OWAHL 003: Bringing on Affiliates for Your Product Launch

One of the best and most exciting ways to make an income online is by launching your own products. Earlier this week Jason and I shared a big picture overview of how to launch a digital product. 

Today we are going to share how to take that product launch to the next level by working with affiliates! 

A big focus of ours in our won business in 2017-2018 is expanding our affiliate base. We have around 100 active affiliates right now but only a small portion of these make any significant sales. 

A good rule of thumb when thinking about brining on affiliates, is to launch your product first without affiliates. Do a launch, get comfortable with it, make sure the product works, and then bring affiliates into the mix. 

How it works with affiliates:

People who are interested in sharing your product can sign up for your affiliate program. Once approved they will get their own affiliate links to share your products. 

If someone purchases through those links, that affiliate gets a percentage of the sale. Typical commissions on digital products are 30-50%. 

How to run an affiliate program:

Running an affiliate program takes a little bit of technology. I know it can be scary, but there are several different options that can make it easier. 

The most common option are Wordpress plugins. Here are a few that we've used. 

iDevAffiliate

This is my #1 recommendation if you are using wordpress. It's not actually a plugin, it's an addition you add to your site. It's a little wonky to get set up but once it's set up, it gives you SO many tools. This is an affiliate program you can grow with. 

We started off using iDevaffiliate for our digital products and used it for a long time before we had to switch where we host our digital products. Now we use iDev for our product store. It's not the cheapest option out there because it does offer so many features. But it is very affordable compared to make other big programs. I think it's a great happy medium. 

Find out more about iDevaffiliate here

What it costs:

• Cloud option: $39 a month and includes a TON of extra features. If you need a FULL affiliate suite (which most people don't need when just starting out), this is an incredible deal!! 
• Standard: $199 one time fee. This is very important: a lot of the more robust programs are monthly fees. The standard version is what we have had for several years and it was $199 one time! 

Make sure to come follow us on Instagram: Our Work at Home Life! 

 Woocommerce Integration

If you already use Woocommerce then there are a couple of plugins that are already integrated with woocommerce. It's not necessary to use one of these plugins if you use woocommerce. After all, we run Woocommerce in our product store and yet we use iDevaffiliate as our affiliate center. 

I have not used either of these and do not know how easy/hard they are to get up and running. I do like the idea though that they integrate with woocommerce. 

The two options they offer are Affiliate WP ($99 a year) or Affiliates Pro ($59 a year).