How To Get FinPub Affiliates To Sell Your Trading And Investing Products

FinPub Pro is produced by The Financial Marketing Summit, the #1 networking and marketing conference for financial newsletter publishers, trader educators, and digital financial media.

John Newtson, host and founder of The Financial Marketing Summit can be reached via LinkedIn at John Newtson

Episode Transcript

SPEAKER_00 (00:01):
All right, let's talk about how do you get
affiliates in FinPub to sellyour uh trading and investing
offers.
This is an area that um like Iget a ton of questions about.
Um I know that like I posted apost that's basically like a
short version of this video inour FMS Discord group where we
had a lot of people who respond.
Like, I wish everybody knew thiswhen they were coming in.
Um, what I wanted to do is puttogether um something different

(00:23):
here instead of a conversationor interview.
Like, let me run through whatI've seen having been in FinPub
for since 2005, 2006, um, andrunning FMS and having everybody
come through and like reallygetting a good sense of this
industry.
Um, like kind of give everyonethe context of who the
affiliates are, what types ofaffiliates they are they are,
what they expect, um what thelimitations are, what the

(00:44):
opportunities are, where to findthem, and all that kind of
stuff.
So if you sell trading orinvesting offers and you're
coming to this for the firsttime, or coming to like the
FinPub or FMS community for thefirst time, like I'm hoping to
kind of give you just a realgood context of everything you
need to know when you'rethinking about building your
affiliate business out.
All right.
So, like going back, my veryfirst venture in FinPub, I was

(01:06):
like the chief copywriter for agroup that was 100% affiliate
driven.
Um, the entire business modelback then was affiliate-centric
for us.
And so, like, I have a ton ofexperience from there, and it's
just evolved since then.
Um, I talk to everybody, I knoweverybody.
Like, let me give you kind of adeep dive here on what there
are.
So let me start real simple,right?
Because there are three kinds ofaffiliates.

(01:28):
So, the what kind of affiliateswould promote your investing
product or newsletter or tradingservice or community?
Um, I'm gonna run through threequick groups and then we'll go
with each one in detail and kindof what they mean, right?
So, number one, um, I think ofthese as the scaled super
affiliate media groups, right?
Um, for a lot of people, theseare the holy grail of marketing
and FinPub because they'rebasically one of the top

(01:51):
acquisitors new customeracquisition sources for even
some of the biggest publishers.
Um, and so these are groups likeMarket Beat and Is Today Media
and Apex, and we'll get intothose in a minute.
I'll talk about um how you getthem to promote for you in a
minute, um, if you can.
Um then the next group is justother publishers, right?
So people who have a businessmodel just like yours, um, they

(02:11):
sell investing and tradingoffers.
Um, this is a this is like acore group in most people's
affiliate programs in the space,and it's super important to
understand.
Um, there's reasons they'llpromote and reasons they won't.
Um and this is probably thegroup that if you're thinking
about building an affiliateprogram, this is a group you
need to focus on in the space,right?
Uh but there's a ton ofvariability here, so we'll get

(02:31):
into that.
And then the final group um isthe one that I hear most about
from new people who come intothe space or new marketers who
are like, I need to getaffiliates, and I don't really
know FinPub.
And that that's social mediacreators.
Um, this is like where everybodykind of says when they start,
like, hey, I have theseaffiliates or this or that.
And so um what I want to do nowis just kind of run through each

(02:52):
of these groups and we'll do itin reverse order because um I
think that the social mediacreators, like I said, is the
one that I hear the most fromnewer folks who come to the
industry.
Um it's what everyone thinks ofthese days.
And so um the reality is like ifyou're just a pure, if you're
going to a pure social mediacreator um to be an affiliate,

(03:13):
like they are the smallest typeof affiliate you're gonna get.
And that's okay if you areespecially when you're starting
out or you're looking for smallthings, and there's ways to use
that to get bigger, but likelet's just kind of run through
what this is because it can becounterintuitive to folks who
maybe don't understand thisindustry that well, um, and
they're coming from a moregeneral marketing environment.

(03:35):
Um, so the problem with a lot ofthe social media is that the
those posts, even on large,seemingly larger affiliates,
don't drive the kind of revenuethat like other forms of
marketing do, right?
Um and so like when you thinkabout this group, the you'll
have these these affiliates whoare or these creators who maybe

(03:55):
they have 50 to 100,000 umfollowers.
Um their posts are great.
And if you get a bunch of themworking um for you, that can be
amazing.
And so, like, you know, groupslike WAP.com, they have a
platform for their traders andthey have a clipping network
that kind of functions as likeit's a bidding system for um

(04:16):
people to promote, like smallcreators to promote offers.
Um, and that's a reallyinteresting space because it's
really it's kind of movingtowards paid media, right?
Um, and that's why I think ofsocial creators as like as an
from an affiliate model, they'renot awesome, right?
Because you need a lot of them.
Um, because the posts themselvesdon't make a ton of money.

(04:37):
And in fact, when you talk topeople who are doing well with
them, what they find is likesome of these smaller publishers
or some of these smallercreators, they'll also have a
media an email list, right?
So maybe they have 50 to 100,000followers and then they have 10,
15, 20,000 name email list thatthey built off of that.
And then because they don'tvalue the email list, um,
they'll they'll promote on theum the channel and then give the

(05:00):
email list for free.
Um, and and that's where a lotof the revenue is coming from.
And so the the thing about thatis that the best social media
creators, the ones that scale,end up moving into the small
publisher model, right?
So they start to sell their owncourses and their own products,
and then they find um how to getinto paid media as well.

(05:22):
And then that they're no longerjust a social media creator,
they're kind of a smallpublisher.
And so um, when you stay in thatsmall creator space, um, they
actually prefer pay being paidoutright rather than
commissions.
And so as an affiliate, they'reless of an affiliate, and
they're they're basically just atraffic source that you can buy
if you can find either an agencythat can get you access, do cold

(05:45):
101 outreach, or use platformslike WAP that kind of have like
these clippers who will go inthere and like create videos on
a you know, get paid this manydollars per views that they get.
Um and so let me just make sureI don't miss anything here on my
notes.
Um yeah, they're the smallerside.
So like really the key with thatgroup is is once they once they

(06:07):
kind of become sizable enoughthat you're really interested in
them, they have eithertransitioned into being just
paid media or being anotherpublisher, and then they fall
into this other kind of categoryof affiliates and they have
different concerns.
And so let's talk about that,like getting other publishers to
promote.
And yes, you can get even thebiggest publishers to be your
affiliate in certaincircumstances.

(06:28):
Like this is a common thingthat's happened in the industry
over the years, is it's justit's a very deal-making and
deal-centric kind of space, andwe're very fortunate for that.
Um, but you got to understand,right?
These groups they make money byselling their products to their
list, just like you do.
Um, and so there's only likethree reasons that I found
consistently that one of theseother publishers is willing to

(06:48):
work with you and to be youraffiliate.
And so those are number one,they want you to also be their
affiliate.
They want to they'll promoteyour offer in exchange for you
promoting their offer.
And if you're not willing to dothat, then they're just not
interested in doing anything foryou because why would they,
right?
Because other publishers aretrying to make money selling
their products.
Um they either would love tohave you promote for them to

(07:13):
sell their products and do thesame for you, or there wouldn't,
there's no reason for them to doit, right?
Um, the only time that there isanother reason that they will
promote for you is that theydon't have enough offers
converting at the moment to makeit worth their maximizing their
marketing inventory, right?
So they maybe don't have um apromotion that's working really

(07:35):
well in the current marketingenvironment and they need to
make revenue.
And so if you don't havesomething converting, then you
look to something else out therethat is converting to try and
promote.
Now, then you start to get intothat competitive realm where
you're basically like, is yourpromotion better than somebody
else's promotion?
Um, and this is where like yourprice point matters and your

(07:55):
copy matters, right?
So um even if I have, if I'm apublisher and my back-end
products like are not convertingvery well at all, the chances of
me mailing one of your low pricetickets, right?
A hundred dollar product,$150product to my list and it
converting well enough to beatmy lackluster results on a two,

(08:19):
three thousand dollar product isvery, very, very low.
And it's hard for me to havefaith that I'm that that's gonna
work.
And so this is a game for highprice backend products.
You have to have an offer thatis a higher price, that has a
higher payout than just like uh,you know,$50,$100, even, right?
Because it's not really worth itto somebody else to give up

(08:40):
their inventory for their ownproducts in order for you to
just promote them, right?
Or or or for you to give them acommission that is very low, um,
especially in a scenario whereyou're not going to promote for
them.
Like people will do that dealonly when they're gonna do that
first thing, which is you'regonna promote for them and
they're gonna promote for you.
Um, so that's like a very key,key thing that if you don't have

(09:02):
products in that two to threethousand dollar price range,
like why would they do it ifyou're not gonna promote for
them?
Um and then even if they do doit, it's only in certain times,
and like I said, because most ofthe time their goal is to have
promotions that are working forthem for their own products.
And so um if they get kind ofcaught out in the mismatch

(09:22):
between like the markets andwhat the audience is buying and
what they're promoting, there'sgaps like that, right?
And so you have to have thoserelationships with them in order
to be able to find thosemoments.
You can't just cold approach allthe time and expect this to be a
thing that's gonna work for you.
Um, but one just because it kindof an aside, like across this
entire industry, like thestrength of your copy matters.

(09:43):
It's the big differentiator,right?
Like, if you had the strongeryou can convert, the more
opportunities, both on the paidand the affiliate side, present
themselves to you.
So like that's why we kind ofobsess on copy.
Um, I mean, I had back in theday, um, I did have a business
when I was writing copy and Iwas a copy chief, and we had
like products that were very,very, I'd say new compared to

(10:06):
where the market was at the timebecause we were focusing very
much on real money traders whoapproved their returns.
Um we had affiliates who didmake more money selling our
products and they're sellingtheir own products.
Um that was for a very definedwindow, and it was because they
never focused on copy, right?
That's that's not something thatyou find commonly at all.
Um, and so then let me just jumpto the last reason another

(10:29):
publisher is going to promotefor you is just that they like
you, right?
They met you, you built apersonal relationship.
Um, you're either trying tolaunch something new or you're
trying to um or you'restruggling with something and
trying to get over hump andthey're willing to help you out,
right?
They're willing to do this as afavor.
Um, that's not uncommon at all.
We have, like you said, a greatcommunity of folks who really

(10:49):
kind of look out for each otherin a lot of times, and
especially when when when youbuild a friendship, um you build
a relationship, and people arewilling to help.
Um so that's it.
Like there's only those threereasons why people are gonna
promote for you, right?
Um there's not like, hey, I havea hundred dollar product,$150
product, um, I'm giving you 30%commissions, and you're going to

(11:11):
promote for me, and I'm notgonna promote for you.
I'm not gonna offer you anythingother than those commissions.
It's just the math won't mathfor another publisher to promote
you that way.
So, like, that's a key thing tounderstand about FinPub.
Um, and if you understand that,then there's a just a massive
amount of opportunity to workwith other publishers.
It's just you got to respect thefact that other people have
differ had their own businessinterests besides your business

(11:33):
interest.
Um, and so let's talk about whatkind of commissions publishers
expect.
Um, I think the industrystandard for for a very long
time has been like kind of afloor of 50%.
Um, and this is on those higherpriced products, right?
Two, three thousand dollarproducts.
Um, I'd say that like that'skind of the floor that I would
expect.
Um, and now the largerpublishers, we've gone through,
you've seen this quite a bit,will always tend to push up

(11:55):
towards a much higher number.
Like some of the big Agoragroups and other things have
very regularly said, hey, it's80% to get to our list because
they had the promotional powerthat they wield, right?
Um like because again, they havea ton of products that they
could be promoting to theirlists.
And so why would they promotefor you?
Um, there have been people likeBrett Holmes when he was running
at Money Map, he would do hewould go out of his way to help

(12:17):
small publishers out um withdifferent deals and find ways to
work together because these hesaw kind of there is a benefit
to having um kind of a strongaffiliate relationships that you
build over the long period oftime.
But like the payouts are stillvery high.
Um, and you got to kind ofexpect that.
And so if you're doing somethingwhere you have an 80% payout,

(12:37):
like obviously you need otherproducts in order to be able to
monetize those names.
Now you will get an amazingcustomer who will buy other
products, but if you don't havethose other products, then
they're not gonna have anythingto buy.
Um, okay, so now let's go to thelast group.
And this is like I considerthis, and I think a lot of
people consider this as the holygrail of super affiliates in
FinPub.

(12:58):
And that's the CPA-driven mediacompanies, right?
These are the market beats ofthe world.
It's today media, apex groupsthat can scale traffic and scale
your offers and functionbasically as one of the top like
customer acquisition sources foreven the largest publishers,
right?
So like they will help you getmaximum distribution of your

(13:20):
offer across the customeruniverse.
Um, but it's super, supercompetitive, right?
So um one of the reasons thateveryone loves them is like I
said, it's the scale.
But unlike the other types ofaffiliates, um, these are
consistent, right?
If you have an offer working andit's meet in and it's one of the
top offers in the industry,they're gonna be able to,

(13:41):
they're gonna keep pushing ituntil it's no longer one of the
top offers in the industrybecause that's their business
model, right?
Um, and so unlike gettinganother um publisher to promote,
like the publisher is fillinggaps in his schedule.
Whereas people like Mark Beatand this today, like this is
their model.
And so they want to promote thebest offers and leadmark and

(14:01):
other groups like this.
We have this really great, likerobust ecosystem of media that
their model is to promote thebest performing offers.
Um, so but there's a big catch,right?
Because everyone wants to usethem, um, but you can't because
you're competing with everyother offer in the industry.
That means you're competing withboth the copy and promotion of

(14:24):
the best publishers out therewith the payouts that they're
making, right?
And so this group does tend tofocus more on the lower price
product model because they'regonna get a CPA, right?
Um, and often what you'll see isthere'll be a$100 product that's
paying a$300 CPA because the thepublisher knows that they just

(14:44):
need the units sold.
They can lose money on the frontend because they're gonna make
it up on the back end.
Um and so that makes this hypercompetitive because at any given
time, what these guys areconstantly doing is they're
looking at this kind of basicmath of how many units are we
selling, what commission are wegetting, and how does that
compare to this other promo thatwe're testing?

(15:05):
And they're gonna keep pushingit and pushing it.
And if they don't, they actuallylose money if they promote an
underperforming offer.
So you're like, oh, well, youhave so much traffic, why can't
you promote it to promote myoffer for me for a couple days
or whatever?
And it's like because they willlose money compared to what they
are they would make promotingthe strongest offer out there.
And so again, we see the samedynamic that copy is one of the

(15:27):
huge differentiators in FinPub.
And so you're you're you're notgonna be able to compete with
them on the same way, right,that a large publisher is,
because the large publishers ishiring the best copywriters,
putting out the most like promoafter promo after promo, trying
to find something that reallycan scale.
Um, they're paying high CPAsout.

(15:48):
And the other thing is that thelarger publishers can pay these
CPAs on on funnels that maybethey don't need to have the
money um paid back for monthsand months and months, right?
Eight months out in some casesor more.
Right.
So like it's not really a smallpublisher game.
Um, there are times, and and wesaw this in kind of the last few

(16:08):
years where some of thismid-sized publishers um were
able to kind of step up becausethey had really good copy.
Because usually, like the youknow, you look at somebody like
Divin Joe Dylan Jovene overbehind the market, it's like
he's an amazing copywriter andhe's the publisher of the
business.
And so if he's really on themarket, he can have a promo that
can compete with the big groups,right?
Um and and they can get and sowhen when we've had transition

(16:31):
points where maybe kind of likethe big machines um have kind of
a mismatch with the marketstory, um, there are these gaps
where smaller publishers cancome in.
And it doesn't mean that they'relike totally dominated only by
the small the biggestpublishers, but again, it's just
a much harder game for a smallpublisher um to play.
And so um, because of that, likeit's the like they're the most

(16:57):
scaled, but it's just thehardest.
And so you have to decide ifyour business is the kind of
business that can play thosegames.
And don't worry, they'll tellyou.
They're not gonna just like, youknow, you run an offer or show
them an offer, they might noteven test it anymore because
it's like this is obviously notgonna be a thing that's gonna
work for them.
Um, and so that's like the thethe three biggest groups here
that I think everyone shouldknow when you're coming into

(17:18):
this space.
Um and like the good news aboutthis, and this is something that
Brett Holmes um said on one ofour, he really made a big point
of this in one of our FMS Prolike um conversations, was that
really if you're a smallerpublisher, a newer publisher
who's coming into the space, ifyou're like, you know, sub five
million, especially, and likeyou're you're looking to get

(17:39):
affiliates, um, great, you getthese, you try and find
relationships to promote things,but the goal with your affiliate
promotion is not just to buildout a large affiliate program.
Your goal with that affiliatepromotion is to start to get
metrics on your offers and yourpromotions in order to be able
to go and intelligently buymedia because in FinPub, we have
this amazing, amazing network oftraffic networks, right?

(18:04):
We have groups where you can goand probably scale up to 100K,
you know, at different times,100k a month and spend without
having to do anything other thando an email marketing.
We have this amazing communityof groups like Darwin Investing
Network, you know, financialmedia core, lead mark, after
offers.
You have publishers like behindthe markets who have built
advertising arms as well.

(18:24):
Like there's this enormousamount of traffic available if
you kind of from from a smallerscale, right?
So you're coming in at$5,000versus$10,000, you know,$10,000
versus having to be up at that$25,000 to$50,000 mark where
it's even beginning to bepossible to get these super
affiliates like Market Beat topromote for you.

(18:45):
Um and so I think I hope thathelps.
I think this is kind of thebroader context of um what the
affiliate space in like FinPubis.
And of course, the last questionis always, well, where do I find
them?
And that's like the easiest oneof all because you just come to
the financial marketing summit.
Like we've been getting togetheras an industry for 10 years.
Everybody that I talked about isa group that goes there.

(19:07):
We have tons of affiliates, buttons of publishers, we have
media sources, like everybodygets together, and you'll come.
And if it's the first time thatyou'll come, you'll be you might
be surprised because it's a verylike welcoming community where
people are willing to do like tohelp you out and to help you
find kind of relationships andkind of point you in the right
direction, give you advice.
Like we really try and promotethat.
And the other thing that youhave is um FMS Pro is a monthly

(19:30):
thing that we have.
Um, this is not for like likenew people who, hey, I'm
thinking about starting abusiness.
Like, that is not absolutely notgoing to be useful for you.
And we don't really kind of wantyou in that group because it's
not what it is.
That group is for people whohave a business.
It doesn't have to be a bigbusiness, but you have to
actually be selling stuff intrading and investing.

(19:51):
And if you are, then we gettogether on a Zoom call every
month.
Um, we have it to talk aboutwhat's converting, what's
working, answer questions, kindof deal with issues that are
coming up, and then we have ourDiscord group.
Um, but if you're looking tofind new relationships in the
space, like just come to theFMS.
Um, the Finnish Marketing Summitputs you kind of, you know, in
two days, you'll meet morepeople than kind of cold
outreach um throughout the year.

(20:11):
Um but anyway, that's like kindof the context that I have for
this.
Um I hope that's useful.
Um, I know that some of thepeople that I've talked to would
be like, hey, I want I want youto do this just so that I can
send it to people when they cometo ask me to promote them
because I'm tired of having thesame conversation over and over
again.
Um anyway, uh as always onYouTube, go ahead and like and

(20:32):
subscribe if you like thisvideo.
Um I might actually try andbuild this channel.
I don't know.
We'll see.
All right, take care.
Bye.