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Affiliate Marketing Superpowers, Ep. 101

Jun 13, 2019

On today’s episode of Just the Tips, we peel back the layers on the mystery, wrapped in an enigma, that is Dean Holland. I’ve known Dean for years and if you asked me what it is that Dean does, I couldn’t tell you. But over a recent visit, I realized what Dean’s superpower is: Creating affiliate programs so businesses don’t have to rely on paid traffic. That’s a bona fide superpower, and on today’s episode we dive into how Dean does it.

Dean Holland: An Origin Story

Dean has sold over $10 million in products online, and only just recently began using paid traffic. I think that if Facebook went away tomorrow, Dean would be perfectly fine (although he’d be a little angry, because he just learned how to use Facebook ads). But how Dean got into entrepreneurship and business more generally was through affiliate marketing. And so he looked at his history as an affiliate marketer, and he said, “Okay, what do the vendors do that make it easier for me as an affiliate marketer?” And he just started building from there.

Affiliate marketing brings you the traffic

The very basis of having an affiliate program is to have an army of people out there, trying to drive traffic to your business. Affiliates don’t get paid unless a customer buys something, so it’s like having a sales army out there that’s only paid by commission. As Dean says, it’s almost the perfect traffic source. The only trouble is: You don’t own that traffic. You can’t control it. So how do you get the most out of it? The Bearded Wonder provides the answers.

Build the highest-earning affiliate program you can

The big lesson that Dean took away from being an affiliate marketer is that you have to create the best-paying sales process that you possibly can. Affiliates will go where the money is. If I’m an affiliate thing, and I have 10 different offers that all fit my audience, which one am I going to choose? It’s the one that makes me the most money. Often, affiliates measure their performance by earnings per click. And so an affiliate is going to choose your product every time, if you offer them greater earnings per click.

How to keep someone as an affiliate

When Dean first started creating affiliate programs, they would be based around a product launch. So there would be a large push for, say, seven days, and then the program would be done. Since then, he’s switched it up so that he has an affiliate platform, where he’s trying to build long-term relationships with his affiliates. And there are a variety of ways to do that, because no one is going to push your products every day to the same audience. But luckily, Dean has lived and breathed the affiliate life, so he knows how to make it work.

Outline of This Episode

  • [2:45] Dean’s superpower
  • [4:47] Dean’s beginning as an affiliate marketer
  • [8:52] What Dean learned and applied to his own business
  • [12:56] Get your baseline before you approach affiliates
  • [14:37] What are the affiliate models?
  • [17:51] How Dean creates his affiliate program
  • [22:00] Treating an affiliate like an exclusive partner

Music for “Just The Tips” is titled, “Happy Happy Game Show” by Kevin MacLeod (http://incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License

Connect With James and Dean

James P. Friel:

Dean Holland: