How to Skyrocket Online Course Sales With No Upfront Investment (by using affiliates)
Are you looking for a way to find more students for your online course or membership without investing money in paid advertising?
A well-designed affiliate program is one of the best ways to find students without paying money upfront.
This is an effective and proven way to find students, but for this to work, you need to have a marketing system that will help your affiliates promote your course and get them paid.
You may be asking, what exactly is affiliate marketing, and how does it work? Continue reading, and you will get a better understanding of affiliate marketing that will help you find students for your online course without an upfront investment in paid advertising.
Note: Some of these links below are affiliate links, which means I may get a commission if you try them and purchase. However, none of the fees have been increased to compensate me.
What Is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is when someone in your industry who has an audience perfect for your online course or membership promotes your product to their audience for a percentage of the sale.
They are essentially putting their stamp of approval on your course or membership and promoting it to their audience. This word-of-mouth marketing is highly effective because their audience trusts them and their support through affiliate marketing says, “this program/course/membership does what it says and is worth the investment.”
When it comes to selling your online course, you will need software that will generate a unique link for your course that you will provide your affiliates with. The affiliates will then use these links in promoting your marketing campaign through various ways, like in their podcast episodes, blogs, social media posts, and email marketing.
The link will be used to track referrals of the affiliates. Your affiliates will get paid a commission for every sale made through their affiliate link.
The Benefits of Affiliate Marketing to Sell Your Online Course
Social Proof
A huge benefit of affiliate marketing is the social proof that comes with an affiliate who has a strong connection with their audience putting their stamp of approval on your online course or membership. This is priceless!
No Upfront Costs
Another benefit of an affiliate marketing program is the no upfront cost. Compare this to a launch with Facebook or Instagram ads where you pay tons of money upfront and won’t be 100% sure that you’ll make a return on your investment.
You only have to pay affiliates for leads that turn into paying customers with affiliate marketing.
Limited Time Investment
With affiliate marketing, you’ll need to spend time upfront finalizing your marketing materials like your sales page, promotional emails for your affiliates, and promotional graphics. In addition to this, depending on your sales funnel, you may have a recorded webinar.
Your entire marketing campaign can be set up once and then reused repeatedly for different affiliates.
Increased Visibility
Your affiliate shares your links, which will spread the word about your online course. In addition, this will make your sales page and website SEO-friendly, so potential students will be more likely to find it via a search on Google as your ranking increases.
If you are ready to set up an affiliate marketing program to sell your online course or membership, below is an 8-step detailed guide that you can utilize to help you start your program the right way.
The 8-Step Guide to Start an Affiliate Program to Sell Your Online Course or Membership
Step 1: Set Your Measurable Affiliate Marketing Goals
Every marketing campaign always starts with a goal. Ultimately, the goal of your campaign is to bring in revenue.
But let’s go a little deeper.
Would you rather have 100 affiliates promoting your course or membership to bring in $100,000 or 20 engaged affiliates that could generate the same amount of revenue?
We would say 20 strong and engaged affiliates for most of us as there is a cost to managing a high number of affiliates.
Also, will this be a one-time launch or something that you will evergreen?
For instance, I’ve done joint JV live webinars as an affiliate, and then we placed the webinar in an evergreen format so I could continue to promote as an affiliate.
Having measurable goals helps you gauge if your affiliate program is successful or not. Some key goals to think about here are your revenue and course sales goals (for a live launch and evergreen sales, if applicable) and the number of affiliates you need to support these goals.
Step 2: Select an Affiliate Platform (to make tracking easy)
This step is easy as most online course platforms have affiliate programs built into their systems.
To use this feature with your online course platform, you may be required to upgrade your plan, but this would pay for itself due to the increased affiliate sales you would obtain by adding this feature to your toolbox.
Review the tutorials provided by your online course platform to make sure you understand how to set up your affiliate program.
You should understand how your affiliates will sign up, and you will set their commission payouts in the system. Be sure to read how the affiliate link works so you can provide this information to your affiliates.
Step 3: Set Your Affiliate Commission (and make your program irresistible)
After you've decided on the approach and platform for your affiliate marketing program, you'll need to determine the percentage commission you'll offer your affiliates.
In this step, I want you to study what your competitors offer in terms of affiliate payouts. Your commission structure will be one of the most important decisions you’ll make as it will be the key determining factor as to whether someone will promote your online course or membership.
You must choose your ideal commission percentage, whether to pay recurring commissions, establish a payout threshold and when you will payout on earned commissions.
Keep in mind that a higher commission will push affiliates to work harder to make a sale to earn the commission.
A 30-40% commission is typical for most online courses and memberships. If you have a membership where your students pay a monthly fee to access your content, consider offering a recurring commission to your affiliates.
Now that you know the details of your program, including the affiliate commissions, when and how you will pay your affiliates, be sure you have an affiliate agreement that your new affiliates can sign when they agree to participate in your marketing campaign.
If you need an affiliate agreement, here is my go to resource for legal contracts and they have an affiliate agreement that’s perfect for your new affiliate program:
Step 4: Create Your Affiliate Marketing Material (and make it easy for affiliates to promote)
In this step, you’re creating your affiliate marketing material to make it easy for them to promote. This includes:
Email swipe files
Social media captions
Promotional images
Training material
You will place your affiliate marketing material in a place where it’s easy for your affiliates to download, like a Google drive.
Step 5: Find Your Perfect Engaged Affiliates
Now is the time to find the perfect affiliates to promote your online course or membership. Conduct your research. You need to make sure that they serve an audience interested in your online course. Estimate how big their audience may be based on their social media following and the quality of their content.
Follow them on social media and subscribe to their email list. How are they treating their email subscribers and social media following? Are they constantly promoting? Are they delivering high-quality content to their audience? Do you feel they have an engaged audience?
If you believe they would be a perfect affiliate for your online course or membership, reach out to them via email or social media to see if they would be willing to join as an affiliate partner.
Step 6: Onboard Your New Affiliates
This is where you introduce the affiliates to your program and learn about it. Effective affiliate onboarding consists of communication, guidance, and support from the moment they sign up until their last sale involving your online course.
Onboarding is a vital step in recruiting. Be sure that they know how to sign up for their affiliate links, confirm they have signed your affiliate contract, and have the dates for your promotion campaign in their calendar.
Remember, how you conduct the onboarding process will significantly impact your program's success. If you have a large affiliate team, consider having a private Facebook group for your affiliates so they can ask questions and get support through your group.
Step 7: Start Promoting Your Affiliate Campaign
When it’s time to start promoting your online course, let your affiliates know that it’s go time! Remind them where to find their affiliate link and promotional materials. Let them know that you’re there to support them if they have questions or need assistance.
This is the step where you will get to see all your plans come into motion. It is officially the beginning of your affiliate marketing journey to drive more sales of your online courses.
Step 8: Track How Your Affiliate Program Is Doing
The last step is to track the program's progress. This can be accomplished through your online course platform affiliate dashboard or the system you’re using for your affiliate management.
Track the affiliate who brings in the most sales. Have a leaderboard that shows who has the most sales and clicks. Consider having prizes for the most sales or clicks to the sales page.
If you’re having a problem achieving the goals, you may have to modify your commission structure or even reconsider your affiliate partners. If you have partners who aren’t promoting or their audience isn’t converting, it may be best to exclude them from future campaigns.
Once you have changed your affiliate lineup and redesigned your program, you will need to go back to step 5 onboard new affiliates you hired. Then move forward to steps 6 and 7 accordingly.
Key Takeaway
Affiliate marketing is an effective marketing strategy with a lower risk since it is commission-based. Many online business owners opt to use affiliate marketing to promote their digital products, thus skyrocketing their online course sales.
Start promoting your online courses via affiliates and see your sales skyrocket in no time!
Pin this for later.
