But if you put in a bit more work, you will make a much higher return on your ad spend.

#4 Make It Harder For People To Buy

Number four, make it harder for people to buy.

I know this sounds counter-intuitive but when you look at these examples, you’ll be like, I know these companies. And some of you guys are probably pushing affiliate traffic for them.

Should you be sending people from your sales pitch directly to buy the product?

Well, Mike Chang, you know Six Pack Shortcuts? That Asian guy who’s just like, “I’m gonna teach you how to be buff.”

He’s just like, what are your goals? This is all a limited to the right type of people. If your goals don’t line up with what we’re trying to do, you won’t buy.

Do you know what I did? I didn’t even put any goals, I just clicked submit and it says “Congratulations, based on your responses you’re a good fit.”

I’m like, “What responses? I put in nothing in there.”

That’s helping their sales if they let anyone go through.

Here’s another one, Instant Checkmate. You guys have all seen this, right?

Have you ever looked up someone? Let’s say you look up Neil Patel and you’re trying to find out more information on him because you love him to death.

He’s speaking here at this Affiliate conference. Like this Neil guy is awesome. I’m gonna blackmail him and try to make him do some free work for me. Let me see what dirt I can dig up.

Instant Checkmate

So, you go to Instant Checkmate, you put in my name. Do you know what the first thing that comes up?

“Are you sure you want to look up Neil Patel? The information you find may shock you. Are you prepared for this?”

And then you’re like, “Yeah, sure.”

And then, they’ll ask you questions. “Does Neil live in any one of these cities?”

Oh yeah, he lives in Las Vegas.”

We’re digging up a lot of information. “Are you sure you really want to proceed?  What you may end up learning may hurt how you feel about Neil.”

Well, I don’t know, but now I want to see information about him.

And then, it keeps going and it’s nonstop. Sometimes you’re going through 30 minutes of pages.

You know their status bar, they have the information ready for you. They just show you the status bar and make you wait for a minute or two because they know if you wait you’re more likely to buy.

That’s really a pain in the butt.

I know another company that does Vehicle, VIN look-ups. And they make you go through more steps and asking you information about the car, even though they already have the answers.

Why? Because they know it converts better.

So we did this. And we saw interesting results.

One Out Of Five

Out of the 5 campaigns we tested this on, different industries from weight loss to creams to background checks to casino stuff.

What we found out is for one campaign to decrease the revenue by 34.63%, the other four was profitable and it went all the way up to 58.86% increase in ad spend or return on ad spend.

That’s not too shabby.

Test it out. As you can see I’m not making shit up. I could tell you that this stuff is all gonna help you, but I even told you that someone actually lost revenue from this.

I don’t just put Oprah on my pages. I’ll tell you how it really is.

On a side note, I actually don’t do much, if any, affiliate marketing. I used to.

Google Banned Me

I ranked number one for online casino, then Google banned me.

And then I ranked number one for a web hosting for a long time, and then Google banned me as well.

Do you remember all those WordPress theme sites? When they first came out, I paid each of those designers to put in their theme, “Hosted By” and then it had my URL.

And my URL had a web hosting in there, and I ranked number one for such a long time. I was making hundreds and thousands of dollars a month from web hosting affiliate stuff.

And the number 2, number 3, number 4 guy who also ranked, they copied my same tactic. I just did it better than them and quicker.

And then Google banned me because they found out it was my site. I shouldn’t be doing stuff like that because I’m a well-known blogger.

But number 3, number 3, and number 4 still ranked. I was so sad, I was crying. I lost a lot of money that day.

And I invested a lot. I think, in total, I spent $70,000 paying these WordPress people to put in my link. They’re like, “$70,000?”

I’m like, “Yeah, you just keep creating themes, you’re such a great designer I want to support you. I want to help you do this, I believe in you.”

“Really?  Yeah, no problem.”

Within 3 months, I was ranking number 1.

Ranked Number One

I’m like, best money I spent. I made that money back in, you know, the day ranked number one. I had a web hosting review site, the number 1 most recommended host, number 2, number 3.

Whoever paid me the most was number 1. They’re my favourite.

It’s like Coke or Pepsi, like Dave Chappelle. I love Pepsi. Coke decides to pay me extra hundred grand more, Coke is way better, forget Pepsi.

#5 Copy Tweaks Have The Biggest Impact On Conversions

Number 5, copy tweaks make the biggest impact on your conversions. 8 out of 10 people will read your headlines, but only 2 out of 10 will read the rest of your copy.

Focus on optimising your headlines.

Headline Rules

So a few headline rules.

Numbers and negative words increase click-through rates.

Keep your characters under 65 characters. Too many headlines, too long, not good for search and everything.

You also want to make your headline match the content. If you don’t, you won’t do well.

I had a buddy doing casino affiliate stuff, really good headline. He doesn’t use this anymore so I’ll say it.

It was a like, “Maggie quit Double Down Casino and what happened next will shock you.”

Really good headline. What happened next was she spent money on a real casino. Spend your own money too, but good headline right.

Odd numbers also perform better than even numbers in the headlines.

You also want to aim for roughly 6-word headlines. I don’t know why. I have a statistician that works for me. We started crunching through a lot of numbers and data points on headlines.

And we found that the number 6 works better than most. Don’t know why, but that’s what it was.

Avoid using words with multiple meanings and include power words and adjectives.

Here are some examples of adjectives.

Effortless, incredible, unique.

Remove your wrinkles in an effortless way. Use this unique product to remove every one of your wrinkles and lose weight at the same time. That’s a 2-in-1.

Take that you skincare affiliates, I’m gonna combine the skin care with the weight-loss.

One product, one price.

General Copy Tweaks

General copy tweaks. So, evoking curiosity is a strong way to generate clicks.

Make your headline match the content.

Write in a conversational tone. Using the words “You” or “I”, brings people into the stories more. It makes them read more of those longer advertorials. So that way, they can get to the bottom, where it says buy now.

Being to sales-y can hurt your sales. People actually think with the advertorials you should be really strong and really sales-y. You should, later down, but at the beginning you need a strong hook to get them in, evoking curiosity.

Then, use data points, get them intrigued. And then, you sell much stronger and you’ll do better.

Make your copy clear. Easy, dark text, easier to read right on mobile phones.

Keep in mind for mobile batteries, most people don’t know this, they put their phones on lighter or dimmer screens, so that way their battery lasts longer. Darker text helps.

You also want to go for simpler landing pages that load quick. Your long sales pages take forever to load. Use AMP, it’s by Google.

The framework, your landing pages will load quicker. You should see it increase in sales.

Ask Them A Question

And, answer objections within the copy. Objections is the key.

So, when someone stays on your page too long, you ask them questions.

“What did you come to the site for? What would intrigue you to buy this product that we’re discussing?”

If they stay for more than a minute and they’re not buying, and you know the average person stays on your page for a minute before they click and you can track this, then start asking questions to get feedback on why they’re not converting.

Then adjust your copy.

So, then that way you can generate more sales.

It really comes down to answering objections. That’s one of the keys to generating sales.

#6 Make The Companies You’re Promoting Optimize Their Checkout Pages

The other thing that you need to do, is convince the companies you’re working for to optimise their damn checkout pages.

You want to improve conversions? Most of these guys have the shittiest checkout pages.

Would you agree with this? Yes, and you should just even tell them what changes to make.

Yes, the other affiliates will make more money too, but, heck, you will too.

Get People To Commit Before Buying

Presells, so you want to get them to buy before they’re even buying. This works.

“Yes, Johnny, I’m ready to start melting the fat off my belly, hips, and thighs at today’s special price at $37. And if in the next 60 days I’m not satisfied for any reason, I can get a full refund.”

Works really well.

That checkbox, it’s already pre-checked for him. They don’t have to check it.

It just helps them convince, commit mentally that they should buy before they buy.

Usually, when we test this out on checkout pages for your industry, usually you can see a 16% lift.

Future Pacing

Future pacing. “What do you get when you use Crazy Egg?” The benefits by telling people, “Hey, once you buy this product here’s what you’re gonna get.”

That’s future pacing.

“Oh cool, once I buy this product roughly in 30 days this is what will happen, and 60 days expect this. Make sure you use it every day.”

That’s future pacing.

Answer Objections

Answering objections, again 14% increase. One of the best ways.

“Did you know that Clicktale is 450% more expensive than Crazy Egg?”

One of our big objections were, “Why should we sign up for you guys versus Clicktale?”

Well now, I put it in my copy on why you should sign up for us. Everyone’s like, “Oh cool, it’s cheaper, sounds good.”

2-Step Checkout

Tell your companies that you’re promoting offers for, their checkout pages should be 2-step. You usually get a 10% increase.

Ask them to collect someone’s name and email before they have them buy. Not 1-page checkout, 2-page.

You know why? If someone gives you their name and email, they’re like, “Shit, I already gave you my name and email might as well finish the purchase. You already have my information.”

It works well.

Checkout Bumps

Here’s another one, Checkout bump. Have you guys heard of checkout bumps? Russel Brunsen does this a lot.

So you could buy something similar. Yes, I’ll take it. A one-time offer, only $27.

They’re already checking out. It never hurts your conversions. You’re not forcing it on them.

You can usually get an extra 15% increase in revenue. When you do all this stuff for these companies, you better hope they give you that rev share on that checkout bump, too.

Don’t let them screw you over. It all works.

Get these guys to make the changes. You guys are driving the traffic, you can enforce it.

#7 Focus O Long Term Offers, Not Short Term Income

Now number seven, this is a unique one and then we’ll get into some Q&A’s. Focus on long-term offers, not short-term income.

How many of you affiliates know that your product won’t last the next year, the offers that you’re promoting? Raise your hand. Alright, good amount of you.

The ones who aren’t raising your hand, a lot of you are delusional.

It’s true.

You think Facebook is gonna let you affiliates keep running Facebook ads? No.

There’s Facebook reps here. I don’t give a shit what they tell you. They’re awesome reps but Google did the same thing.

You know what happens? They let you spend a shitload of money. You submit at night where all the India team sees your ads, easier to get approval. I’m Indian. I accept it, we’re not always the smartest.

It gets approved. And then, eventually, Facebook pulls the offer. Facebook stock price keeps going up because the revenue keeps going up. Eventually, when the big advertisers take up majority of their inventory, you think they’re gonna let you affiliates drive the traffic?

No, why? It’s reality.

Google did the same exact thing. Once they get the heat from the government, the FTC, the government doesn’t care to go after you affiliates. They want to go after the Facebook’s, Google’s. And, they want to stop them for going after it.

Facebook hired an FTC lawyer, her name was Ashley Behringer, one of the best attorneys in America for FTC issues.

You know how I know? I was getting investigated by the FTC, she was one of my attorneys.

She’s really good. And the funny thing is we weren’t doing anything wrong and I passed with flying colours.

Sustainable And Long-term Revenue

But, the government goes after these types of companies. So, you should be thinking long-term. You guys have this money, invest in properties.

You’re collecting all these emails in skincare, why not create a skincare blog?

And, you can make a $100,000 a month just an income from a blog that’s really popular. Yes, it won’t make you the richest person.

You may not be making a half a million dollars in profit anymore, each month. But you know what, you have sustainable, long-term revenue.

You now can take this company, build it up and sell it.

You can’t sell your affiliate company for 4x revenue. No one wants to buy it. It’s short-term.

Think about more long-term offers. Even with the landing pages, you don’t always have to use Oprah, you can pay your own celebrities. And have them promote your product.

Celebrities, a lot of them are broke. You guys make a lot more money than many of these guys. They’ll gladly take the money and have you on their landing page. Or you can put them on your sales page or whatever you want.

So that’s pretty much it. Now let’s get into some Q&A.

Q&A

Daniel:
Thank you very much for the talk. Let’s go over here. So Neil will take questions from the audience now. For everybody who is interested, please line up next to the microphones. Neil, in the meantime, I have a question for you.
Neil:
Sure, fire away.
Daniel:
So, I wanted to touch on your last point. So let’s assume, we all followed your advice, our funnels are nicely optimised, we are profitable and suddenly the offer gets pulled. What advice would you have for affiliates? How should they react to this?
Neil:
If your offer gets pulled, in the short-run you should go and find a new offer. There’s always gonna be more offers out there. And, there are other offers within your space. You can also expand internationally. So for example, a lot of the forced continuity offers got pulled in America, now the affiliates are going to South America, Brazil, all the Latin America countries because the regulations are less strict. So there’s still money to be made but what you need to be doing at the same time, is thinking long-term. How do I collect emails from the people that aren’t converting right away? And, how do I keep pitching them more and more offer so I’m not buying the traffic and I have my solid base of users? How can I create a blog, how can I create my own products or services?
Daniel:
Okay and do we have people lined up yet? Not yet, okay. So I will ask you another question in that case.
Neil:
Sure, fire away.

Future Of Facebook Advertising For Affiliates

Daniel:
How do you see in the future of Facebook advertising for affiliates, you touched also on this? You see there is a future for affiliates on there? And if yes, how should they adjust to stay in the game for the long-run?
Neil:
Sure, so I do see Facebook advertising getting stricter and stricter. I know a lot of you affiliates are getting pages through and you’re just like, “Yes, I’m smart.” No, Facebook is letting a lot of this stuff go. I don’t think they’re trying to really block all of it. If they wanted to, they probably could. They have really smart engineers there. In addition to that, the future I see is going to be, unless campaigns meet certain requirements, like they’re actually accurate, the landing pages, etc., they’re gonna start taking down all people who are going to affiliates.

More Brand Advertisers

They want to push more brand advertisers. The Apple computers of the world, the Sony’s, the Nintendo’s, the people doing the Pokemon-Go’s. They’d rather have those people doing mobile app downloads advertising versus affiliates. So in the long-run, I do see Facebook becoming a smaller and smaller channel. Google seems to be opening up because they’ve lost a lot of affiliate revenue to people using Facebook. You’re gonna start seeing Google open up more and more in the up and coming years. But you’re also gonna see the cost going up increasingly. And, you’ll also start seeing new channels work. A lot of people right now are doing Arbitrage on Outbrain, Taboola in native ads. That’s working really well, and Taboola, Outbrain, they’re Israeli companies. They’re really easy-going and friendly. They’ll let you run almost any offer you want as long as you pay them.
Daniel:
So, I see we got somebody who has a question.

Which Vertical has Potential

Audience:
Thanks for a great speech. Very nice to see you in person. A question, if you would have to start affiliate marketing now from zero, which vertical would you choose? Which vertical do you think has the most potential like in the near and a long-term future?
Neil:
Sure, I know a lot of you guys are doing nootropics. You guys, nootropics? You guys have heard of it? Nootropics, flashlights. You know a big one right now is? Trump pins. You know Trump, presidential in the US, he’s trying to run. I know people who are making like $400,000-$500,000 a month in profit selling Trump pins. They’re not even Trump fans. And you know their biggest problem is, they can’t produce enough Trump pins. That’s how many fans they have. Yeah but the biggest space, I look at market cap, go to Google.com/trends and type in industries like nutrition, diet. And, you could type in all these different industries and you’ll see trend lines of which ones are going up over time and which ones are going down. Look for the industries that are going up. A big one right now that you guys can make a ton of money on that no one’s really tapping into, is lucid dreaming.

Lucid Dreaming

Have you guys heard of lucid dreaming? It’s where you can control your dreams and you can dream about shit. I don’t know what else you dream about. I dream about working and making money. That’s really my dream. Control my dreams? No, no, I just want to dream about money. But that is where that is a huge industry. Tim Ferriss just recently blogged about lucid dreaming. But I believe if someone got into the lucid dreaming space, they bought Facebook traffic. You can probably make a quick to 300 grand a month in profit. It’s a big market. Control your dreams.

Send People Through Webinars

And then, once you fine-tune your funnels, if you send people through webinars, that’s huge. Affiliates don’t use webinars enough. You make the most money through webinars. You take the traffic, you make them watch an hour-long webinar. The first 30 minutes is education, the last 30 minutes is pitching them on why they need to buy your product or service. If you do an evergreen webinar using Ever Webinar or Webinar Jam, you make a shitload of money. You can sell pills, supplements, your tropics, dreaming stuff, all better through webinars and at a higher price.
Daniel:
Okay great. I think we have a next question.
Audience:
You were saying basically the ad spread is gonna move towards a brand budget on Facebook? So, I was just curious. Instead of going after the typical affiliate offers that are probably gonna get more and more aggressively pushed out by Facebook, how do you pivot, as an affiliate, to try and create offers or move towards getting a position in that brand budget and trying to create offers around where that spend is already headed for what Facebook actually wants?

Create Your Own Product And Service

Neil:
Yeah, the best way around it is to create your own products or services. Now, I know creating supplements is a pain in the butt but there’s a lot of companies that I’ll do it where you just white label it. They hold the inventory. And every time you sell a bottle, they’ll just ship it out for you and deal with refunds and support and all that. Your best bet is to create your own products in your own landing pages. Because what will happen is, if you’re in full control of the whole funnel, you’re gonna survive in the long-run for Facebook Ads, Google Ads, etc.

Digital Products

The bigger thing that you guys should be thinking about is digital products. I know you guys like doing a lot of tangible stuff and you think it converts well. And yes, it converts better. But the margins are so much better on the digital products. You can make so much more money. I had a buddy he was doing over $1 million a month in profit on drivers. Are you guys familiar with drivers? You know when your HP printer is broken, what do you do? You download a driver, right? So, what he decided to do is aggregate all the drivers around the web, put on his website. And if your HP printer is messed up, you can pay him for the driver. He sold drivers. And he was doing Google Adwords. Made a shitload of money. And then, HP started getting mad. Like, “Hey you’re selling our drivers.” So, then he said, “You know what, that’s fine. I’m not gonna sell drivers anymore.” He then created a diagnostic tool that figured out which drivers on your computer weren’t up to date. And after he ran the scan and that scan was free, then you can pay him money to get all the new drivers. And that’s how he got around it, made a shitload of money.
Daniel:
Okay, cool.
Neil:
But you get what I mean. Creating your own product, it’s more long-term. Because if you don’t, eventually, you’ll get cut off from a lot of these ad networks.
Daniel:
Thanks for the feedback.
Audience:
No problem.
Daniel:
Well I think I have another question. You’re very big into software, right?
Neil:
Yes.

Software Space

Daniel:
You’ve built multi-million dollar companies. What advice would you have for affiliates that are thinking to move into the software space?
Neil:
The software space makes more money. Affiliate markers are some of the smartest marketers I know out there. There’s one problem with them. They go for the quick money. And I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with quick money, but a portion of your time should be focused on long-term. Because after you make $1 million or $2 million, like one of my friends just bought a house, $1 million cash. Why would you buy a house for $1 million cash in a market that’s going up? Go invest it into something that’s a long-term. You guys are smart marketers. And if you invest in something long-term, you can go create a company that can sell for 4 or 5 or 8x revenue. You don’t even have to be profitable and you can settle for that. You’re building up your net worth. Right now, you guys are living paycheck to paycheck. And your income and your net worth is whatever you made the last month. But why not invest a portion of your time building a startup, something that could be big. So then that way, later on, you can sell it for 4 or 5, 8x revenue or multiples of profit. That is the key. I’ve done well in life. And I’ve done okay where I never have to work again because I focused on building on my net worth instead of just focusing on making short-term money.
Daniel:
Okay, all right, thank you, Neil. Thank you very much for your time.
Neil:
Thank you. Thank you guys for having me.