We naturally share our favorite items and products with our friends, but what if you could make an income by sharing business tools and products with your audience? In today’s episode, Candice Coppola joins us to share all about affiliate marketing as a business owner. Listen in as she shares how she got started, how she found success, and what it looks like to develop an affiliate program of your own!
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Guest Bio:
Candice Coppola is an author, podcast host, business coach and entrepreneur who believes that you shouldn’t have to do business (or happy hour!) alone.
As a successful entrepreneur who grew a business from the spare bedroom of her home into a multi-country, multi-six figure company – it’s safe to say she’s navigated the bumpy road of entrepreneurship.
After selling her first company in 2019, she dove straight into the online marketing and coaching world developing programs and education for wedding pros helping thousands of small business owners grow their business and impact.
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Here are the highlights…
2:38 – Meet Candice
5:30 – Affiliate Marketing for Entrepreneurs
6:38 – What Makes a Great Affiliate Program
10:20 – Strategies for Intentional Affiliate Marketing
14:20 – The Role that Evergreen Content & SEO Play in Affiliate Marketing
19:48 – Incorporating Affiliate Marketing into Your Business
22:05 – Referral Bonuses and Sales Strategies
26:58 – Setting Up an Affiliate Program for Products
33:30 – Managing Affiliate Programs Effectively
37:12 – Getting Started with Affiliate Marketing Another Brand
42:57 – Creating Your Own Affiliate Program
Mentioned in this Episode
Episode 161: Maximize Your Business with AI: Top Tools & Tips with Dawn Richardson
Connect with Candice
Website: candicecoppola.com
Instagram: instagram.com/candice.coppola
Youtube: youtube.com/channel/UCp3XF6mQ1bNWry55DsSyUMw
Podcast: podcast.candicecoppola.com
Review the Transcript:
Colie: Hello, hello, and welcome back to the business first creatives podcast today. I am chatting with Candice Coppola. She is an amazing business woman, but also the host of the power in purpose podcast, and today we are smack dab in the middle of the marketing with intention series, and I will admit I’ve always wanted Candice on my podcast, but I didn’t think that I was going to bring her on to talk about affiliate marketing, but here we are, Candice, good morning and welcome to the podcast.
Candice: Well, thanks so much for having me. I’m so excited to be here.
Colie: I mean, literally, so I know, Candice, we have the same, podcast manager, Haylee, shout out. We both love you. And I’ve also seen Candice speak on stage at the creative educators conference hosted by Laylee Emadi and every time that Candice speaks about email. My ears perk up. Like I just love hearing her talk about emails.
She is the one that initially inspired me to create that evergreen funnel that I have mentioned to you guys in a few episodes. When I started to create this marketing series, I was intentionally not going to talk about email marketing. And when I thought, well, what are the other kinds of marketing that people make money off of that don’t get talked about enough?
And Candice posted an affiliate marketing thing on Instagram that day. And I was like, Oh my gosh, that’s it. So I reached out to Candice and I was like, will you come on the podcast and talk about affiliate marketing? So here she is.
Candice: Oh my gosh, I’m well. I’m so excited that you saw whatever I posted and that we’re here talking about this today. I’m. I’m really passionate about affiliate marketing. It’s not something that I ever envisioned that would be like such a big component to my business revenue and something that I would spend a lot and even just a little time focused on in my business.
But it has been so wonderful and it’s helped my business grow and I really like, I can draw a line to some of the success I’ve had just from affiliate marketing revenue in general.
Colie: Nice. Before we dive in, I said, you’re a podcast host. I said, you’re an amazing business woman, but we should probably tell the listening audience what it is that you do and who you serve. So if you could give me like the 30 second pitch, because I, I assume we’re going to talk more about it as this conversation goes.
Candice: Yeah. Well, I help wedding pros build profitable businesses with purpose and in a former life, not too long ago, I was a wedding pro myself. I was a planner. I had a business for over 12 years and I work with clients all over the world to help them celebrate moments that matter. I built a really successful planning company.
I wrote some books and I built a great Brand. And when it was time to hang up my planning hat, I decided that I wanted to help small businesses in the wedding industry, create a bigger impact on their clients lives and in their own lives. It’s hard making money in the wedding industry. You know, it’s funny.
I scroll threads and I see lots of couples engaged planning a wedding. And they think all these things about the wedding industry. They think it’s so expensive and it’s such a scam. And I see these interesting. hot takes. And it’s frustrating, but I mean, I get it. It’s frustrating because I know the behind the scenes of what it’s like working in the wedding industry.
And it’s very difficult to make a meaningful living and to scale a business. And so I want to help people do that because I’ve been fortunate enough to do it for myself.
Colie: And I think I mostly talked to a lot of wedding photographers, so I can, I’ve never done anything related to weddings, but certainly helping wedding photographers set up their systems. Like, I am typically talking to people who are, you know, they’re scaling their business, but they’re getting really worn out because when you are doing weddings, most weddings take place on the weekend.
And so you have to think about all the wedding pros, not just photographers, but all of them are typically giving up so much of their lives on the weekend because they’re devoted to their clients. And so they miss a lot of super important, experiences, you know, for themselves and with their own family.
And so I love that you are helping everyone get their shit together
Candice: Pretty
Colie: build profitable businesses around the wedding industry.
Candice: yes, ma’am. That is my jam, at least for now. That’s what I love doing. And it’s been a wonderful almost five years now of being fully focused on being an educator in the wedding industry, being a coach, being a mentor, creating courses, and so I have a lot of different ways that I support wedding pros build their business and grow their business.
And it’s been just such a great experience transitioning from having like, kind of like a brick and mortar business. So to speak into something that’s really just online 100 percent of the time.
Colie: Yeah. Okay. I think I want to ask you because you said you’ve been doing the coaching and the mentoring and the educating for about five years. So when we talk about affiliate marketing, which I mean, I feel like we should give a definition of what affiliate marketing is, and it is simply being paid to promote another company’s product or service, whatever that is.
But how did you first get into affiliate marketing? And I’m curious if you started back when you were still just a wedding pro versus really ramping it up now that you are in the education space.
Candice: Is a great question. I came across affiliate marketing almost by happenstance. I was a user of a certain software while I was a wedding pro and they had a really great payout when you recommended it to friends. And so I would recommend it to friends and colleagues. I would also recommend it to people that I was mentoring one on one at the time, while I sold my business in 2019, I was still coaching and mentoring while I was in the business, but I was taking on a limited number of clients.
It was a much smaller scale than what I’m doing now, but I would still recommend to my students at the time and my colleagues, this one specific software. And that’s just how I sort of happened into making affiliate revenue to me was. So wild that like they would send me money for just recommending something that I already loved and used, but just recommending it to a friend.
And it was just so gratifying actually to be compensated for those recommendations. So that’s how I initially got started with affiliate marketing, never imagining that it would have snowballed into what it’s, what it’s become.
Colie: And I don’t mind naming that software because I’m assuming you’re talking about HoneyBook,
Candice: I am. Yes.
Colie: Okay. I just want to make sure. I mean, everybody on the podcast knows I am now a lover of HoneyBook. It has not always been that way, but I am firmly in the HoneyBook camp now.
Candice: Yay! Good!
Colie: because when you talk about getting paid and their payout is like exceptional.
Compared to a lot of the companies that a lot of us, you know, we are casually, I would say that that’s like casual affiliate marketing where you use a software. And when someone asks you what you use, you’re just like, Hey, I use HoneyBook. And if you want to try it out, I have this affiliate code for 50.
Percent off your first year or 50% off, you know, your subscription, whatever the offer is that you have to give to them. But I feel like that’s a very casual way of doing affiliate marketing and getting paid for something that you would already answer as a friend, as a business colleague, as a mentor.
Like we get asked all the time, what softwares are you using? And so most of us are just happy to just give that information out. And if we get paid, it’s like a nice little bonus.
Candice: Oh, a great bonus, especially when the payout is as nice as HoneyBook’s payout. I also think too, from the HoneyBook perspective or from the perspective of the company that has an affiliate program, it really helps create user loyalty as well, because when you compensate your users for recommending you, you create a sense of loyalty, people become loyal to you.
Yes. Because we love that compensation, but. But we’re also being rewarded for the suggestion and the recommendation. And that just established a greater trust, greater relationship and greater loyalty. There’s been many instances where I’ve been approached by competitive softwares and folks who are in competing spaces, asking me to refer to their software, and I’ve remained loyal to HoneyBook, not only because I love the software and I truly love.
how it is developed over the years, but also because they compensate me really well for every referral I make. And so I feel very connected to their program.
Colie: And I will say HoneyBook does have one of the best programs in place in order to give people like us what we would need in order to share things beyond our personal, like, opinion or how we personally use it. I mean, I know that they give graphics, they give tips on how to post on social media, how to write blog posts, which we’re going to talk about some of your fabulous blog posts.
But. I mean, I do feel like they have really put forth the effort in order to, to build this affiliate marketing program. And it really shows in the number of referrals that they are getting from it each and every day.
Candice: Oh, absolutely. 100%. There has been a lot of intention put into their affiliate marketing program so much so that it’s inspiring. If you ever wanted to create an affiliate marketing program for your business, you can look to some of the most successful ones like HoneyBook. I think Flowdesk also has a really great affiliate marketing program as well.
You can look to some of these brands, which are small businesses in the grand scheme of things. I they may not be as small as you and I, but they are small businesses and they once were quite small. Small, you can look to how they manage their affiliate programs and what they do for their affiliates as inspiration for your own programs that you might create.
Mm-Hmm?
Colie: I mean, that is just so brilliant. So we’re really focused right now on talking about how we would affiliate for someone else. But by the end of this conversation, we are definitely going to talk about how to put some of this stuff into our business, particularly for someone like you and me, who are educators, we both sell templates in a shop, we have a course, and those are the perfect services and products to affiliate for, you know.
Business colleagues and friends, or even programs that you’ve been through. But I think where I want to go next is for HoneyBook. You started doing it very casually. People were asking you, what are you using as your CRM? And you happily told them HoneyBook. Now I’m assuming that you were, you already said that you were getting money from it, but.
Is there a difference between when you were doing a more casual approach, which was just, Hey, I use HoneyBook. Here’s my link versus all of the pieces that you have in place now, which I mean, you are one of the people that I think does the best with your blog posts, your page. I can see clearly that you have worked on SEO in order to get rankings for particular words.
So. How is it that you decided to kind of put forth more effort into affiliate marketing and what kind of gains did you see from it versus being casual versus being intentional
Candice: This is a great question. Casually, I would say maybe I made a few hundred bucks here and there. Maybe overall for the year, I might bring in 1, extra dollars a year in honey book referrals. And I can say now with pride that I bring in over six figures of just HoneyBook referrals and that doesn’t include any of the other amazing affiliate programs that I represent and that I’m a part of.
And so you can see from, you know, 2, bucks a year to, you know, six figures and, and maybe someday seven, who knows? I certainly wouldn’t be opposed to it. Yes. But six figures just from one platform is a pretty incredible growth strategy or growth. And so the strategy really began with my own podcast. And when I launched my podcast back in 2018, this was a year before I sold my business.
I wanted to find a way to monetize the podcast just to pay. For the show so that I wasn’t out of pocket for any of the show expenses. And I decided that I was going to use my HoneyBook affiliate code as a way to hopefully generate revenue and make a recommendation on my show, run an ad. To a landing page, which then would help people say 50 percent off HoneyBook.
And that was the beginning of understanding how SEO and how content creation really can help you build this whole ecosystem below the surface. That makes you money from affiliate marketing, because there’s one thing that you should know. about me and my affiliate marketing strategy is I’m not out here every day with an affiliate code on Instagram or on TikTok, hawking another business, constantly talking about it, talking about it all day, every day in emails and Instagram everywhere.
I mainly just have my podcast ads and some really well placed, well ranking blog posts and content pieces that help people sign up for the things I recommend. Right.
Colie: really glad that you brought that up because I feel like when people, we were talking about podcast movement. The conference before we hit record. And I feel like a lot of people think when it comes to monetizing your podcast, that you either have to monetize it with your own products and services, or that you have to go after ad revenue from other companies, or you’re trying to get, you know, ad revenue from the actual hosts and people who run podcast ads.
But you are in this very I would say creative space where you are taking an affiliate code and you are basically just making your own ad to earn affiliate income. And it’s not necessarily that HoneyBook is sponsoring your episodes. You are in a way, self sponsoring your episodes, just by using your affiliate link, which has been very successful for you.
Candice: Yeah, that’s exactly right. That’s the strategy. And I could have never imagined that that strategy would open the door to even more strategies with affiliate marketing and really help me to understand the role that evergreen content and SEO plays. Affiliate revenue because that’s really where so much of the affiliate revenue is made now I make recommendations all the time with my students and I even embed affiliate revenue into my programs and my courses and my Communities because why not if I’m gonna recommend this product to them Anyway, if I think they can benefit from it, I might as well We’ll give a link that’s an affiliate link or a discount code that also gives me some type of commission.
But the large majority of the affiliate revenue that I make is from evergreen, well placed content. And I’ve mainly just focused on writing blog posts and articles, but I’m also YouTube space. I have just under 800 Mighty subscribers, which by the way, it’s taken me a year of YouTubing to get there. But there’s so much potential with YouTube, I think, uh, when it comes to affiliate revenue, and I’m really excited to see how that just helps to expand my footprint.
Mm-Hmm.
Colie: Absolutely. So we started in a very casual manner. Hey, here’s my link. Then you started using ads within your podcast episodes. When did you start transitioning to make this evergreen content in the form of blog posts and then like your main staple pages that refer to HoneyBook? Cause I mean, you have an awesome one.
That’s HoneyBook versus Dubsado.
Candice: Mm-Hmm.
Colie: And so when is it that you decided to start putting out these pieces of content on your website?
Candice: I would say probably during COVID after I had sold my business and I was transitioning into the coaching and course creation space, I sold my business in October of 2019 and I went full time and coaching literally the next week I launched my very first offer, my very first program and during COVID I had to come up with a way to, uh, Creatively make some money.
The wedding industry was one of the hardest hit industries of lockdowns and shutdowns. And so my people were really feeling the pinch. They didn’t have any revenue coming in. And while they did want to invest in support, they didn’t have a ton of money to be spending on coaching and programs. They had to really be mindful about how much they were spending.
So I had to figure out another way. To make money. And that’s where I decided that I was going to start writing some blog posts that incorporated affiliate revenue into the strategy. And it really was just organic. It was like one of those aha moments. If you’ve ever read Elizabeth Gilbert’s book, Big Magic, the universe, like sometimes just throws you a bone.
It just throws you an idea. You get thrown ideas all day long. Some are really meant for you. And it was just a light bulb moment where I was like, I should do this. be doing this. And I started doing it. And then of course started ranking because I am very good with SEO. And before you know it, that only enhanced my affiliate revenue.
And once the strategy starts working and it starts taking off, there’s no better incentive to keep going and to keep exploring how you can maximize that strategy. And so that’s where that, that’s how things started to snowball.
Colie: I love that a few minutes ago, you specifically said, listen, I’m not out here talking about these products all day, every day. I’m not on Instagram sharing my affiliate links every single day. So, Candice, in a monthly basis, how much effort Or how much time would you say that you are spending on your affiliate marketing prospects?
And how are you tracking results? If you’re tracking results, which I would be surprised if you said no, but I guess there’s always that chance.
Candice: Oh, there’s a spreadsheet for sure that tracks year over year, our affiliate marketing results, it gets updated daily as we sometimes daily, as we get payouts from our, uh, partners. I think from a time perspective, I don’t spend that much time on it. It’s really woven into the natural fabric of my business.
So I don’t necessarily set aside time to pay attention to affiliate marketing. It’s just in the fabric of my everyday when I’m recording a podcast episode, when I’m suggesting something to my students or doing something, I will mention products that I love and services that I think they should purchase.
But when I was really ramping this up, I would say that I probably dedicated a few hours to it a week, especially during COVID when, you know, I was really trying to
Colie: Everyone had time.
Candice: Everybody had time. And so I was, you know, I had more time to write, more time to think, more time to strategize. And an incentive to really test things out because I needed to make money.
I would spend a few hours on it a week, but it’s just ingratiated into our overall marketing strategy. I do have a team and I do have people who support me in the overall marketing vision of my company and my products and how we’re creating evergreen content, podcasts, blog, YouTube, everywhere. And it’s just folded in.
It just becomes a part of everything. Everything that you talk about, it says close to how we talk about our mission and our messaging and our marketing. I help wedding pros build profitable businesses with purpose. I help them do that through also connecting them with the right tools they need in their business to grow.
And it’s just that connected.
Colie: Absolutely. Now, you’ve just mentioned your products and services, so let’s, let’s finally turn the page and start talking about how we as small business owners can take advantage of affiliate marketing for our own businesses and sales. So, How far in your business, once you became an educator, or actually, no Candice, let’s go back, did you have any kind of affiliate marketing or referral marketing for your planning services before you became an educator?
Candice: no, I didn’t. When I was a planner, we didn’t really, we’re such a high ticket item. We didn’t really offer like any affiliate or referral revenue to anybody who would suggest our services. And then also, there really wasn’t much opportunity for us to make a lot of money as planners on affiliate revenue at the time.
You had Amazon storefronts and like certain things that you could do with your clients, but the payout was Is it really important? Because when I look at something like HoneyBook or FlowDesk or some other companies that we work with, the payouts are really good. So when you think about the cost of your time and the investment you make in.
Marketing and writing blog posts, even hiring people to write content for you or to create marketing assets for you. Um, the payout, you know, is worth the time investment. I have to be honest, things like Amazon storefronts just aren’t worth it, weren’t worth the time investment for me to make like 11 cents off a 1, 100 shopping cart.
It was just like It was frustrating. And now there are some people who do really well with that, but they, their strategy is really focused on creating content around Amazon. That’s not something I wanted to do, but the possibilities are there. I think this is a little bit of a tangent, but when thinking about your affiliate marketing strategy, I think that you should consider the payouts of the businesses or the, whatever you represent, the products you represent, and the amount of time that you would invest based on those payouts.
And if you have the time to dedicate to extracting the pay, the maximum amount of payouts that you can get from those affiliate partnerships, where like Amazon is like something that just a casual affiliate marketer isn’t going to see huge results from.
Colie: Yeah, I know as a photographer, and I didn’t really, I think that’s one of my downfalls is that I don’t advertise things like this. I just give it to my clients because I feel like it’s a bonus. But as a photographer, when my clients refer me to their friends and family, It used to be that I gave them session credit.
I would give them a 100 per person that referred and then they could use that for a future session. Now, once I really got into pick time and I had an online gallery store where my clients could buy their own products, I started giving them a 100 in product credit so that they could spend it on a current session.
Session on an older session or on a session that they had in the future. I don’t think that I’ve ever done it in like a, let me market it in a way that really tells my clients, Hey, please refer me to all your friends and clients, and I’ll give you this money. Like, it’s never really been that for me.
It’s always been a bonus, but when it comes to the services side of my business, when it comes to systems, I mean, in that case, I do really, I I guess, advertise, I market, I tell people about, the affiliate commission that I’m willing to give when they refer someone, and, I don’t know if I would perhaps get more referrals if I had been a little bit more vocal with my photography clients.
I felt like I was getting like in particular from certain clients. I mean, I can probably count like 20 plus clients that I’ve gotten from a few of, you know, my clients that I’ve had for the last 8 years. But as we move forward, like what is the best way for us to communicate, if we are giving a referral bonus, a referral commission, an affiliate commission, when people refer out our services and we’re going to talk about products in just a sec.
Candice: Yeah, that’s a great question. I mean, I think there’s a lot of ways you can approach it for photographers. To me, it feels easier because there are a lot of different session types. That you can offer referrals on. And if you have products incorporated into your photography business and you’re offering prints or canvases, albums, you can always offer credit towards those things inside their shopping cart, inside whatever system you might use to sell those third party systems.
But I mean, in terms of communication, it’s just like anything in marketing and in business, if you want people to know about it, you have to communicate it. And I think after the project is completed, this is an opportunity for you to reach out to your client and thank them for their business and let them know that you have a referral program and introduce them to that referral program, let them know that if they refer friends or family and they’re mentioned by name, that this is what you offer.
And you have to think about what would incentivize you to refer. To another photographer or another planner or another system strategist or whatever it is that you do in whatever creative industry, what would prompt you? It’s usually money. People love money, but they also like free things. But those free things have to be things that they want.
I mean, You could say, I’ll give you, you know, free McDonald’s. And to me, that would mean nothing cause I don’t eat it. So if you said, I’ll give you free McDonald’s, sure. That’s great. I mean, whatever. But if I give me free Starbucks, well then that’s great. I love Starbucks. So I’ll take you up on that offer.
Yeah, now you’re speaking my love language. So you have to kind of know who your customers are and what they would ultimately want from you. And the easiest thing to give away outside of money is your time. And if you want this client to come back, what Offering them a referral bonus, a free session or credit towards a future session is really great.
And it can also act as almost a sales tool when you think about it. Because if you offer somebody, let’s say a hundred dollar print credit, and they end up spending 150 that they weren’t going to spend in the first place. First place, then you just made 50. They got 150 worth of prints and everybody’s happy.
I mean, this is the strategy that big corporations and stores use to attract you to their labor day sales. I mean, it’s why you have Kohl’s cash. It’s why my grandma Vera used to be like, we need to go to Macy’s because I have this. $5 coupon that I wanna spend and it expires tomorrow. She would’ve never gone to Macy’s and spent $50 unless she had the $5 coupon.
So there is a, a, a secondary strategy to offering some incentive there where they end up spending more. Mm-Hmm.
Colie: Well, and you mentioned that I would have a 50 sale, but I also have whatever the referred person bought, whatever they spent on their session, whatever they bought on prints and products after the session. I mean, it is just like a snowball effect. Once you, once you have your core set of people, who are your affiliates, then every single person that they refer and bring into your business is the possibility that then they could potentially become referrers and bring in additional clients for your business.
Candice: Yeah. This is why incentivized marketing really works.
Colie: Let’s talk about, uh, we talked about services. So now let’s talk about products a bit for someone like you and I, who have a shop that have templates, which tend to be on like the lower price point, if you will. And we also have courses that are, you know, a little bit more high priced. I know that you said that we should consider.
What we would be incentivized to get in order to refer out. And I do think that like thinking about what that payout commission is, is super important, because if you’re telling me that you’re selling a course for, let’s say a thousand dollars and my payout is 50, I don’t know that I’m as incentivized to share your course as I would be if the payout was 200.
300, even 500 is what I’ve seen for some, online courses that don’t have a lot of one to one time and are basically sold at volume. But do you have, like, a percentage that if we were going to give advice to the listening audience on templates or courses, like, where’s a number that you should start with, and then you should maybe adjust depending on your cost of goods sold, or just whatever comes to mind for you that feels good for your percentage?
Candice: Yeah, I guess it depends on the price point of your product. So for instance, I have an affiliate program for my community for wedding planners. It’s called the planner’s playbook. It is 57 a month. And I offer a 50 payout for every person that you refer. And I felt like that was a great payout, especially for my target audience, 50 to an aspiring wedding planner, or even just a more seasoned wedding planner is a good amount of money.
I mean, it’s It’s more than lipstick money, you know, it’s, it’s something they can really, you know, it’s a really good payout. And if they refer 10 friends, well, that’s, you know, a good amount of money for them. And so that’s one month essentially of somebody’s, monthly fee and joining the planner’s playbook.
And I felt comfortable with that. I think anything 50 percent or less is a good place to, to start. I’m always of the thought process that you should start maybe a little bit less than where you ultimately want to be and kind of see how people react to some of the percentages and the payouts to see if it’s worth it to them, what they say about it and give yourself a little bit of room to grow.
One mistake that we do make sometimes as business owners is we give too much too soon and there’s really no place to go from there. So if you want to run an affiliate program for long term, you’ve got to give. Some incentive to your top affiliates and an area for them to grow. So a tiered affiliate system is also something that you can think about as well.
I know several different software companies and products do tiered affiliate programs, and it’s almost gamifying the experience too, you know, I don’t know about you, but I am very competitive. So when it comes to, when it comes to competition, I’m like, I’m going to be the number one. Affiliate in this program.
So you have a little bit of competition. There are good competition gamification, and there’s a chance to bump people up and offer more reward when they actually bring people to your business or your product or service. So it really depends on your price point, but nobody’s doing much for anything less than 10 bucks.
I would say to anything less than 10, most people are not going to do much for. And when you do have products. People like money. So when we talk about selling templates or courses, even physical products, people want to receive money back. They don’t want more free product. So really do keep that in mind.
But there’s so many options. Like, I could see an option where maybe they want to The affiliate payout is 50 or they could double it and get a hundred dollars worth of your product. So just like giving people an incentive to, to choose the product over the cash. Like there are some, some fun things you can do, but one thing I have learned and I’ve learned this, uh, my own personal experience is that having an affiliate program requires.
planning. It requires you talking to your affiliates and actually creating almost like a whole product plan or business plan around how you’re going to manage your affiliates. You can’t just like launch an affiliate program and expect everybody to just start recommending your stuff. It’s a long term strategy that you really have to pour into much like I pour into my Affiliate marketing, blogging strategy, you know, it’s years that it’s taken to develop and I pour into it as much as I can.
The same will be said if you have an affiliate program for your business. It’s not just like a set it and forget it.
Colie: Yeah, and I would say that part of that plan should also be to help your affiliates talk about your products and services. So giving them ideas for content that they could create, such as blog posts, Instagram reels, and just by suggesting. things that they could do doesn’t mean that you’re requiring it.
I mean, I don’t know that I would ever participate in an affiliate program that actually required me to send a certain number of emails to post a certain number of times on social media, but I certainly appreciate when they tell me, Hey, maybe you could, like, for example, for HoneyBook, maybe you could, Write a blog post or do a social media reel on your favorite feature inside of HoneyBook, which I mean, it’s currently on my to do list.
So by the time this episode airs, it will be on the blog, but I love when people give me ideas like that because sometimes I am so content devoid of ideas because I’m focused on my own business. I might not have the best ideas for how to share the products and services that I love in an affiliate manner.
Candice: Oh yeah, for sure. It definitely helps when you can give your affiliates content ideas, swipe copy images, they need all of that. Most people do even people at some of the top tier of affiliate programs. Even myself, I need to be reminded to talk about it. I need new ways to talk about it. I even just need to be inspired to share something.
And earlier in our conversation, you had mentioned that HoneyBook had a great affiliate program. And this is part of the reason why is is they have a lot of assets, a lot of tools, and a ton of communication to their partners that keeps HoneyBook top of mind and keeps HoneyBook in the conversation. If you want to have a successful affiliate program, And you want your affiliates to bring in.
a meaningful amount of business for you. You have to sort of emulate what some of the top businesses are doing with their affiliate program. I almost feel like personally for me, I need to put somebody on my team on affiliates, like full time in developing the program, creating content for the program, maintaining contact.
It sounds easy, but it’s actually, it can be a lot of work if you want to do it right. And if you want it to stay If you just want people to have the option to make money and recommend your products, you don’t have to put this kind of effort into it, for sure. But if you want it to scale, you have to put some time, effort, and maybe even investment behind it in people or resources.
Colie: Yes, I have a blog writer. She has a very long list currently of blog posts that need to be written about some of the software that I am an affiliate for. Why? Because I’m too busy doing actual system setups. I don’t have the time and capacity in order to write those blog posts and make sure that they actually get published.
Now, my favorite way to get it done. And sometimes when I’m driving my kid to school, I will do a voice note and basically ramble off all of the things that are personal to me that need to be included inside of a blog post. And then she runs off and does her own, you know, SEO research and all of those kinds of things.
So it it is a collaborative experience, but I’m not the person who’s responsible for hitting publish. Someone else
Candice: gosh, no. Oh, no, me either. Not for years have I been responsible for doing that. What I love about, the marketing person on my team, Cara, she, Cara was a student of
Colie: Oh, Kara’s mine. I forgot that. Continue. Hi, Kara.
Candice: love that. Cara was a student of mine. She was a former planner, and she joined my first offer the day it launched in back in 2019.
And so Cara has been sort of ingratiated into my business in every aspect. She knows all of my greatest hits. She knows my spiels. She, she just listens to me in every program. She’ll tune into my podcast episodes. Like she knows what’s going on. And what I have to say so she can easily like take a transcript from a podcast episode, take a live transcript, jam it together and write out an amazing blog post to add a little razzle dazzle.
And it’s good to go. And so. When you’re thinking about expanding your business, even with having a copywriter on your team or somebody who’s going to come in and help you with your marketing, I think one of the things to look for is somebody who can ingratiate themselves a little deeply into your business, familiarize themselves with the things you like, dislike, some of your, you know, You know, consistent, reoccurring talking points or content buckets.
And they can, all of this is fodder for them to create content for you. I mean, she’s never shy of content. Today’s when I feel like we have discussed everything. She’s like, what about this? And I’m like, I never even like thought to talk about that. So it’s so great to have somebody on your team like that too.
And just to collaborate, like to ideate is so nice.
Colie: Absolutely. And I do just have to put a plug in here because if you guys feel like this is sounding familiar, we are both talking about Kara Duncan,
Candice: Yes.
Colie: 171, who was the second episode in this marketing with intention series. So if you dropped in to just listen to Candice’s episode, please go back to 170 when this series started, because the entire series is full of people like Candice, like Kara, who are going to give you new and fresh ideas for marketing your business. Candice, I have, I think two closing questions because I want to like give people some actionable tips, if you will. So if someone is looking to like dip their toe into affiliate marketing for someone else, what would be a tip that you would give them in order to get started in affiliate marketing for another product or company?
Candice: I think the first thing you should do is naturally look towards what you use already that you’re passionate about and see what kind of affiliate program they have. Join that affiliate program and find some way to create a piece of evergreen content that will live forever. forever on the internet and that can be found by anyone at any time.
So really a blog post, a landing page, a YouTube video, something evergreen, create a piece of evergreen content around why you love this tool so much and why it’s such a great product for students. Someone just like you. So if you’re a photographer, why photographers should use it. If you’re a system strategist, why another system strategist would love this.
If you’re a marketer, why another marketer should use this? That’s a great place to begin just talking about your own lived experience with a tool or with a product and how people just like you should also use it. And then from there. Recommend it. And when you’re in conversation, find places and spaces to talk about it.
And before you know it, you will get your first sign up and you will be like, dude, that was too easy. Oh,
Colie: on to what Candice just told you guys. Yes, I want you to figure out what your affiliate commission would be for the products and services that you have either been through or that you are currently using. And for the love of God, can everyone make a list that is easily accessible?
That is the one thing that is going to help you be consistent and consistent. In your sharing is if you have one central location where all of your affiliate links are located so that when someone needs one of your affiliate links, you don’t have to go back through emails, go back on the website, like you just go to this one centralized place in order to find your link.
The second thing that I’m going to say is that could be an internal document. It could also be a public one. So if you do not have a resources page on your website that talks about the things that you use, that you love, whether you have an affiliate commission from it or not, I would highly recommend that everyone create that page on your website.
So, So that you can constantly be sharing that page in general. And then of course when someone needs a very specific referral, you can copy the one affiliate link that they need.
Candice: such a good tip. You know what I love doing? And I learned this from the goat, Dawn Richardson at the creative educator conference, by the way. And I just finally, a label clicked for me when she said to do this is keyboard shortcuts. And like, I never. I don’t even realize that keyboard shortcuts existed embarrassingly, and I’m a very tech person.
Like, I’m not a stooge. Like, I know, I know how to do a lot of stuff. And when she talked about these keyboard shortcuts, and you can do text replacements. And then get, you know, URLs, hex codes you normally use. I’m like, Oh my God. So I ran to my keyboard shortcut text replacement settings in my Mac. And one thing that I do is, is I have all my affiliate links with my text replacement and then my link.
So I can easily link to these things anywhere and everywhere somebody might ask for them. And I think, You know, it’s important that you have these things accessible. When somebody asks for your suggestion, you want to be able to quickly DM it to somebody, respond as quickly as you can. You don’t want to have to go search through some database or go log in and pull your link.
You want it right front and center so that you can send that recommendation and get that credit. Because if they’re asking, Hey, you, you have 50 percent off HoneyBook, right? And you take two days to respond. They probably went to somebody else and use their code, right?
Colie: Or they Googled it and they
Candice: right? And they found me
Colie: So I’m gonna admit, I mean, you know, that is a great strategy. If you Google, you will probably find Candice and. She mentioned that tip from Dawn Richardson. If you have not listened to her episode on this podcast, which was episode one 61, she was giving you all of the AI tips, but like in general, Dawn of Tech Savvy Creative is an amazing tech person that all of us should be following.
And Candice, I just realized, I mean, before you even said what it was, I said, Keek. I said, uh, keywords, shortcuts, because I, that was on my to do list and I did not do mine. So I’m going to do mine today. The only reason that I suggest like having that centralized location specifically for someone like you and I, is I need those links, but my team members need those links more.
And so having it centralized to where I have access, Haylee has access, Kara has access, Is a great way to centralize everything to make sure that if you do have team members that they have access to the same things that you find that you need on a daily basis.
Candice: for sure. Listen, those, but those key keyboard shortcuts or key text replacement shortcuts, those things are so money. I use them for so many things. When I think about the amount of time I wasted just getting my social media links, I would go to my website and I would then. Copy the link addresses off my website of my Instagram and my YouTube.
Just so much time doing it. So inefficiently I laugh because I’m like, how did I ever in a world think that that was the way you were supposed to do it? So I hope somebody listening here is being blessed by this strategy. And you’re thinking, Holy crap, I need to go to my text replacements and start saving all the links I use on a daily basis is going to change your life.
Colie: in the same way that like password software saves mine because no one’s got time to be trying to remember
Candice: No!
Colie: So Candice, we just talked about how to get started affiliating for other people. But for someone who wants to create an affiliate marketing program inside their own business, what would be that first tiny step that they could take
Candice: you know, I think that you should actually pull some of your audience and ask them what they’d like to see if in an affiliate program that you might create, you know, oftentimes we feel like we have to figure things out on our own and we need to make all this up on our own. The best shortcut and the best tool are the people who would actually join your affiliate program and make money off your affiliate program.
So put together a quick little questionnaire, a type form, a Google questionnaire, a Google form, and send it to some of your best friends. Biggest supporters, some of your super fans, the people who are already recommending your product or service offer a little bit of incentive, a 25 gift card, choose one lucky winner, send it out to your email list, ask people on your social media to fill it out, ask people in any groups that you might Have or whatever your community is currently living, ask them to share with you what they’d like to see in an affiliate program, what kind of payout would really incentivize them, what they would need from you in order to recommend your product and service if they’ve ever referred to you. And any other questions that are relevant to your business, and let’s see what they have to say. And that will literally probably give you everything you need to start making decisions. Now, I’ll tell you from our perspective, we have a small, but mighty affiliate program that we really should spend some more time pouring into.
And maybe we will,
Colie: as a result of being on this podcast?
Candice: result, correct. But the next steps after that, once you decide like I’m going to do this, it is creating some type of landing page for your affiliates to go to that, that tells them everything the affiliate program includes. You’re going to likely need some kind of agreement, some terms of agreement for your affiliate program, so you can go download that.
I’m sure Colie has a great affiliate link for you to go download a template or a contract for that, so be sure to reach out to her. And then you’ll also need some type of software that, Installs cookies and tracks people’s whereabouts so you know who’s coming to your shop page or your course page or your cart page.
And I do think that going the extra mile in creating some graphics for your affiliates that can be universally used in blog posts on social media is another nice step. And I also think having your terms outlined in a document they can read and easily understand. So payouts happen? How often do they happen?
Are there any terms around payouts? Thresholds, anything like that. And, where can they go to get the best information? Is there any swipe copy you could give them? So I’m giving you a nice long list of things that
Colie: You did.
Candice: After you pull your audience, I don’t want you to get scared, but these are all things that you can do, , to launch your affiliate program and you can do this in, in a short period of time.
We did it in a very short period of time.
Colie: Yeah. I mean, and as Candice said, you know, if you think that you’re going to work your way to 50%, don’t start there. Start somewhere smaller so that you can see how it goes so that as you need to make adjustments, you can, but polling your audience, guys, I hope that that was worth the price of admission to listening to Candice and I.
Today on this episode, because, um, you guys know this, I often have a guest on my podcast and I’m like, Oh, that’s been on my list, but by next week, it will be done when Don was on the podcast before I was actually trying to finish my evergreen sequence that I got inspired to write by you. And after I had Don, and she was talking about hoppy copy and some other AI tools that I could use to, like, not stare at a blank screen.
I was like, Oh. This is great. And then I got it done. Well, Candice, thank you so much for joining me today. If the listening audience is like, um, I need more of what this girl is serving. Tell them where they can find you on the internet and guys, I will have it all in the show notes as well.
Candice: the best place to find me is my website, kandacecoppola. com that links to all my programs and all my resources. You can go check out some of my affiliate marketing blog posts for yourself, do a little search on my blog and see some of the things that we’ve written and some of the different softwares and tools that we’ve reviewed or talked about.
And I’m mostly Instagram, and I’m usually there just like sharing behind the scenes of my life and like shit posting and sharing stuff about housewives. So if that’s of interest to you, you can follow me on Instagram at Candice. Coppola.
Colie: Yes. Candice, thank you so much for being on the episode today. This was amazing.
Candice: Thanks
Colie: All right, everyone. All right, everyone. That’s it for this episode. See you next time.
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