You searched for segmentation | Smart Passive Income

7 Email Marketing Mistakes from High Earners (and How to Fix Them)

Pat Flynn — Mon, 12 May 2025 18:00:00 +0000

7 Email Marketing Mistakes from High Earners (and How to Fix Them)

In this workshop, email marketing strategist, copywriter, and tech expert Allea Grummert will expose seven specific mistakes that (once fixed) can strengthen your connection with subscribers, boost brand loyalty and engagement, and fully optimize your email marketing strategy.

About the event

May 12 @ 11:00 am – 12:00 pm PDT

What if you could get an insider look at the most common email marketing mistakes made by 7-figure earners? Even better, what if you could learn how to avoid those same mistakes?

During this workshop, you’ll learn:

One practical step you can take by the end of the day to make a better first impression on new subscribers

How to actually improve your open rates (and even save on email costs) by removing cold subscribers

How to fully leverage segmentation to better target your list

Strategies to improve your subscriber experience using tags

Async AMA:

Allea will be available in the Thrive community for a week after her workshop to answer your questions!

Need help applying what you’ve learned? Facing a newsletter challenge and want her insights? She’s here to support you.

Who can attend

This event is open to all Thrive tier members of the SPI Community.

To register

Community members will find the event information inside the Community events calendar.

Join the community

Interested in attending this event? Unlock it by joining the SPI Community! You'll get access to live events, all our courses, and a supportive community of entrepreneurs.

Learn more about joining the SPI Community

May 12 @ 11:00 am – 12:00 pm PDT

Pat Flynn

The post 7 Email Marketing Mistakes from High Earners (and How to Fix Them) appeared first on Smart Passive Income.

Kit Review 2024

Ray Sylvester — Tue, 26 Nov 2024 22:09:55 +0000

If you’re looking for your next email marketing platform, and you’re curious if Kit is right for you, well, you’re in the right place! Here’s our comprehensive Kit review for 2024, which will cover:

What Is Kit?
Why do I need an email service provider (ESP)?
The rebrand from ConvertKit to Kit
Kit Features
Kit Pricing
Key Benefits of Kit
Drawbacks of Kit
Kit & Email Marketing: More Resources to Read, Listen & Learn

What is Kit?

Kit is an email service provider (ESP). Essentially, it’s a technology service that lets you send email campaigns to a list of subscribers. Kit is one of literally hundreds of ESPs out there, and—full disclosure—it happens to be the one we prefer and use at SPI.

Although we’re biased, we can still be objective! In this post, we’ll cover the features, benefits, and drawbacks of Kit as we see them, to help you decide if it’s the right ESP for your business.

Email marketing strategy: Why you need an ESP

If you’re reading this, you might already know what an ESP is and why you need one. But in case you don’t, an ESP is the most important piece of technology to support your email marketing strategy.

Email marketing is one of the most powerful methods to build relationships and market your products and services to your audience. Let’s talk about why that is.

In its most basic form, email marketing involves you sending emails to a group of people who’ve chosen to hear from you by “subscribing” to receive emails from you. You could technically use a simple email program like Gmail to accomplish this—but we don’t recommend it, because you’ll quickly find it insufficient (and because your personal email account will get flagged as spam if you send too many emails from it!).

As your business grows and more people subscribe to get your emails, you’ll want the ability to do more sophisticated things with your email marketing, like customizing the emails people get according to their interests, and using reports and analytics to determine what’s working well or not.

You also need to make sure you’re respecting people’s privacy and not spamming anyone. An email service provider also helps you to stay in compliance with government regulations around the world, such as the CAN-SPAM act in the United States, the General Data Protection Regulation in the European Union (GDPR), and the Canada Anti-Spam Law (CASL).

Things can quickly get out of hand without the help of a dedicated email marketing platform. That’s where an ESP like Kit comes in.

Okay, let’s get into the nitty gritty of Kit’s features!

Psst… Want to grow your email list and learn powerful segmentation and automation strategies that allow your business to run on its own? Check out the Email Marketing Magic course.

Kit features

These are the key features of Kit, organized by how you’ll use them.

Sending emails

Autoresponders/drip campaigns (sequences): Send a sequence of pre-written emails automatically to a specific segment of subscribers on your list, triggered by a specific event or action, with the aim of guiding them to take a specific action.
Broadcast emails: Send standard announcements or one-time emails to your subscribers on a specific date.
CAN-SPAM, GDPR, and CASL compliance: CAN-SPAM, GDPR, and CASL are laws that set the rules and requirements for commercial email messages, and give recipients the right to have you stop emailing them—so compliance is crucial!
Dynamic (personalized) email content: Your email content can display different text or images, according to your customer segmentation.
Responsive email templates: Ready-to-go email designs, as well as the ability to create your own custom templates. Kit automatically formats your landing pages for various devices, such as desktop computers and mobile phones.
WYSIWYG email editor: The built-in email editor lets you see how your email will look with your template’s styling applied while you’re composing it.

Collecting new subscribers

Custom responsive landing pages: Use the included tool to quickly create a landing page to collect email addresses. Kit automatically formats your landing pages for various devices, such as desktop computers and mobile phones.
Embeddable forms: Collect email subscribers anywhere on your website by dropping in a Javascript or HTML form, or by using the WordPress plugin.
Site builder: Create a website directly on Kit to publish newsletters, host a digital storefront to collect payment for one-time or subscription products, and build custom pages. Set up a landing page and collect payment for one-time or subscription products right inside Kit.
Visual automations: Kit allows you to create rule-based paths using if-then logic, so that when a subscriber takes a particular action, you can send them pre-defined emails or add them to a segment.

Learning about your subscribers

A/B testing: Kit lets you test different subject lines for your emails, and automatically determines the winner based on their respective open rates.
Reporting/analytics/ROI tracking: Learn how often your subscribers open your emails, click on links, and complete various actions.
Segmentation/tagging: Segmenting your subscribers into different categories (similar to but more powerful than other programs’ “lists”) allows you to send them emails that are better tailored to their needs and interests.
Polls. Add polls directly to emails to engage with and collect information about subscribers, which you can then use to build segments.

Growing your income

In 2022, Kit Commerce was added to the platform, allowing users to try selling digital products to their subscribers by creating customized product pages that can be embedded in your emails, along with automated sales funnels.
The current iteration of Kit also features a site builder. You can create a website directly on Kit to publish newsletters, host a digital storefront to collect payment for one-time or subscription products, and build custom pages.

Connecting with and supporting other creators: The Creator Network

In 2023, Kit launched the Creator Network, which helps users guide their audience members to discover other creators and get discovered in turn.
You can also get paid for Creator Network recommendations you make via the aptly named Paid Recommendations.

Expanding the platform’s capabilities: App store

As part of the 2024 rebrand, they also launched an app store, where you can find custom apps to do more with Kit. The app store will launch with five apps: KitBoard (add CRM to your account), Wordsmith (turn YouTube videos into newsletters, SavvyCal (add booking widgets to emails), Mighty (connect your Mighty community and content with Kit), and SegMetrics (learn about how you gain, engage, and convert subscribers).
Kit also offers a self-service app builder to create your own add-ons. (As of this writing, the service is currently in beta.)

Start your Kit account — free for your first 10,000 subscribers!

Start your account now

This is an affiliate link

From “ConvertKit” to “Kit”: Behind the rebrand

In summer 2024, the company previously known as ConvertKit officially became Kit. The new name was announced in July during the Craft + Commerce Creator Conference and went live in October. (They had previously rebranded to Seva in 2018, but considerable negative feedback to the new name caused them to revert to ConvertKit until this year.)

The change to Kit was more than a name change, though, because the company launched several big new capabilities to their platform as well. We covered some of the new features in the section above, but here are the highlights:

An app store where developers can create add-ons to augment Kit’s capabilities
A central data hub with enhanced reporting
An expanded Creator Network to help users find new collaboration partners

Kit also made a point of rebranding in public by sharing information about the rebranding process through blog updates, live-streamed design sessions, and a four-part YouTube mini-documentary. This transparency gives an interesting insight into the company’s thinking. And we think it’s a smart move given how their previous rebrand went.

With that out of the way, let’s talk about pricing.

Kit pricing

For a long time, Kit only offered paid plans. But in December 2019, the company announced a new free tier if you have fewer than 1,000 subscribers. They recently expanded the free tier to include creators with up to 10,000 subscribers.

Here are Kit’s pricing options as of October 2024:

$0/month for up to 10,000 subscribers

The Newsletter plan includes:

1 basic Visual Automation
1 email Sequence
1 user
Unlimited landing pages, opt-in forms, and email broadcasts
Audience tagging & segmentation
Sell digital products
Run paid newsletters & subscriptions
Newsletter feed & website
API Access
Free Recommendations (required—at least one recommendation slot to grow your list by cross-promoting with other creators)
Smart Recommendations (auto-recommendation of similar creators to help you grow your list)
24/7 support

Kit Creator Plan

$9/month for up to 300 subscribers (paid annually; $15 if paid monthly)
$25/month for up to 1,000 subscribers (paid annually; $29 if paid monthly)
Tiered pricing up to $1,916/month (paid annually; $1,916 if paid monthly) for up to 400,000 subscribers

The Creator plan includes:

All the features of the Newsletter plan
Unlimited Visual Automations
Unlimited email Sequences
2 users
Free migration from another tool
Free Recommendations
Paid Recommendations
Remove Kit branding
Third-party integrations
RSS campaigns
Polls

Kit Creator Pro Plan

$25/month for up to 300 subscribers (paid annually; $29 if paid monthly)
$50/month for up to 1,000 subscribers (paid annually; $59 if paid monthly)
Tiered pricing up to $2,166/month (paid annually; $2,599 paid monthly) for up to 400,000 subscribers

The Creator Pro plan includes:

All the features of the Creator plan
Unlimited Visual Automations
Unlimited email Sequences
Unlimited users
Facebook custom audiences
Newsletter referral system
Edit links in sent broadcasts
Subscriber engagement scoring
Advanced deliverability reporting
Insights dashboard
24/7 Priority support

Both the Creator and Creator Pro plans offer a 14-day free trial so you can see if it’s right for you before committing.

We’ll keep this post updated with the latest Kit pricing, but you can also visit the pricing page on the Kit website.

Let’s get into the reasons we like Kit next!

Benefits of Kit

We’ve used Kit to power Smart Passive Income’s email marketing for several years. In that time, we’ve found it to be the ideal ESP for our needs. We also think it’s a great solution for a range of entrepreneurs and digital creators looking for a robust, feature-rich email marketing platform.

The best email service provider for new entrepreneurs.

Easy to learn, powerful when you need it.

Get your free account

This is an affiliate link

From where we sit, the power of Kit falls into two main categories: user benefits, and audience benefits.

Kit benefits from the user’s standpoint

First, Kit has everything a business owner needs to get up and running quickly:

You can collect emails.
You can set up a simple landing page to collect emails.
You can sell products (one-time purchase or subscription).

These features allow someone to start selling even while they are in the process of setting up a website somewhere else. It also makes it easy to execute on one of the main lessons in our Smart From Scratch course: using selling as a key step in the idea-validation process.

Second, the Kit team designed their platform to grow with the sophistication of the user. When you start, you probably just want to collect email addresses and send emails. But as you grow, you’ll want to start tailoring your message and segmenting your audience. At that point you can take advantage of things like automations and dynamic content. As you and your business become more advanced, the Creator Pro Plan is your next step—you won’t have to switch to a different email service provider five years down the road. This sets Kit apart from some other ESPs, particularly Mailchimp.

Some people find Kit a bit daunting (see Drawbacks below), but if you’re somewhat tech-savvy we think it’s pretty approachable. In particular, we like the accessibility of Kit’s automation builder, which lets you create automations in a straightforward, linear way.

We tried Infusionsoft for a year and found its automation builder innovative but overwhelming. You had to already understand how automations work, as well as the various symbols common in automation builders. We find Kit’s automation builder, on the other hand, makes it easy to string automations together in an advanced way. With multiple templates to choose from, setting up an automation for the first time is easy for any user.

We also like Kit’s approach to subscriber management. With Kit, all your subscribers go into one big pool; there are no lists. Instead, subscribers can be put into segments by assigning them attributes using tags and custom fields. These let you treat your subscribers as unique humans with different needs; not all subscribers are created equal. The other benefit of the way Kit treats subscribers? You’re only charged once for each unique subscriber, unlike some other ESPs.

Kit’s recently launched Creator Network is also a big plus in our eyes, from both a business-building and community-building perspective. It allows you to grow your subscriber base while also fostering connections with other entrepreneurs and creators.

Last but not least, if you’re moving from another ESP like Mailchimp or AWeber, Kit offers a free migration service that can take some of the headache out of switching.

Kit benefits for your audience

Kit gives you the opportunity to tailor your messaging to your audience. You can have as many forms and landing pages as you want. You can have as many tags, custom fields, and segments as you want. You can be as specific in talking to your audience as you want to be.

As you collect information about your audience, you can start to segment subscribers so you don’t bother people with things they aren’t interested in. Kit makes it easy to collect details about your audience along the way, and you aren’t penalized for that through higher costs, as you would be with a list-based email platform.

Drawbacks of Kit

No solution is perfect, of course. Here are some of the drawbacks we and other Kit users have noticed.

Moderately steep learning curve. The interface can be a little overwhelming for a beginner. Taking full advantage of all of Kit’s features—like segmentation, tagging, and automations—requires some learning (and potentially coding). You can shorten this learning curve by following their Getting Started video series, as well as the rest of the content on their well-organized support site
No list-based organization. Although we like the way Kit lets you organize subscribers using tags (and doesn’t charge you for duplicate subscribers, as we mentioned above), the lack of a list-based organization system can be confusing if you’re coming from other platforms. Over time, though, we think you’ll find this system more flexible than managing lists.
Barebones email and landing page templates. Kit requires CSS coding to create custom advanced email templates and landing pages beyond the included options. Some users report that the email design tool can be buggy.
Analytics could be more robust. The free and Creator plans don’t offer the same advanced deliverability reporting, subscriber scoring, and analytics features of the Insight feature that the Creator Pro plan offers, which makes sense but may be a bother to some users.

Thankfully, one of the previous drawbacks of Kit, that there was no free option, hasn’t been the case since 2019. This free tier makes Kit comparable at the entry level to other popular ESP options like Mailchimp.

Lastly, this is by no means a drawback, but as Kit continues to expand its offerings to include things like the Creator Network and Kit Commerce to its core email marketing capabilities, there’s a chance that the platform’s value could get spread thin. To be clear, we don’t think this is going to happen and have a lot of confidence in Nathan and the Kit team, but it’s worth keeping in mind.

Our big takeaway on Kit

With the recent updates, Kit is coming closer to being a one-stop shop for creators who want to grow, nurture, and sell to their audiences with a platform that’s largely ready to use and automatable. If you’re looking for your first or next email marketing platform, we think it’s a great solution for growing your audience and increasing your income while retaining creative control over what you put out into the world!

Kit & email marketing: More resources to read, listen & learn

So there you have it—our review of Kit’s email marketing platform! We’ll leave you with a few more resources if you’re curious about Kit, or want to dig further into email marketing.

Kit [Full Disclosure: As an affiliate, we receive compensation if you purchase through this link.]

SPI 825: Behind the Scenes of a Major Rebrand & Lessons Learned After a Hard Fail—my conversation with Kit CEO Nathan Barry about setting his company’s sights on more ambitious goals with the rebrand.

What Is Email Marketing? + Best Practices: An SPI How-to Guide

Email Marketing Magic Course

AP 0712: How Do I Migrate an Email List from AWeber to Kit? – Smart Passive Income

Why I Switched from Aweber to Infusionsoft to ConvertKitI hope this post has been helpful in deciding whether Kit is the right ESP for your business. Whatever email marketing platform you choose, nothing is more important than having the right email marketing strategy, so be sure to check out our essential guide to email marketing and consider the Email Marketing Magic course if you want more hands-on support with your email marketing, available inside the SPI Community. Good luck!

The post Kit Review 2024 appeared first on Smart Passive Income.

How to Get Your First 1,000 Subscribers Fast

Pat Flynn — Thu, 12 Dec 2024 18:00:00 +0000

How to Get Your First 1,000 Subscribers Fast

Join Pat Flynn and Nathan Barry, the founder and CEO of Kit — SPI’s preferred email service provider — for a live one-hour webinar where they’ll break down the tactics that are helping hundreds of entrepreneurs grow their email lists quickly and easily.

About the event

December 12, 2024 @ 10:00 am – 11:00 am PST

Pat and Nathan will share a sneak peek into how other entrepreneurs are scaling their lists using features in Kit, such as the Creator Network, custom automations, and targeted segmentations. You’ll learn how to apply these tools to your business for immediate results, even on a small scale. Plus, by registering, you’ll unlock an exclusive Kit BONUS, available only to Pat Flynn’s audience.

Finish the year strong, and set your business up for success in 2025! Don’t miss out — register now!

Who can attend

This event is open to everyone.

To register

Go here to register for this event.

Join the community

Interested in attending this event? Unlock it by joining the SPI Community! You'll get access to live events, all our courses, and a supportive community of entrepreneurs.

Learn more about joining the SPI Community

Pat Flynn

The post How to Get Your First 1,000 Subscribers Fast appeared first on Smart Passive Income.

SPI + Kit 1000 Email Addresses Webinar

Pat Flynn — Wed, 20 Nov 2024 20:50:13 +0000

How to Get Your First 1,000 Subscribers Fast

Thursday, December 12th at 10:00 AM PT / 1:00 PM ET

Join Pat Flynn and Nathan Barry, founder and CEO of Kit, for a special one-hour webinar on how to grow your email list quickly and effectively.

Quickly grow your email list with quality leads!

Email marketing is a great way to promote your latest products and services while building your brand story directly with your audience. But how do you grow a list when you are starting from scratch?

Join Pat Flynn and Nathan Barry, the founder and CEO of Kit — SPI's preferred email service provider — for a live one-hour webinar where they'll break down the tactics that are helping hundreds of entrepreneurs to grow their email lists quickly and easily.

They'll share a sneak peek into how other entrepreneurs are scaling their lists using features in Kit, such as the Creator Network, custom automations, and targeted segmentations. You'll learn how to apply these tools to your business for immediate results, even on a small scale. Plus, by registering, you'll unlock an exclusive Kit BONUS, available only to Pat Flynn's audience.

Finish the year strong, and set your business up for success in 2025! Don’t miss out — register now!

During this live training, you'll learn:

How to go from 0 to 100, and then from 100 to 1,000 email subscribers.

Tactics used by hundreds of other creators to grow their lists fast.

How to use Kit — the go-to marketing hub for creators and SPI's preferred email service provider. (Affiliate link.)

Don’t miss out — register now to set your email marketing up for success!

The post SPI + Kit 1000 Email Addresses Webinar appeared first on Smart Passive Income.

Email Marketing Magic

Pat Flynn — Mon, 29 Jan 2024 05:13:47 +0000

Email Marketing Magic

Part of the SPI Community course library. Learn how to polish your email strategy to engage more readers, make more sales, and grow your brand.

SEE WHAT YOU'LL LEARN

Follow the weekly assignments

Weekly assignments keep you on track to complete the coursework in just seven weeks

Live help from experts in email marketing

Ask your questions each week in Tuesday's live office hours calls (or watch the recording later)

Get help and encouragement

In the dedicated group, you'll be able to ask questions and get feedback from experts and your classmates

Save 16% with annual billing

Accelerate

Do It Together

$99

/ month

Billed quarterly for $297

$83

/ month

Billed annually for $990

Join Accelerate

You have access to:

Downloadable cheat sheets and templates
Public events with Pat Flynn
Q&A sessions with Team SPI
Free 101 introductory courses
Pat Flynn's book companion courses
Full community forum
Team SPI (priceless)
Monthly beginner workshops (live and replays)
Hot Seats with Pat Flynn
All premium courses ($5,500+ value)
Cohort course accelerators ($499 value each)
Member-led masterminds
Networking events
Pat Flynn's twice-monthly office hours ($1,000 value)

Learn what to write and when to send it

Do your email newsletters take a ton of time, give you a ton of anxiety, and honestly, don't get many opens? Let's change that.

Pat Flynn will teach you exactly what emails to send, to whom, and at what time to help you get more engagement—and eventually more sales. Instead of worrying about unsubscribes and people who complain about you sending emails, you're going to get thanked by your readers for sending them!

Start at the beginning

We start from the beginning to set you up for success. Even if you have an email list already, most people overlook some key items that affect how emails show up in people’s inboxes (or even if they show up at all).

Clear action items

At the end of each lesson, Pat gives you a very clear, very manageable action item—your assignment for the lesson. This makes sure that you are making steady, ongoing progress and that you start seeing results right away.

Go beyond the basics

Gain a professional-level understanding of who is on your list, and how to talk directly to them instead of just “blasting” messages to everyone. Pat will teach you which tools play a part in email marketing success, and then demonstrate step-by-step how to use them.

You don't have to be a great writer

Don't fret if your writing skills aren't strong. We’ve included all kinds of email templates that you can use in different parts of your business. Just copy and paste so that you can move on.

Easy-to-follow video tutorials

Walk you through the entire process with step-by-step videos, so that even if you’re the most technologically challenged person in the world, you’ll be able to get things done.

Learn what makes your audience happy

Instead of worrying about unsubscribes and people who complain, you’ll learn how to send emails your audience actually WANTS to read, even if you’re selling something.

Focus on simplicity over complication

Email marketing can turn into a giant complicated nightmare, but that does no one any good. Learn to leverage the strategies that give you the biggest ROI with the least amount of overwhelm. This isn’t push-button easy, but we simplify and reduce the overwhelm as much as possible so that you can finally take action and make emails work for you.

Advice that grows with you

As your business expands, you can venture into the more advanced areas of the course, such as lessons on segmentation or how to use advanced tools like RightMessage, to help you take growth, monetization and automation to new levels.

Ready to learn email marketing?

The SPI Community has the education, support, and accountability you need to progress in your business.

Join us now

Learn to use Kit

Kit (formerly called ConvertKit) is our favorite email service provider—it strikes a balance between intuitive usability and powerful automation. All step-by-step videos in the course use Kit. You don't have to use Kit to succeed with this course, but we highly recommend it.

[Full disclosure: SPI founder Pat Flynn is a compensated advisor and SPI Media is an affiliate for Kit.]

Meet Your Course Instructor

Hi, I’m Pat Flynn. If you’re an entrepreneur, podcaster, YouTuber, blogger, course instructor, consultant, coach, author or any other creator who is building an audience, I can help.

Ever since I was let go from my architecture job in 2008, I’ve run my own businesses, and it didn’t take long for me to realize just how important email marketing was to the equation of building a successful business.

In fact, I’ve gotten to become so obsessed with email, that I actually became an advisor to an email marketing company, Kit, in 2014. Since then, it’s become an even bigger focus of mine, and on SmartPassiveIncome.com, it’s no longer just me – I have a whole team of people whose focus is delivering value through email so that we can help the most people possible.

I’ve generated a few million dollars online since 2008, and I can safely say that email marketing has had to do with almost all of that income. I’m excited to share with you what works, and what doesn’t, and help you finally get a grasp on this thing that most people try to avoid. It can make all the difference.

Email Marketing Magic Course Outline

Welcome, Students!

Resources & Tools for Entrepreneurs

Pat Flynn — Thu, 11 Jan 2024 15:46:06 +0000

Powerful tools of the trade for online entrepreneurs

We only recommend online platforms that we use to manage and grow our own business. There’s no hype or fluff here — just the stuff we’ve found essential to our success.

Over the years, we’ve worked hard testing dozens of online platforms to find the ones that can be real game-changers for your online business. Here are the critical few we believe in so much that we use them ourselves.

Check out the Tools

Explore Free Articles

Important Disclosure: Please Read Before Proceeding

We're proud affiliates for some of these tools, meaning if you click a link for a tool and make a purchase, we earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Our recommendations are based on deep experience with and knowledge of these companies and their products. We recommend them because they are helpful and useful, not because of the commissions we may receive. Please do not spend any money on these products unless you believe they will help you achieve your goals.

Affiliate links are marked with

This is an affiliate link

Looking for podcasts and articles instead?

Smart Passive Income Podcast with Pat Flynn

Weekly interviews and advice for building your online business the smart way.

Listen to the Podcast

Articles and Essays

Enjoy in-depth guides, useful how-tos, revealing success stories, special announcements, and more published exclusively on our blog.

Read the Blog

Definitive Guides

Our in-depth guides on essential online business skills are your fast track to learning the ropes of success as an online entrepreneur.

Explore the Guides

Our business runs on these platforms

Try Circle

This is an affiliate link

#1 Community Platform

Circle

The modern community platform for creators — and the easiest way to set up a premium community experience. That's why we use it for the SPI Community.

Circle is powerful enough to support some of the largest and most successful online communities — while being easy to use for community builders who are just starting too. Circle is fully white-labeled so it can match and integrate with your brand.

Your members stay looped into your community — increasing engagement, retention, and connection.

Watch our video walkthrough of how you can use Circle to build your community. Already using Circle and need a little help? See our how-to tutorials here.

Listen to an interview with Sid Yadav, Co-Founder and CEO at Circle.

Try Kit

This is an affiliate link

#1 For Building Email Lists

Kit — formerly called ConvertKit

Kit is the only email marketing platform we use.

Kit is our #1 recommended email marketing platform because it has been built with care to the exact needs of creators building online businesses. Their user experience is very user-friendly. And segmenting our subscribers into focused groups so that we can deliver content specific to their needs has never been easier. We’re all in on Kit.

Watch our walkthrough of Kit and hear why it's our favorite email service provider. Already using Kit and need a little help? Check out our video tutorials here.

Pat has talked with Nathan on the SPI Podcast several times over the years. Hear Nathan's advice on bootstrapping a startup and the story behind why he started Kit.

This is a sponsored link

Sponsored Recommendation

Relay

Your cash flow could be clearer with Relay

Relay is small business banking that puts you in complete control of your cash flow. It’s an all-in-one money management platform with multiple checking accounts, team spend controls, no account fees, and more—so you can see what you’re earning, spending and saving.

Don’t waste another day—or dollar—with traditional institutions that nickel and dime small businesses like yours, sign up for Relay today!

Get $50 when you sign up and fund a Relay account

This is a sponsored link

Sponsored Recommendation

ScoreApp

Create a high-converting quiz that grows your list…and your income!

Try Fusebox

This is an affiliate link

#1 For Podcast Hosting

Fusebox

The official podcast player used by SPI!

Fusebox provides your website visitors with a superior listening experience. From its powerful podcast hosting and analytics to the industry's most elegant and responsive web players, Fusebox is a must-have tool for starting a podcast.

Get three months free when you join using our affiliate link.

Try Taplio

This is an sponsored link

Sponsored Recommendation

Taplio

Build your LinkedIn brand like a pro in no time.

Taplio is your LinkedIn coach tool, built for people who take the platform seriously. It helps you stay consistent with all the tools to grow your personal brand on LinkedIn. Taplio shows you what wins so you can post with confidence and grow faster. Start your free trial and see your personal brand grow!

Try Poppy

This is an sponsored link

Sponsored Recommendation

Poppy

Create viral content & ads with Poppy AI.

Poppy AI is the only AI tool that lets you work visually with multiple inputs at once. Drag in YouTube videos, competitor content, PDFs, voice notes, and images – then watch as Poppy helps you create viral scripts, ad copy, and social media posts that actually convert.

Try Rockbase

This is an affiliate link

#1 For Website Building

Rockbase

The smartpassiveincome.com website is built with Rockbase.

We have always recommended WordPress as our website builder of choice because of how customizable the platform is, but designing an attractive WordPress website can be challenging. The Rockbase theme truly makes it easy to quickly create a WordPress website, using beautifully designed blocks that are easy to assemble. Created by talented creators for talented creators—just like you.

Try Aura

This is an affiliate link

#1 Security Solution

Aura

The tool to help keep you and your business secure.

Combining financial, identity, network, and device protection, Aura offers antivirus software, VPN, password management, and more in one digital security solution.

Read why identity theft is a problem and how Aura can help you stay protected.

Try RightMessage

This is an affiliate link

#1 For Marketing Optimization

RightMessage

RightMessage gives us the ability to communicate with our fans on their terms.

It’s hard to get your messaging right, which harms your ability to motivate others to take a call-to-action. Thankfully, RightMessage is here to save the day. Their platform empowers you to dynamically display content and user experiences on your site tailored to individual audience types, which can dramatically boost your conversion rates.

Listen to an interview with Brennan Dunn, the creator of RightMessage. Pat and Brennan discuss the power of segmentation for personalizing your customer's journey.

Use the affiliate link to get a 14-day free trial.

Other cool tools we use across a variety of needs…

Business Platforms

Collaboration Technology

Legal & Compliance Tools

Marketing Platforms

Podcasting Equipment & Tools

Project Management Apps

Sales Platforms

Video Production Tools

Website & Form Builders

Business Platforms

Aura

The tool to help keep you and your business secure. Combining financial, identity, network, and device protection, Aura offers antivirus software, VPN, password management, and more all in one digital security solution. Read why identity theft is a problem and how Aura can help you stay protected.

Try Aura

This is an affiliate link

Guideline

We are so grateful that Guideline exists because without it we may never have rolled out a 401(k) plan to our team. It integrates beautifully with Gusto, which we use for payroll. And it keeps us compliant, which provides blissful peace of mind. Follow this link for three months off of your employer fees.

Try Guideline

This is an affiliate link

Gusto

Gusto makes running our SPI business a breeze. It starts with payroll, which is critical to get right for a growing business. We also use Gusto for PTO tracking, culture surveys, capturing important documents, and more. Oh, and their concierge team is dynamite.

Try Gusto

This is an affiliate link

Help Scout

There's no way we could operate our customer care inboxes without Help Scout. We also rely on Help Scout as the home of knowledge base tutorial content for some of our offerings. It's pure magic in the form of a software system made to delight.

Try Help Scout

This is an affiliate link

ZenBusiness

ZenBusiness provides the essential tools and guides entrepreneurs and small business owners need to create a successful business. Officially filing an LLC is a great first step… but that's only the first step. ZenBusiness provides the ongoing education, support, and tools to quickly and easily set up and run a business on their platform.

Try ZenBusiness

This is an affiliate link

Collaboration Technology

Dropbox

Dropbox is our cloud-based document storage system of choice that easily syncs with all of our team's computers and provides simple access controls to third-party contributors. We also dabble with Dropbox Paper for elegant document creation.

Try Dropbox

This is an affiliate link

HeySummit

Make online events easy so you can spend less time building while using the tools that you already know and love. HeySummit can bring your audience together on your terms — offering integrations with popular web platforms, you can launch your first (or next) event within minutes!

Try HeySummit

This is an affiliate link

SavvyCal

SavvyCal makes scheduling easy by allowing your recipient to compare their calendar with yours to find availability. You can connect multiple calendars and offer different meeting types. Our link gets you your first paid month free after your 7-day trial.

Try SavvyCal

This is an affiliate link

Slack

Slack is our beloved digital HQ for all things SPI. We organize all of our communications in Slack using various channels tailored to unique projects, departments, and hierarchies. It's made email almost a thing of the past, which is glorious for our productivity.

Try Slack

This is an affiliate link

Legal & Compliance Tools

Doola

Doola, formerly Startpack.io, helps global online entrepreneurs form US LLCs, supporting customers through the incorporation process so they can confidently collect payments, build credibility, stay legal, and make more money.

Try Doola

This is an affiliate link

HelloSign

The document signing process can be a real hassle — emailing various PDFs back and forth, scanning hard copies, etc. Thankfully, there's a much faster, easier, and more secure way — use HelloSign. We use it for all of our sensitive documents, and always will.

Try HelloSign

This is an affiliate link

Iubenda

Iubenda ensures that your website is compliant with the latest privacy laws. They have a variety of services, including policy and term generators, cookie management, and consent solutions. Of the solutions available, we've found this one easiest to use.

Try Iubenda

This is an affiliate link

Marketing Platforms

Bonjoro

Bonjoro is a game-changing tool that lets you send personal videos to new leads and customers. Whether you're in sales, marketing, or customer service, Bonjoro helps you get more engagement. Plus, it seamlessly integrates with CRMs and tools like Slack and Kit. We've been so impressed by how much engagement we've seen with Bonjoro!

Try Bonjoro

This is an affiliate link

Kit

Kit is the only email marketing platform we use, and will ever use. Kit is our #1 recommended email marketing platform because it has been built with care to the exact needs of creators building online businesses. Their user experience is very user-friendly. And segmenting our subscribers into focused groups so that we can deliver content specific to their needs has never been easier. We’re all in on Kit.

Try Kit

This is an affiliate link

Copy.ai

Write better copy and get past your writer's block! CopyAI offers automated creativity tools to generate marketing copy in seconds. Built on top of the world’s most advanced AI language model, CopyAI is helping thousands of people turbo-charge their creativity.

Try Copy.ai

This is an affiliate link

RightMessage

RightMessage gives us the ability to communicate with our fans on their terms.

Try RightMessage

This is an affiliate link

Stan Store

Stan Store is the fastest, easiest way for entrepreneurs to launch their online businesses. It’s an all-in-one storefront where you can sell digital products, manage income, track analytics, and more — all in just a few clicks. Set up your Stan Store in 5 minutes and start monetizing your knowledge and passions today!

Get started today with a 30 day free trial of Stan Store.

Try Stan Store

This is an affiliate link

VideoAsk by Typeform

Interact face-to-face with your audience and make gathering feedback and testimonials a breeze. From conditional logic jumps, to contact forms, or closed caption and transcription support, VideoAsk enhances conversations with your audience.

Try VideoAsk

This is an affiliate link

Podcasting Equipment

The gear lists referenced here come from this article on podcasting gear.

The Frugal Kit

See the Frugal Kit

This is an affiliate link

The Jetsetter Kit

See the Jetsetter Kit

This is an affiliate link

The Audiophile Kit

See the Audiophile Kit

This is an affiliate link

The In-Person Kit

See the In-Person Kit

This is an affiliate link

The YouTuber Add-On Kit

See the YouTuber Add-On

This is an affiliate link

Podcasting Tools

Descript

Descript offers simple and powerful collaborative tools to edit your audio and video just like a text document! Remove the tedious work that often stands between an idea and its expression and focus on developing your craft instead of getting side-tracked with platform fatigue.

Try Descript

This is an affiliate link

Fusebox

The official podcast player used by SPI! Fusebox provides your website visitors with a superior listening experience. From its powerful podcast hosting and analytics to the industry's most elegant and responsive web players, Fusebox is a must-have tool for starting a podcast. Get three months free when you join using our affiliate link.

Try Fusebox

This is an affiliate link

Podcast Hawk

Take the work out of getting booked and experience a smarter way to get exposure. Podcast Hawk is the smartest way to get booked, using time-saving and cost-effective software. Guest appearances on podcasts are a great way to promote your brand and grow your business, but you don't have to do it alone.

Try Podcast Hawk

This is an affiliate link

Podpage

The easiest way to create a turnkey website for your podcast, no coding knowledge required—and it automatically updates every time you publish a new episode. Upgrade to their Pro plan to add on even more features, like email address collection, voicemails, and importing reviews.

Try Podpage

This is an affiliate link

Project Management Apps

CoSchedule

If you're looking for a content-specific project management solution, then look no further than CoSchedule. It integrates seamlessly with your WordPress blog, allows you to create standardized editorial workflows, and centralizes all content creation tasks.

Try CoSchedule

Monday.com

Monday.com is our new go-to work management platform. It's drag-and-drop simple. There are oodles of pre-made templates for a variety of use cases and it's highly collaborative and visual by design. We use it for darn near everything we do.

Try Monday.com

This is an affiliate link

Sales Platforms

Eventbrite

If you run your own events, then do yourself a favor and sell your tickets through Eventbrite. We've tried to adapt other platforms for ticket sales and it never really works. We always come back to Eventbrite, which powers such events as FlynnCon.

Try Eventbrite

Karat

A credit card for creators without limits to grow your channel fast with the credit you deserve. Karat will get you up and running in just 5 minutes with no need for a social security number or effect on your credit score.

Try Karat

This is an affiliate link

Rewardful

It can be hard (and expensive) to grow a SaaS business — that's why Rewardful offers a simple way for companies to set up affiliate and referral programs with Stripe. Just connect your account and let us track referrals, discounts, and commissions for you!

Try Rewardful

This is an affiliate link

Stripe

Stripe is the gold standard for payment processors. Pat uses it to process payments for his private mastermind and workshops. Most SaaS companies today use it for their recurring payments, and we use it to process community membership payments.

Try Stripe

Teachable

Offering online courses to our audience revolutionized our business. That was possible thanks to Teachable, a market leader in the booming online courses industry. They make it so darn simple to configure content, manage settings, and sell to students. No coding is required!

Try Teachable

This is an affiliate link

Video Production Tools

Frame.io

Frame.io is a key component of Pat's workflow for producing, reviewing, and collaborating on videos. The user experience is off the hook. And upload times are blazing fast. And it's all highly secure too. If you're a video pro like Pat, definitely check out Frame.io.

Try Frame.io

This is an affiliate link

Loom

Loom is a welcome breath of fresh air in the world of video recording tools. There's a free plan option that's not lacking in features. And videos are saved automatically to the cloud. We use Loom anytime we need to create an important explanatory video.

Try Loom

SwitchPod

This minimal, versatile, handheld tripod was specifically designed by Pat Flynn and Caleb Wojcik with video creators in mind. It's quick to set up and comfortable to hold.

Try SwitchPod

This is an affiliate link

Wistia

Wistia hosts all of our core educational and marketing videos, including our online course videos and promotional videos. We've been using it for years and have no intention of switching to a different option. We believe in Wistia and are all in on them.

Try Wistia

This is an affiliate link

Website & Form Builders

Circle

The modern community platform for creators — and the easiest way to set up a premium community experience. That's why we use it for our communities.

Circle is powerful enough to support some of the largest and most successful online communities — while being easy to use for community builders who are just starting.

Try Circle

This is an affiliate link

Flywheel

Offering thoughtfully built tools to manage your clients and websites while growing your business. Flywheel handles all of the technical bits and bobs of running a website built on WordPress — including nightly backups, blazing-fast speed, 24/7 support, and a free SSL certificate.

Try Flywheel

This is an affiliate link

Rockbase

The Rockbase theme truly makes it easy to quickly create a WordPress website, using beautifully designed blocks that are easy to assemble. That's why we used it to build this website. Created by talented creators for talented creators—just like you.

Try Rockbase

This is an affiliate link

Ready to find join your people and level up?

Like you, we're online entrepreneurs who crave connection, direction, and support from people like us.

Join the SPI Community Today

The post Resources & Tools for Entrepreneurs appeared first on Smart Passive Income.

Preview the All-Access Pass

Pat Flynn — Thu, 04 Jan 2024 21:56:38 +0000

Preview the All-Access Pass

Get a feel for what's included in the All-Access Pass with a free preview lesson from each course. Explore the page—we've got over an hour and a half of free video lessons for you!

Jump to a topic

1•2•3 Affiliate Marketing

Featured Free Lesson: Three Mandatory Rules for Long-Term Success

Course Outline

What you need to know before you begin

3 lessons

Step 1: Choose the Right Product

9 lessons

Step 2: Passive Promotional Strategies

8 lessons

Step 3: Active Promotional Strategies

11 lessons

The Affiliate Marketing Recipe Book

4 recipes

What our students are saying

“I was leaving money on the table. Pat's [1•2•3 Affiliate Marketing] course is amazing. He walks you through nitty-gritty details..he gives you some strategy and tips you can start using right away. You will be impressed with the content and the calibre of the course.”

Dr. Maelisa Hall

qaprep.com

“Pat provided both the foundation to understand what works with affiliate marketing, but he went further with recipes to create your marketing efforts with different types of products. Each one of these recipe books provided multiple ways to approach my marketing efforts. That was a lesson in itself—don't just do one thing when trying to market a product you recommend to your audience.”

William Beem

Smart From Scratch

Featured Free Lesson: Figuring Out Your Top Idea

Course Outline

Stage 1: Idea and Market Visibility

9 lessons

Stage 2: Adjust and Refine

6 lessons

Stage 3: Testing

6 lessons

What our students are saying

“I have been in the program for six months now and I have a business that's already starting to make money because of it. I was a big ideas guy and so I came into the course with too many thoughts…Through the course I was able to really refine and discard some of the ideas that I thought would be big ideas and a lot of fun, and actually they weren't money-makers nor were they things I would enjoy long term. I picked a topic that I was able to dive into and start making money.”

Chris Gilmour

Cash Flow Fundamentals Mini-Course

Featured Free Lesson: The Emotions of Cash

Pricing For Profit Mini-Course

Featured Free Lesson: The Emotions of Pricing

Vital skills, trailblazing resources, and a motivating community.

Your business growth starts now.

Learn More about the All-Access Pass

Heroic Online Courses

Featured Free Lesson: Your Heroic Niche

Course Outline

#1: Nail Your Niche

6 lessons

#2: Create an Extraordinary Course Outline

5 lessons

#3: Making Your Sales Page

8 lessons

#4: Build a Production and Launch Plan

6 lessons

#5: The Right Mindset Before You Step into the Arena

5 lessons

#6: How to Film and Create Your Course

9 lessons

What our students are saying

“Because of Heroic Online Courses, I was able to not only create an outline and start writing out my course content and recording my videos, but they gave me encouragement. They gave me ideas for copy for website. They gave me tips on video and audio equipment, what to use for recording. They walked me through the Teachable process and how to set up the course within Teachable, how to service my customers and how to get people to buy my class. I was able to launch right at the last week of the course and I launched very successfully. I got eight people to buy into my beta course and proved my content, my concept, and so I couldn't have done this without Heroic Online Courses.”

Carolina Albano

Email Marketing Magic

Featured Free Lesson: Basic Email Terms and Definitions

Course Outline

#1-1: Setup and Foundation

7 lessons

#1-2: Optimizing Entry Points

7 lessons

#1-3: Grow Your List

10 lessons

#1-4: What to Send

6 lessons

#1-5: Optimizing Your Emails

6 lessons

#2-1: Tagging and Segmentation

5 lessons

#2-2: Integrations

3 lessons

ABC Bank: Autoresponders, Broadcasts, and Campaigns

8 lessons with templates

What our students are saying

“Thank you for this course, Pat! I have prior experience with e-mail marketing, and for me, there are lots of moving parts. Your course and teaching style gives me a certain structure to re-launch and structure my marketing effots and warm-up my list again. Very good teaching style, calm and clear. Thank you!”

Mattia

“Due to the COVID-19, I'm encouraged my email list may be the best things I have going for me. I have put into action sequencing emails in new ways and I will attempt to figure out how to purge my list with MailChimp. Loving this course…huge benefits all the way through and I especially appreciate seeing your examples.”

ASL Teaching Resources

Ready to find join your people and level up?

Like you, we're online entrepreneurs who crave connection, direction, and support from people like us.

Join an SPI Community Today

Power-Up Podcasting

Featured Free Lesson: Common Roadblocks (and How to Stop Them)

Course Outline

Pre-Launch #1: You and Your Future Podcast

9 lessons

Pre-Launch #2: Planning Your Podcast Episodes

7 lessons

Pre-Launch #3: Recording and Editing Your Show

10 lessons

Pre-Launch #4: Preparing Your Audio for the World

11 lessons

Pre-Launch #5: The Launch Plan

4 lessons

Launch Week

6 lessons

After Launch

7 lessons

Podcast Monetization

5 lessons

Video Podcasting

4 lessons

What our students are saying

“I wanted to have a bigger impact. I always loved working with my mentees and I wanted to do that on a bigger scale…I knew a podcast was the way to do that but I had no clue how to get started…literally within a month, The Epic Success Podcast with Dr. Shannon Irvine is live!…It's by far the best course I've ever taken.”

Dr. Shannon Irvine

drshannonirvine.com

Even in my 60s, I went for it, because Pat showed me it's doable, and I don't believe that there's anything you can pay for that will give you the feeling I'm experiencing myself, doing my show. Nothing. There's no amount of money, because this feeling comes from what I'm already getting back, and I've only just gotten started.

Dr. Barbara A Cohen, Ph.D.

drbarbaracohen.com

Amp'd Up Podcasting

Featured Free Lesson: The #1 Way to Promote Your Own Product

Course Outline

A: Let's Automate

3 lessons

M: Marketing Levers

5 lessons

P: Profit

6 lessons

YouTube From Scratch

Featured Free Lesson: Choosing Your Niche

Course Outline

#1: Plan Your YouTube Channel

9 lessons

#2: Create and Setup Your Channel

5 lessons

#3: Publish Your First Video

5 lessons

#4: Creator Studio Analytics

5 lessons

#5: Monetization

3 lessons

A to Z Webinars

Featured Free Lesson: 9 Ways to Use Webinars in Your Business and Brand

Course Outline

#1: The Mindset to Win with Webinars

4 lessons

#2: Equipment and Software

5 lessons

#3: Pre-Webinar Setup

4 lessons

#4: How to Promote Your Webinar

5 lessons

#5: Preparing Your Presentation

4 lessons

#6: Going Live—Everything You Need to Know

4 lessons

#7: How to Sell Your Webinar (Without Being Sleazy)

5 lessons

#8 How to Follow Up After a Webinar Is Over

4 lessons

#9: How to “Evergreen” Your Webinar

3 lessons

#10: Moving Forward

1 lessons

Bonus: How to Use Facebook Ads to Promote Your Webinar

4 lessons

Vital skills, trailblazing resources, and a motivating community.

Your business growth starts now.

Learn More about the All-Access Pass

The post Preview the All-Access Pass appeared first on Smart Passive Income.

Affiliate Marketing – A Simple Step by Step Guide

Pat Flynn — Wed, 08 Nov 2023 21:51:23 +0000

Affiliate Marketing — A Simple Step by Step Guide

Everything you need to know about affiliate marketing, including how to get started, different methods, and things to watch out for are all below. Let's get started!

Affiliate marketing is the easiest way to generate an income online. You don't need to create your own products (which takes a ton of time), and you don't even need to really sell anything.

All you need to know how to do is to recommend something, and if you've ever recommended anything to anyone before, then you already know how to do this.

I’ve been affiliate marketing since 2009 on my very first website, GreenExamAcademy.com. On this architecture-education website I promoted an exam software that has generated more than $200,000 in commissions over the years.

And that's just one product out of dozens of products I've recommended across multiple businesses. All together, I've generated over 3 million dollars since 2009. That's not total sales, that's total commission that I got to keep.

I know, this sounds kind of wild, and almost too good to be true. You're not going to make millions of dollars overnight – this stuff takes time to learn what works, and what doesn't. But, I'm here to help you speed up the process and finally get the momentum going your way.

In this guide, I'll teach you how to get started and find the right products for your audience, even if you're just starting out.

Instead of worrying about upsetting and annoying your audience with your promotions, I'll show you how to gracefully promote products in a way that people will thank you for the time and effort you put in to help them make a buying decision.

I'll also teach you about the amazing opportunities you can have related to the companies you help promote, and the special kinds of deals and offers you can get for yourself, and your audience, through those relationships.

It’s the guide I wish I’d had when I started my affiliate marketing journey way back in 2009.

Excited? Here’s what’s in store:

What is affiliate marketing?
How does affiliate marketing work?
Benefits of affiliate marketing (and drawbacks)
How much do affiliate marketers make?
What affiliate marketing strategies do marketers use to promote their partners?
How to start affiliate marketing for beginners
Affiliate marketing examples
Affiliate marketing case study: SPI + Kit
8 best affiliate programs and networks
Affiliate marketing tips for beginners (and experts)
Affiliate marketing mistakes to avoid
My best resource for beginner affiliate marketers: The Affiliate Marketing Cheat Sheet

Get Unstuck in just 5 minutes, for free

Our weekly Unstuck newsletter helps online entrepreneurs break through mental blocks, blind spots, and skill gaps. It’s the best 5-minute read you’ll find in your inbox.

Free newsletter. Unsubscribe anytime.

Join 100k+

Subscribers

What is affiliate marketing in simple terms?

Affiliate marketing is the process of earning a commission by promoting another person’s (or company’s) product. You find a product you like, promote it to your audience, and earn a piece of the profit for each sale that you make.

It’s similar to a salesperson earning a commission, except you don’t work for the company. Instead, it’s like earning a reward for sending a new customer to the company.

In other words, when you help another company generate sales, you get a cut!

The best part is that you don’t have to spend the time and money to create your own products, because someone else has already done the hard work.

You can begin making money as an affiliate as soon as you have a place to recommend products, whether that's a website you have, a podcast you've started, or even on social media.

So, all you have to do is send traffic through a link to that product, and everything after that is out of your hands . . . right?

Wrong.

There's so much more involved to make this work well, which is why most people who attempt affiliate marketing fail, or just see a few dollars coming in from their efforts.

I want you to see amazing, life-changing results from affiliate marketing, which is why I'm thankful you're here.

There are two ways to be involved in affiliate marketing—either as a product owner/affiliate marketing program creator or an affiliate marketer.

In this post, we’re going to focus on how to do online affiliate marketing from the affiliate marketer side.

Affiliate marketing is quite simply one of the most powerful ways to generate an income online. Regardless of your niche, the upside with affiliate marketing is nearly limitless if you go about it the right way!

Part of the beauty of affiliate marketing, especially for beginners, is you don’t have to invest time in creating the products that will be serving your audience—because, guess what?

Those products likely already exist.

Because of that, affiliate marketing is an opportunity anyone can take advantage of, and it’s easy to get started.

Affiliate marketing examples are all around us—and you’ve probably been involved in affiliate marketing without realizing it!

If you’ve ever clicked on a link in a blog post to a product or service being offered on another website, there’s a good chance the owner of the website where you originally clicked the link received a commission from your purchase.

Yes, affiliate marketing is everywhere—but here’s the thing: few people understand how to take full advantage of it.

In fact, I believe affiliate marketing is the world’s most untapped source for generating passive income!

It’s a beautiful process that’s completely underutilized, and I’m excited to share with you exactly how it all works.

Who is a good fit for affiliate marketing?

Affiliate marketing can be a great choice for online entrepreneurs, bloggers, and really anyone who has a website and is willing to build an audience they can serve authentically.

If this describes you, products exist right now that people in your target market are probably already buying, and if you can become the resource that recommends those products, you can generate a commission as a result.

Affiliate marketing can be an especially good option if you’re not ready to create your own product or service, but you want to serve your audience by recommending products that may be helpful to them.

Online affiliate marketing can also be a good fit for a wide range of people because you can apply a bunch of different marketing methods to promote affiliate products and services.

These include the same marketing methods you may already be using—things like search engine optimization (SEO), paid search engine marketing (SEM), email marketing, content marketing, and display ads.

You can even take advantage of other nifty ways to market products, like product reviews and unboxings.

Take for instance this YouTube video I did, where I review and demonstrate three USB podcasting microphones and include Amazon affiliate program links to purchase each one in the description.

Finally, it’s important to remember that affiliate marketing works best when you’re sincere and confident about the product you’re promoting.

You’d only sell your own product if you knew it could help people, and it’s the same with affiliate marketing. If you go in with a get-rich-quick mentality, you’re not going to be impressed with your results.

How does affiliate marketing work?

Let’s get into the details of how affiliate marketing works. There are three main players in an affiliate marketing arrangement:

You and your website—the “affiliate.”
The affiliate company (or network). In the simplest affiliate arrangements, you work directly with a single company to promote one or more of their products. There are more complex affiliate networks that provide an opportunity to earn affiliate revenue on a range of products, such as Amazon, Impact, and ShareASale.
The customer. This is a member of your audience who uses your affiliate link to purchase a product from the affiliate company or network.

A company that offers an affiliate marketing program may call it by a different name—these programs are also commonly called partner programs or referral programs.

Here’s how each party benefits from affiliate marketing:

From your recommendation, your audience learns about a product, course, or tool that may be useful to them;
From your recommendation, the company selling the product, course, or tool gets new customers they may not have found otherwise;
As a result of the sales to your audience, the company gives you a commission.

When done the right way, affiliate marketing can be a win–win–win.

But at the center of this is one thing: your audience’s trust.

When your audience believes you have their best interests at heart and trusts your recommendations, then all three parties in the affiliate marketing relationship ultimately benefit.

A lot of people worry about getting involved with affiliate marketing because it might make them look slimy or too salesy.

That’s why I’ve made it part of my mission to teach people how to do affiliate marketing in a way that makes it a win for everyone.

The biggest element to success with affiliate marketing?

Trust.

Earn trust from your audience first, and only recommend affiliate products that you’ve used yourself and know your audience will benefit from.

And you know what?

A lot of people do it the wrong way by taking an income-first rather than a serve-first approach.

These folks push random products and over-promote them without providing true value to their audience.

This has given affiliate marketing a really bad rap in some quarters, causing many ethically minded entrepreneurs to be wary of affiliate marketing.

But thankfully, you CAN do it right, maintaining your audience’s trust and having them thank you for your recommendations.

Benefits of affiliate marketing (and drawbacks)

As with anything, affiliate marketing has its upsides and its downsides.

Later in this guide, I’ll give you the guidance you need to go about affiliate marketing smartly so you can make the most of the opportunities out there and avoid the potential downsides.

Here are the main pros and cons of affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing pros

Low barrier to entry. Affiliate marketing is easy to get started with, and costs little. Most affiliate programs are free to join, and you don’t have to create, stock, or ship products, which also means less hassle/responsibility.
Low risk. You’re not the product owner, so you don’t lose anything if a customer doesn’t buy.
Passive income potential. Affiliate marketing provides the potential for passive income.
More freedom. When you start earning passive income, you can work anytime and from anywhere, as long as you have internet access.

Affiliate marketing cons

Not a quick fix. It can take time to generate the amount of traffic needed to result in substantial income.
Less control. You don’t own or control the product/service you’re recommending, so you can’t control the quality or customer experience.
Competition and audience fatigue. An attractive affiliate program means you might be competing with others for customers.
Offer fatigue. Audiences can also get “offer fatigue” if they see too much ongoing promotion from you.
Not all affiliate programs are created equal. While most companies that offer affiliate commissions are stable and ethical, there are shady companies out there too, some of which may not pay what they say they will. It’s important to do your homework.
Risk of link hijacking. Unscrupulous individuals may hijack your affiliate links, known as “clickjacking,” potentially stealing your commission in the process.

How much do affiliate marketers make?

The beauty of affiliate marketing is that you don't have to invest the time and effort to create a product to sell.

You can begin selling something as an affiliate as soon as you have a platform to sell it on. In this way, affiliate marketing can be a great way to earn some extra income without a lot of hassle or upfront cost.

That said, it’s not a way to get rich quick.

Like all passive income ideas, it takes time and effort to create a decent revenue stream.

Although affiliate marketing has been my number one source of income for a while, it took me a while to get to where I am, including building close relationships with the companies I’m an affiliate for.

In my very first month doing affiliate marketing (December 2008), I earned a whopping $163.16:

Here’s how I did in December 2009, the month that marked my first full year as an affiliate marketer:

And here’s what my affiliate income looked like in December 2017, the last month I published an income report:

As you can see, I’ve done really well with affiliate marketing in the past 10 years—but it’s taken a lot of time and hard work to get to that point.

So, how much can you make once you’re up and running with affiliate marketing?

That depends primarily on how committed you are to making it work and how much time, energy, and focus you’re willing to put into it. It also hinges on a few other factors:

The commission percentage you receive for each sale of an affiliate product or service.
The size of your audience.
How successful you are at promoting those products or services to your audience.
Typical commission percentages vary depending on the affiliate company you partner with, and the types of products or services you’re promoting.

Digital products and services typically offer higher margins due to their lower costs of production and fulfillment—there are no raw materials, manufacturing, shelf space, shipping costs, etc.

These margins can be as high as 50 percent.

On the other hand, because of all the aforementioned costs, physical products tend to offer lower percentage margins, sometimes in the single digits.

Thankfully, there is no real limit on how much you can make as an affiliate marketer.

Affiliate marketing can be a great way to augment your existing income, or even become your main source of income if you’re willing to make the commitment.

But in either case, if you’re looking for long-term success with affiliate marketing, you have to be willing to do it the right way.

What affiliate marketing strategies do marketers use to promote their partners?

There are a ton of tactics you can use to promote your affiliate partner’s products online.

Here’s a starter list of 10 to get your affiliate marketer brain something to chew on and remix:

1. Create an epic post

One thing I like to do when promoting a product is create an Epic Post about it.

What’s an epic post?

Think of it as a potential one-stop-shop resource for this particular product—not just a review of it, but a full-fledged introduction, how-to, FAQ, best practices, and troubleshooting resource for anyone who purchases the product.

If you can show this much information to people before they make a purchase, they’ll be more likely to actually make a purchase.

At the same time, the epic post becomes an extremely shareable article, one with the potential to rank high for the particular product keyword in Google.

In this epic post, I’d go all out and . . .

2. Create multiple YouTube videos about the product

These videos should be embedded in the epic post.

This is an important affiliate marketing strategy because YouTube is the #2 search engine in the world. You can get a lot of traffic coming in through your affiliate link on YouTube, and the videos themselves can rank in Google too.

Plus, by shooting multiple videos about a particular product, you create even more SEO opportunities.

Make sure to include your affiliate link in the video description, ideally in the first part of the description, so people don’t have to click on “show more” or “read more” to see it.

What should you cover in these videos?

I recommend recording yourself from start to finish with it, then break it up into chunks. People like to watch shorter videos, so this works in your favor, and you get multiple opportunities to rank for various keywords related to that product.

If it’s a digital product, start at the moment of purchase and walk people through the entire process. And if you’re doing a physical product, consider an unboxing video.

3. Host a webinar

One way to take your affiliate product promotion to the next level is to host a webinar for it.

Webinars are an extremely powerful way to share a message with your audience. They’re personable, they’re live, and you can treat them like an actual event. That way, your promotion becomes a much bigger deal than just a regular affiliate link you dropped into a post.

Combine this with tip #15 in my list below, and have the owner of the product share high-value information, and even answer people’s questions directly on the webinar, and you’ve got yourself a winner.

4. Publish a webinar replay

Be sure to record your live webinar so that you can embed it on your website as a replay for those who didn’t watch it live, as well as those who did watch it live but want to review the information.

To be honest, more people will probably watch it as a replay than live, and that’s a good thing—you just have to give them the opportunity to do so.

I recommend recording using screen capture software like Camtasia Studio or Screenflow.

Here’s an example of a blog post on my site containing a webinar replay—one I recorded with Clay Collins of Leadpages, a company for which I’m an affiliate:

A webinar replay page for an event with Clay Collins.

Finally, make sure that in the webinar and on the post where you embed the replay, you give people multiple opportunities to click on your affiliate link.

5. Give away a bonus

This is probably one of the more underutilized tips I have to share today—but probably one of the most powerful too.

In addition to promoting the affiliate product, give away a bonus to all of those who purchase the product through your link as a thank you.

Chances are, you’re not the only one promoting that product, so to get people to buy from you instead of the other guy, throw in a bonus that can only come with a purchase through your link.

Just have your audience members send you their receipt via email and then you can reply with the bonus, or information about how to access it.

So what could that bonus be?

Maybe it’s a special webinar that shows people how to use the product with a Q&A session at the end of it. Imagine being able to purchase a product, getting familiar with it, and then a couple of days later having access to a webinar that shows you exactly how to use the product, with an opportunity to ask questions about it. How awesome would that be?

Maybe the bonus is another product or piece of software that you have that complements the affiliate product.

Maybe it’s a discount you work out with the owner of the product, one that provides incentive to purchase from you.

Maybe it’s a coupon code or discount to another product you own or have ties to.

Maybe it’s a PDF quick-start guide with instructions and best practices for that product, or access to a website with videos with the same guidance.

You’re adding value to the purchase, making your buyers feel comfortable, and helping get those on the fence from “I’m not sure if this is right for me” to “This is exactly what I need, and more.”

6. Promote your products indirectly on social media

Although your website is the centerpiece of your affiliate marketing strategy, social media—Facebook, X, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc.—can play an important role in your affiliate marketing strategy too.

The thing about social media—at least in my experience and in the experience of many other people I know—is that if you directly promote on your social media platforms, you’re not going to get a good response.

People on social media are typically there to be social, not to be sold to.

But all is not lost in the affiliate marketing world, because you can do an indirect social media push, which means instead of directly linking to your affiliate links on Facebook or X or any other platform, you’re instead linking to something of value that includes the affiliate link, such as a video, an epic post on your blog, or a link to sign up for a webinar.

You’re not linking directly through your affiliate link, but a resource that will engage people beforehand, earn their trust, and show them what the product is about before clicking on your affiliate link.

Yes, one of the cardinal rules of online marketing has long been that the fewer gateways or clicks people have to go through before they get to the “buy” button, the better.

But I think that’s been changing, and now it’s closer to the less information you give away, the less you’re likely to make a sale.

The more trust you can earn beforehand, the greater the likelihood people will buy from you.

You don’t want someone to have to click 100 times before they get to where you want them to go, but a few clicks is okay, as long as you give them enough information beforehand to help them make their decision.

7. Run a giveaway to take advantage of “social proof”

Social proof is the idea that people will naturally gravitate toward what the masses are doing. As an example, say you’re at the mall, and you see a huge crowd gathering around one store.

You can’t help but want to know what’s going on—everyone else is there for some reason, and you want to know what that reason is.

Online, this translates to having other people do the marketing for you, except in this case it’s through metrics like numbers of subscribers, likes, comments, and things like that.

Here’s how this strategy can play out in the real world.

When you plan to promote a product as an affiliate, try to work with the owner to get a few copies to give away to your audience for free.

Maybe you can get a discounted price for a limited time only for your audience as well. This may not always be possible, but it never hurts to ask.

In a blog post, review this product—maybe it’s your epic post, or maybe you just mention it at the end of one of your regular posts.

Share that you have two or three copies of the product to give away for free, and that in order to be entered to win one of the copies, your audience members have to leave one comment about how they would use the product and why it would help them.

Have them go through an affiliate link of yours to see what the product is all about first, and then come back to your blog to leave their entry as a comment.

What happens here is that you get tons of people leaving comments that become social proof for the greatness of the product.

There’s nothing more powerful than someone else’s recommendation, and in this case, it’s other people’s recommendation for a product you’re promoting as an affiliate.

Plus, you can follow up with the people who leave a comment on the post but don’t win, to share a limited-time deal or an email saying thanks for the entry and giving them your affiliate link one more time.

I’ve used this strategy to great success promoting several products in the past, so I suggest you give it a shot.

8. Promote products indirectly via your email list

Your email list is an integral part of any affiliate marketing campaign—and if you don’t have one, you need to get started building one yesterday! Email is extremely powerful for marketing, which is why so many people say, “The money’s in the list.”

As with social media, I recommend indirectly promoting to your email list. I don’t directly promote anything on my email list. If there are any links in my emails they point back to other content, usually on my blog, such as epic posts, videos, webinars, and the like.

Email should be all about giving people as much high-value content as possible, not direct selling. In fact, certain affiliate programs such as Amazon’s don’t even allow you to include affiliate links in emails. For more on Amazon, check out my Amazon affiliate marketing guide here.

You need to take great care of your email list and not be too aggressive with it. Indirect promotion is a much better way to go about things, especially if you’re focused on building trust with your audience (and you should be!).

9. Promote products indirectly on other people’s sites

This is another instance in which indirect linking is your friend.

If you’re interviewed for another person’s blog, or asked to write a guest post, you can link back to a piece of content on your site that contains your affiliate link.

As with social media and email, you don’t want to hit people over the head with your links—and most of the time, if you try to link directly to an affiliate product through someone else’s site, they won’t allow it anyway.

10. Review and compare different products of the same type

Another strategy is to compare different products of the same type. Compare and contrast, and if you give them your recommendation, make sure that link is an affiliate link.

The reason this works is because people like to shop around, but they also like convenience. So instead of making them carry out their search all over the web, keep them on your site by reviewing each of the different products in one spot.

If you’ve done a good job building up audience trust, then a well-written comparison review of different products of the same type can be a great way to drive affiliate purchases.

This could potentially become an epic post as well, complete with videos and special deals just for your audience.

How to start: Affiliate marketing for beginners

Many how to start affiliate marketing posts suggest a series of steps similar to this:

Find a company and product you want to promote.
Sign up as an affiliate.
Get your unique affiliate link and add it to your site.
A visitor to your website clicks the link, which takes them to a third-party page.
If the visitor makes a purchase, you receive a commission based on the value of the item purchased.

Now, these steps are definitely accurate—you can’t earn money with affiliate marketing without first finding a product to promote!

But more importantly, you shouldn’t be affiliate marketing without first establishing trust with your audience. Audience first, always.

That’s why my methodology for successful online affiliate marketing goes like this:

First, build a relationship with your audience.
Then, identify a product that might fit your audience’s needs.
Next, use and test the product yourself, to ensure it’s truly something worth recommending to your audience, so you don’t risk taking advantage of their trust.
Show your audience tangible proof that the product does what it promises via a blog post or case study on your website or YouTube channel.
Then—and only then!—you can start to promote the product to your audience and hopefully start earning some affiliate revenue when they purchase it.

This approach puts your audience’s needs front and center, setting you up for success with affiliate marketing.

This YouTube video featured a panel discussion between me and several online course creators, hosted by Teachable, an online course creation platform for which I’m an affiliate.

Although I shared my Teachable affiliate link in the show notes, the primary purpose of the video was to deliver value to my audience, not promote the link.

Put your audience first (build trust)

Affiliate marketing helps me generate over $60,000 in affiliate commissions each month. My affiliate income has grown because I follow two major rules:

I only recommend products that I’m very familiar with. Preferably, these are products I’ve used before and that have helped me achieve something. If I’m not confident in the product and I don’t feel it will help people, I will not promote it.
I never directly tell anyone to buy a product. I always recommend products based on my experience and in the context of what I’ve done or what I’m doing with it.

What does following these two rules achieve?

Trust.

By doing these two things, my audience knows that I only want them to buy the tools that they need, at the time they need them. They know that I’ve used and believe in the products I recommend.

And they know there’s no pressure, because I’m only looking out for their best interests.

Many affiliate marketers choose not to follow these rules—and I think that’s why affiliate marketing has a bad reputation. We can do better, and so I hope you’ll join me in following these rules.

Every affiliate marketer needs to understand the importance of establishing and maintaining trust with their audience before they get started with affiliate marketing.

Thankfully, my system for getting started has trust baked into the entire process. Let’s dive into it now!

The Soft Pitch Pipeline

My approach to affiliate marketing is built around something I call the soft pitch pipeline.

This approach is designed to do two main things: build trust, and reduce the amount of “hard selling” needed to promote your affiliate products (hence the “soft pitch” part).

Imagine a series of pipes. These pipes represent the experience or “flow” people go through when they visit your site or are introduced to you and your brand.

On one end is traffic entering the pipeline, and on the other “exit” end of the pipeline is the sale or conversion.

Between these two points, there are five segments that combine to make up the total experience of your brand:

The Relationships you cultivate with your audience
The Products you decide to promote
The Experience you have with those products
The Proof you share that those products work
The Pitch or “sell” of those products to your audience

These segments can vary in strength and size.

For example, if you have an amazing relationship with someone, it doesn’t take much to convince that person to do something for you.

In this case, the relationship segment is extremely long, so the pitch segment doesn’t have to be long at all.

For example, say your wife is pregnant. It’s two in the morning and she wants you to go to the store and buy a Little Debbie’s Fudge Brownie. Well, you’re probably off to the store to buy a Little Debbie’s Fudge Brownie—there’s not much pitch or convincing needed at all.

Now take the other extreme: a company you’ve never heard of before.

Since you hardly have any relationship with this company, they’re going to have to work a lot harder to pitch you—to convince you to try them out.

And many companies pitch really aggressively, which can backfire and make people uncomfortable or even annoyed.

That’s exactly what we try to avoid with the soft pitch pipeline.

By focusing on the first four segments of the pipeline—the relationships you cultivate with your audience, the products you promote, the experience you have with those products, and the proof you can share with your audience that the products work—you can make the pitch phase shorter and less aggressive.

If you set up the first four segments of the pipeline the right way, hardly any pitch will be needed to get your audience to click through your affiliate links and make a purchase.

Let’s go over each of those segments now!

Segment 1: Relationships

Relationships are everything.

Having a relationship with your audience is the foundation of trust. It also allows you to get to know your audience in depth, so you can understand their needs and pain points.

That way, you can identify potential products that can help meet those needs and pain points.

Not too long ago, a lot of people were trying to do affiliate marketing by finding a product that offered an attractive commission, then building a site around it and selling it by driving traffic using Facebook ads and Google Adwords.

That tactic used to work, but Google and Facebook have caught on and started clamping down on those ads, making it much harder to pull off.

But more importantly, on a strategic level, it’s just not the right way to do things if you’re interested in building a lasting business. Instead, you need to take a longer-term approach, one centered around relationship building.

What does that look like?

First, you need to identify a target audience that has a specific pain, issue, problem, or goal.

By homing in on that target market and understanding exactly what they’re going through, you can discover ways to help them achieve their goals and overcome their problems.

The key is to not go into it with the aim of finding an affiliate product, but to get to know your audience and find solutions they can use.

Start with the pain, not the product.

How do you learn what your audience needs?

You need to become friends with the people who visit your site and interact with you on social media. Without that relationship, it’s much less likely that meaningful transactions will ever occur.

By meaningful transactions, I’m not just talking sales transactions—I’m talking about email list subscriptions, comments, clicks, likes, follows, shares, and retweets.

The hard part is, a relationship takes time to build.

Thankfully, there are ways to speed up the process of building a relationship with your audience without compromising the quality of that relationship.

So how can you connect with your audience more quickly? Here are three ways:

1. Be Personable

What would make YOU buy something from someone you didn’t know, especially if they were selling a product they didn’t even make themselves?

In a lot of my content, be it blog posts, podcast episodes, and even in-person presentations at large conferences, I try to share aspects of my personality and my personal life.

As a result, most of my audience knows a lot about me—that I’m a family man, that I love Back to the Future, that I’m still working toward my goal to touch a regulation-height basketball rim…

The point is, they know me as a real person, someone just like them.

They can relate to me. And as a result, they’re much more connected to me than if I were to spend all my time telling them about the strategies and tactics that will help them build a successful online business.

What do my kids or my favorite movies have to do with affiliate marketing? Nothing, at least directly.

But what do those things have to do with my brand? Everything, because building a brand is the equivalent of building relationships.

People connect with people, and the more you can become a person in the eyes of your audience, the easier it is for them to connect with you—it’s as simple as that.

2. Tell Stories

People are programmed to love stories.

Think about the last time you were engrossed by someone’s tale around the dinner table, or just watched a movie or read a book.

When you tell a story, it’s easy for your audience to put themselves into that story; stories put things in context and make them relatable. Stories are an easy and personable way to relate to your audience.

Now, you don’t have to dedicate entire posts to stories about random things to create a meaningful connection.

Instead, be creative and share little anecdotes and examples here and there to illustrate concepts, honest stories that relate to the message you’re trying to get across.

Doing this helps you convey information and build those important relationships with your audience at the same time.

3. Practice ROAK

RAOK is short for “random acts of kindness,” and it’s one of my all-time favorite things to do.

Why?

Because when you do something unexpected and generous for someone, it leaves an amazing impression.

It can be as simple as replying to comments on your blog and social media. I do this, and it helps people see I’m a real person.

If someone has a question, I answer it. It saves them time, and helps them remember who I am.

Sometimes I even take it a step further and leave comments on the blogs of people who’ve left comments on my posts.

It’s small things like these that can help you quickly form a deeper relationship with your audience.

And you can do the same thing!

So ask yourself, what kinds of RAOK can I do for my audience? What unexpected favors can I perform that will help me build a positive, lasting relationship with them?

Segment 2: Products

Once you’ve started to build your audience and develop a relationship with them, you’ll start to learn what that audience needs.

The next step is to identify products you can recommend to meet your audience’s needs and help them in their journey.

First, keep in mind that sometimes the products will be ones that allow you to generate an affiliate income—and sometimes they won’t.

You never want to start with a product or commission in mind. You want to start with the problem, then find solutions for it.

And if the best solution for a particular problem is not an affiliate product, well, that’s what you should promote to your audience. Remember, trust and relationships come first, always.

With that in mind, once you’ve gotten to know your audience and its needs and pain points, how do you select a specific product?

To help you get in the right frame of mind here, think about a brand new visitor who comes to your site for the first time—what is it you want that person to ultimately achieve?

This might be a tough question to answer, but you need to know what you want your visitors to do, because if you don’t, then everything you recommend is going to seem random.

You need your recommendations to be precise and targeted, so your audience can get what they need from you to reach their goals.

Once you’ve identified what you want to help your new visitor to achieve, think about how they’re going to get there.

What’s their roadmap or path to success? Defining the steps on this path will help you determine exactly what kinds of products will help your audience at different points along the path.

Next, you need to think about the products that will help your audience along this path.

One of the best places to start identifying these products is through ones you’ve used yourself. Whatever niche you’re in, spend a little time making a list of the tools and services you use.

Those things that you used to help you achieve your goals can help your audience achieve their goals too. Just about any product or service can work, including:

Courses
Books
Physical products
Software
Coaching services

Often, you’ll need to look beyond the products and services you already know and use to find things that will be a good fit for your audience—which means doing some research!

Thankfully, there are plenty of great places and resources to find new affiliate products, including:

Google
Word of mouth—your professional network, including masterminds, Facebook groups, etc.
Amazon, to find books and products

Remember: don’t start with the products; start with your audience’s goals and pain points. Then find the products to help them get where they want to be.

It’s also important to realize that by not promoting products and services that will help your audience along their “success path,” you’ll actually be holding them back.

Remember, your knowledge and your relationship with your audience can help them filter through all the noise and find the right solutions, because you’ve put in the work to understand what’s best for them.

Finally, it should go without saying, but if a product doesn’t make sense to promote—if it’s not a part of the audience’s success path—then you shouldn’t promote it, no matter how generous the affiliate commissions may be.

Segment 3: Experience

Okay. You’ve found a product that will help your audience achieve their goals. Now what? Do you immediately start promoting it to them with your affiliate link?

Not yet. The next important element in decreasing how much you need to pitch is the experience YOU have with those products.

I have two words for you: Experience sells.

On Amazon, we read other people’s reviews—people we’ve never met!—to help us make a purchase decision.

That’s powerful stuff, so imagine how much more powerful your real-life experience with a particular product can be, combined with the relationship you have with someone in your audience already.

So, before you start promoting your product to your audience, you need to get to know it yourself, inside and out.

Affiliate marketing works best when you treat the products you’re promoting as your own. You need to know firsthand the experience your audience will have using this product.

Obviously, if you learn that the product is a dud, it’s not going to make sense to promote it to your audience!

And if it’s great, then you’ll be reassured that your audience is going to find it useful.

As a result, I really encourage you to use and test a product thoroughly before you promote it, for three main reasons:

1. For your protection

You have to understand what it’s like to use any product you promote, because your audience’s trust is the most important thing in the world.

Anything you promote directly reflects on you and your brand, whether it’s your product or somebody else’s. If you’re promoting it, your reputation is on the line.

2. To become a resource

By using and experiencing a product, you’ll be able to answer specific questions about it much better, and become a helpful resource for an interested person in your audience who could become a buyer.

3. (Most importantly) To get rid of the mystery

By showing your audience exactly how a product is used, they’ll be able to imagine themselves using it.

You make that product a known quantity, and make it easier for your audience to imagine buying it and benefiting from it.

So, how exactly do you show your audience how a product is used?

The key is to show the product in action—to show yourself physically using it.

Why is this important?

Science, and little things in our brains called mirror neurons.

Mirror neurons are a special set of brain cells that respond when we see other people do stuff; they let us understand what it feels like to do something by watching other people do it.

As an example, take all the “unboxing videos” on YouTube—the ones where someone buys something like an iPad and records themselves unwrapping the plastic and taking out all the parts and firing it up—those videos are extremely popular!

Check out this example, where I unbox three podcasting mic options for under $75:

People like to see exactly what they’re going to buy, so do yourself and your audience a favor and “unbox” the products you’re promoting as an affiliate.

Write extensive blog posts about products and everything there is to know about them. Record videos and podcast sessions with the products’ owners with questions to popular questions about the product.

You can even host live webinars with real questions from the audience about the product.

So, show them what it looks like, how to use it, and how not to use it. Share the good, the bad, the tips, the tricks, everything. Make it easy for them to picture themselves using it.

In every case, be honest and thorough. Give your audience enough accurate information to make a qualified decision about whether the product will work for them.

Segment 4: Proof

Next in the pipeline is proof.

People want to see how a product can help them be successful at achieving their goals. I’m talking about real, tangible proof—undeniable results you can feel, taste, smell, and touch.

You can’t just say something will help your audience—you have to show them.

Proof is similar to experience, but it’s about focusing on the positive outcomes of using a product. If experience is about seeing the product in action, proof is about seeing it work.

A few years ago, I watched a documentary called Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead. It’s about a man named Joe Cross who was going through a tough time: he was really overweight and had a lot of skin problems, things he attributed to the food he was eating.

The documentary covered his ninety-day juicing journey. That’s right—all he consumed for ninety days straight was juice.

His transformation was remarkable, and you saw it happen over the course of the documentary. By the end of the ninety days, he was completely healthy—off his medication, no more skin rashes, happy and healthy and thin.

Only thirty minutes after watching that documentary, I had a receipt from Amazon in my inbox for my new Breville Juicer.

All thanks to Joe Cross, whose documentary showed his remarkable transformation in a bold, personal way.

This documentary is almost the perfect example of proof—showing your audience the remarkable outcomes that are possible for them.

After watching Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead, I didn’t need to hear a pitch. The proof of Joe Cross’s transformation did it all for me.

If there had been an affiliate link mentioned at the end of that documentary, I would have been more than happy to use it. I was on the fence initially, but showing that proof sealed the deal and moved me firmly into the “buyer” camp.

If you can show the success you’ve had with a product, your audience will be excited about the possibility of achieving the same success.

Joe’s platform for showing his proof was a documentary—maybe yours is your blog, or a podcast you're starting, or video, or all of the above.

Whatever it is, give your audience tangible proof—data and demonstration—that the products you’re promoting can change their lives for the better.

Segment 5: Pitch

The last part of the pipeline, before you get to a conversion or sale, is the actual pitch or sell.

There’s a reason this comes last—because, as I mention throughout this guide, trust is key. You shouldn’t start directly promoting a product until you’ve earned your audience’s trust and know the product is something they will benefit from.

Here’s the great part: If you’ve done things correctly to this point, the pitch phase should be the shortest and least aggressive part of the pipeline.

The more you focus on building a relationship with your audience, recommending products that align with their success path, sharing your experience using that product, and providing tangible proof of that product’s benefits, the less important it becomes to actually pitch the product directly.

So yes, you can reduce the amount of pitching you have to do by focusing on the first four stages of the pipeline.

But at a minimum, you’ll still need to enable the sale. You need to make sure people have a way to click on your affiliate link to buy the product!

This means creating a point of sale where you insert one or more calls to action (CTAs) to click on the affiliate link and purchase the product. You have lots of options in terms of where to put these links and CTAs:

Emails
Blog posts
Landing pages
Podcast show notes
Webinars
Social media messages

So is it as simple as just adding your link to an email or blog post and watching the commissions roll in?

Not so fast!

There are a few crucial tips to keep in mind when it comes to adding your affiliate links at the point of sale.

1. Be honest

When you provide a link, always be clear that it’s an affiliate link that will earn you a commission for each sale.

In fact, if you do everything in the pipeline leading up to this point, this will actually help you, because people will want to pay you back for everything you’re doing for them.

Some people may not know about affiliate links and commissions, and will sometimes open a new window to buy a product.

By being honest and upfront that you’re using affiliate links, you’ll help ensure you’re getting all the affiliate commissions you deserve.

2. Offer support

In addition to telling them it’s an affiliate link, offer to answer questions and provide support if needed.

This is a great way to show your audience, right at the point of sale, that there’s someone there to help them if they need it.

Yes, this also means someone to blame if things don’t go well—but since you’ve already vetted the product and learned how to use it, you shouldn’t have any problem taking on that responsibility.

3. Provide multiple opportunities

Give people more than one chance to click through your affiliate link.

Take blog posts, for instance, since they’re probably the most popular way to share affiliate links. A lot of times, business owners will just link the first mention of an affiliate product in a post.

If their reader misses it—or keeps scrolling, intends to return, then forgets to scroll back up—well, you’ve lost your potential commission.

Instead, add a link near the beginning, middle and end of a post.

Also remember that, beyond just blog posts, there are lots of ways and places to share your affiliate links, including:

YouTube videos
Emails
Podcasts
A “resources” or “tools” page—in fact, my tools page here on smartpassiveincome.com is my most profitable page.

4. Offer a bonus

Offering a bonus with an affiliate product is a great way to make sure your audience goes through your link and not someone else’s.

Lots of people use the bonus technique, but many don’t use it to its greatest potential.

They’ll throw in random things that aren’t something the potential buyer needs. If you really want to knock bonuses out of the park, create a bonus that truly complements the product you’re promoting.

This could be something like:

A quick-start PDF guide on how to use the product
Access to something you have that complements the product—if you’re selling a juicer, you can provide a recipe guide to go along with it
A coupon code or discount on a related product or service

Get creative!

5. Remember why

Finally, remember why you got into affiliate marketing.

It’s not for the commissions. It’s for your audience—to help them achieve something.

It’s your responsibility, as someone with a platform and an audience that trusts you, to give them the products they need to achieve success.

Your commissions are ultimately a byproduct of how helpful you are to your audience. So aim to be incredibly helpful, and you will earn more in the long run.

When you approach affiliate marketing in a way that keeps people around and doesn’t rely on the pitch, but rather everything that happens before that—the relationship, the product, the experience, and the proof—you’ll set yourself up for maximum success.

Remember: Use affiliate marketing as a tool to help your audience, and the commissions will come!

Affiliate marketing examples

What does affiliate marketing look like? If you’ve visited my website, you may have come across my Tools page.

Editor's Note: This screenshot is from a previous version of the website.

This page contains a list of recommended resources—products, services, apps, and more—to help my audience build their own online businesses.

Many of the links on this page are affiliate links, meaning I receive a commission if someone clicks on the link and purchases the product or service it links to.

Here’s what someone sees if they click on my affiliate link for Bluehost, the web hosting company I use and recommend:

And here’s what they’ll see when they click on my affiliate link for Kit, the email service provider I’m happy to recommend:

As we’ll further discuss below, you can also earn affiliate commissions by signing up with an affiliate network. One of the most popular is the Amazon Associates program which you can read more about here.

You can easily find tons of other examples of affiliate marketing “in the wild.”

For example, Create a Pro Website is an affiliate marketing website and YouTube channel that creates tutorials on anything and everything related to “how to create a website.”

They do a good job of offering value through demoing products (which we’ll see in the case study below is a great affiliate marketing strategy), while working in their affiliate links where it makes sense.

Freelancing.school is a particularly good example of focusing on building relationships with an audience first by offering extras like a community of like-minded individuals and a free course to help people find success with their freelancing careers.

These days, even well-established news outlets like the New York Times are becoming affiliate marketing websites!

The example here is NYT’s Wirecutter section, which reviews products and offers tutorials on everything from How to Clean a Toilet the Right Way to Everything You Need to Make Hot Pot at Home.

Affiliate marketing is essentially about sharing your affiliate links, so however you choose to share those links—whether on your website, on social media like X, Facebook, or YouTube, or via emails to your list—well, that’s affiliate marketing in action!

Affiliate marketing case study: SPI + Kit

Next up, I’m going to share a case study to show you what effective affiliate marketing looks like “on the ground.”

This case study is based on a product I’ve recommended for a long time that’s also become one of my biggest drivers of affiliate income.

From 2015 to 2017, it brought in a whopping $315,000 in affiliate revenue.

Kit (formerly known as ConvertKit) is an example of a product I promote as part of a long-term strategy.

It’s a great example of an affiliate resource I promote to my audience that can benefit and serve them over the long term and hopefully I earn a healthy affiliate income at the same time.

Although I love and use Kit myself (and the founder, Nathan Barry, is a good friend of mine), the point of this section is not to promote the product.

Instead, I’m here to show you how I’ve promoted Kit.

And I’ve done so in a very specific way: by D-O-I-N-G. This strategy has helped me be very successful in promoting Kit as an affiliate.

Those letters stand for:

Demo the product
Offer answers to your audience about the product
Interview the founder of the product
Never recommend more than one of the same kind of product
Get the product in front of your people

Before we get into the details of the D-O-I-N-G approach, here’s a little background on how I got started promoting Kit as an affiliate.

ConvertKit (now Kit) wasn’t my first email service provider.

My first one, back in 2010, was AWeber.

AWeber was great as an entry-level email tool, and I also promoted it as an affiliate, making up to $2,000 a month at one point.

And that income still comes in each month, because I get paid a recurring commission for every month a person I refer stays on, even though I’m not actively promoting the product anymore.

Eventually, though, I needed an email service that was easier to use with more advanced features.

For a while, I turned to another tool called InfusionSoft, which was good, but still not exactly what I needed.

Shortly after I started using InfusionSoft, a friend of mine, Nathan Barry, reached out to me to ask how I was doing with the new tool.

Nathan had recently started a new email service provider, ConvertKit.

We met for coffee in downtown San Diego a couple weeks later.

After catching up about personal stuff, the conversation turned to business.

Nathan asked me a lot of questions about my needs, experiences, and desires as a blogger, podcaster, and digital marketer.

He didn’t try too hard to plug his new tool, except toward the end of our conversation when he said, “Hey, if Infusionsoft doesn’t work out for you, let me know, and we can see how you might be able to use ConvertKit.”

I didn’t think much of his offer for a little while.

But over time, I started growing more and more frustrated with Infusionsoft.

So I reached back out to Nathan to see how ConvertKit was doing.

I wasn’t surprised to hear that they were experiencing constant growth month after month.

New features were being added on a regular basis, and after a couple of side conversations with other users, I was happy to hear extremely positive reviews.

That’s when I asked Nathan to demo the current software for me over Skype—and I was blown away.

I loved the intuitive user interface, along with the tool’s segmentation and automation capabilities.

Seeing what the tool could do, it wasn’t long before I decided to switch from InfusionSoft, and Nathan’s team even helped me migrate my email list.

I’ve been using Kit very happily ever since.

That positive experience has shown up in terms of my affiliate revenue from Kit, too.

Although I was happy with my AWeber affiliate income, since shifting to Kit, I’ve broken into a new level of affiliate income and success.

Part of that is because Kit is an amazing tool—but a lot of it has to do with how I leveled up my promotional efforts with the D-O-I-N-G approach.

Let’s learn all about it now!

D: Demo the product

Affiliate marketing is technically easy to do.

All you have to do is get your affiliate link and start sharing it with your audience. It’s easy to stop there and think you’ve done enough.

But if you’ve been with us since the beginning of this post, you know that a crucial practice in affiliate marketing is to take products that are not your own and treat them as if they were your own.

If you were selling your own product, you’d show people what they were going to get before they got it, right?

But most people who do affiliate marketing just share a link and a couple of sentences and call it good.

Instead, as we talked about above, you need to show the product in action. That’s where the demo comes in.

People are more likely to buy when they know what they’re getting and exactly how it will help them.

The best way to do this is with a video demo that shows people two main things: 1) how they can benefit from the tool and 2) how to use it.

In 2015, I created a YouTube demo of ConvertKit.

In the video, I talk about the benefits and features that made me fall in love with ConvertKit: ease of use and setup, beautiful design, powerful statistical analysis, segmentation and tagging, and a lot more.

Along the way, I show screenshots of ConvertKit in action, so viewers can see exactly how to accomplish different things using the tool.

When you search “ConvertKit demo” or “ConvertKit tutorial” on YouTube or Google, my demo is typically one of the top results.

It’s been viewed 30,000+ times, and it’s driven a ton of traffic both back to my website and through the affiliate link mentioned in the video description.

When you’re thinking about creating your own demos, you want to show not just the features and benefits of the tool, but also make it fun and show your personality.

In the ConvertKit demo video, although you don’t get to see much of me (it’s just my voice with a Screenflow video), I’m just being myself.

I could have made a stiff, mechanical demo that was all about just conveying the relevant information—and it would have been shorter too—but who wants to sit through that?

Instead, I’m relaxed and sharing my honest opinions, using words like “cool” and “powerful” (and yes, “nice”!) to convey my excitement about ConvertKit’s capabilities, in the hopes that excitement will be shared by my audience too.

You want to create a thoughtful demo that shows you care about creating informative content while also keeping your audience engaged and excited to try the tool.

And of course, make sure you include calls to action (CTAs) to go through your affiliate link, as well as disclosing your affiliate relationship with the company.

You don’t want to bombard your audience with these CTAs, though, and if you’ve provided enough valuable, engaging content in the demo, you shouldn’t have to include more than one or two CTAs.

In my ConvertKit demo video, I only mention my affiliate link and status twice very briefly, at the very end:

“Go ahead and check it out: smartpassiveincome.com/kit. And I look forward to seeing how you are able to use it. As I said, Kit is constantly releasing new features to make our lives even easier. Hopefully, this is helpful. Cheers. I appreciate you. That affiliate link one more time, which I do get a commission from if you do go through that link, is smartpassiveincome.com/kit. Thank you so much, and I’ll see you in the next video.” [Full Disclosure: I’m a compensated advisor and affiliate for Kit.]

In other types of content, such as blog posts, I might share my affiliate link a little more often, for instance at the beginning, middle, and end of a post.

But in either instance—whether a video demo or a blog post—the content itself does the “heavy lifting” of sparking someone’s interest in trying out the product, so I don’t have to hit my audience over the head with my affiliate link.

O: Offer answers

The next step is to offer answers to people’s questions.

This is huge, because if a person asks you a question about a product, they’re likely already interested in it.

They may just be on the fence, and if you can be the one to answer their questions, that may give them the final piece of the puzzle to go ahead and make a purchase, knowing there’s someone there to provide product support if they need it.

That’s why I always offer support for Kit and the other affiliate products I promote.

When questions come in, I’m quick to answer them because I want to make people feel comfortable with the idea of spending money on this thing I’m promoting.

The combination of the demo and offering answers is powerful.

If you put together a thorough and helpful demo, you’ll likely answer a lot of people’s questions in the demo itself.

But even if your demo covers all the bases you can think of, you should still offer to answer people’s questions.

Why?

Even if they don’t have any, just the fact that you’re offering this assistance will make people feel more comfortable and inclined to buy the product through your link. Remember, you want people to trust you and feel secure in their investment.

Want an example of how you could offer support in this way? Here’s what I say toward the end of the ConvertKit demo video I mentioned in the previous section:

“I’m here to answer your questions too. If you’re watching this on YouTube, ask your question below; I’ll do my best to answer it. If you’re watching this on the SPI blog, go ahead and leave your question in the comments section. Or, if you want to send me an email, that’s totally fine too. Happy to help, because I really believe in this product.”

I also offer to answer people’s questions about my affiliate products via other channels, including email and social media.

People often reach out to me on X, because X makes it easy for me to reply quickly.

It helps that there’s a character limit, too, because it forces both parties to get to the point.

Offering to answer questions also makes people feel secure about the fact that if they were to have questions later on, once they’re up and running with the product, you’ll be able to answer them.

This is especially important if the product you’re promoting is of a highly technical nature.

So, offer support and people will be more at ease about buying through your affiliate link.

I: Interview

When you’re promoting an affiliate product, having other people talk about the product, and the story behind it, can be a powerful way to get people excited about it.

A great way to do this is to start a podcast and interview the founder of the product on one of your episodes.

ConvertKit (Kit) founder Nathan Barry joined me on episode 244 of the Smart Passive Income podcast, titled “Bootstrapping a Business.”

But here’s the thing: we didn’t actually talk about the product itself much at all!

We talked about his story, and how he bootstrapped the company and grew it successfully.

We talked about how I met him and built a relationship with him and his company, eventually becoming an advisor to ConvertKit (Kit).

Because the product itself—as well as my affiliate relationship with Kit—was not the focus of the interview, listeners were able to focus on how much care and quality Nathan put into creating the product and cultivating the company’s culture.

As a result, in a way, they were able to start building a relationship with him too.

I only mentioned my affiliate link at the very end in a casual way, as almost a natural conclusion to the episode.

The ability to augment your affiliate marketing efforts by interviewing the founder of a product you’re promoting is a great reason—among many—to have a podcast.

Even though Nathan and I recorded the episode in 2016, people are still downloading and listening to it today.

I also reference the episode a lot when I mention ConvertKit (Kit), which helps make it an active resource in promoting my affiliate relationship.

So, if you’re planning to promote a new affiliate product, see if you can get the founder of that product on your podcast.

If you can’t get access to the founder for a podcast interview, consider an email interview or maybe a video interview over Skype or Zoom.

And if you can’t get the founder, try for somebody who represents that company at a high level.

If that’s not possible either, aim for somebody who’s used the product and knows it well, hopefully somebody your audience is already aware of and respects.

In the How to Start Affiliate Marketing above, we talked about the importance of promoting a product yourself, showing how much you know and love it and the great results you’ve gotten from using it—i.e., showing proof.

When you’re the only one doing the showing, there’s always the risk, however small, that your efforts may come off as too promotional.

On the other hand, as the Nathan Barry podcast episode showed, interviews are powerful because most of the selling that’s done is indirect—and often, you won’t have to talk about the product much at all.

Next up, you should never recommend more than one solution for a specific type of problem.

This is a really important rule, and one that generates a lot of debate.

And there are exceptions, which we’ll talk about in a second.

But first, what exactly do I mean by never recommending more than one of the same kind of product?

Well, if I were to recommend Kit, but also recommend other email solutions like AWeber or MailChimp, it would dilute the strength of my primary recommendation.

You need to pick one, because otherwise people are going to be confused.

I went the route of recommending multiple similar products once, and it didn’t go well.

People said, “Wait, I thought you were recommending this one. But now you’re talking about this one? What’s the difference? How is it better?”

You don’t want people asking themselves even more questions about which product makes sense for them.

That’s why they came to you in the first place!

So, yes, I’ve made my decision, and the only email service provider I recommend to people is Kit.

Are you recommending more than one product right now that’s essentially the same type of solution?

If so, you’re diluting your affiliate marketing efforts and reducing the amount of income you can make. Yes, sometimes it’s great to give people options, but it can also work against you.

Now, if someone were to say, “Hey, Pat. I know you recommend Kit, but what other solutions are out there?” then of course I’m going to be honest with them and tell them what other options they have.

I’m not going to say, “Sorry, Dave. There are no other great options out there.”

That would be lying. There are other great email service providers out there.

But the one I use, recommend, and trust will be there to help my audience is Kit.

Plus, as with everything, there are exceptions to the rule.

In this case, only having one recommendation doesn’t make sense for some types of sites.

For example, if you run a vacuum review site, you can’t get away with promoting just one product, as that would go against the entire aim of the site.

You can certainly highlight featured products and recommendations in different categories. But when people are searching for helpful comparisons of similar products, the N rule likely won’t apply.

Here’s another example from one of my own affiliate promotional materials that you might remember from above.

In one of my YouTube videos, I review three different podcasting microphones.

Here’s the key: Even though each of these products is very similar (they’re all microphones), I use the review as an opportunity to differentiate them according to their best uses, then make specific recommendations about which microphone should be used for different scenarios.

For instance, in the video, I end up recommending that you not use one of the microphones for podcasting at all—instead, I recommend another use case that makes more sense for this particular microphone. I’m comfortable including my affiliate link to each of the microphones because I’ve made the effort of differentiating them for my audience.

G: Get the product in front of your people

This final one is a big one, and it represents a mindset shift I’ve undergone over the past few years.

Often, people become timid when it comes time to put products in front of their audience.

If that describes you, whether it’s your own product or an affiliate product, then I want you to shift your mindset—to one of excitement about sharing something you know will help your audience.

In fact, it’s your obligation and your role to do that, and you should embrace it. Because if you don’t, you’re not serving your audience in the best way possible.

It’s not about being pushy or aggressive; it’s about being motivated to get the product in front of people.

You’ve done the research, you’ve used the product, you’re offering answers, you’ve created the video demo, you’ve recorded the interviews.

You know the product can help your audience, so get it in front of them!

Talk about it on your podcast, and on other people’s podcasts.

Share it in blog posts.

Create more videos about the benefits and capabilities of the product.

That’s exactly what I’ve done and continue to do with Kit.

I believe in the product, and the company, so it’s my responsibility to get it in front of my audience so they can benefit from it like I have.

I’ve used lots of methods and channels to get Kit in front of my audience, including:

Blog posts
Videos (like the product demo)
Social media messages
My Resources page
Podcast episodes (like the interview with Nathan Barry)

When it comes to getting the product in front of your audience, it pays to be creative!

On that note, I wanted to share one more pretty novel way I’ve gotten Kit in front of my audience.

In a March 2018 video, I congratulated ConvertKit (Kit) for a huge milestone—hitting $1 million in monthly recurring revenue (MRR).

In the video, I also shared 8 important lessons for people looking to start and grow a business, ones that came directly from ConvertKit’s (Kit) example in becoming a $1 million MRR business.

The video was a response to a single tweet by ConvertKit’s (Kit) founder, Nathan Barry, about the company’s $1 million milestone.

But I built on that tweet to tell a much richer story about the company and how they were able to accomplish something so remarkable. You can see the whole thing below.

The key in this video is that I didn’t focus that much on the product itself—and especially not on my affiliate relationship with them—but on ConvertKit (Kit) the company, and how they used 8 powerful and ethically-minded principles to grow their business rapidly.

These are principles anyone who’s trying to grow their own business the right way can learn from and implement.

And you can do the same thing I did with this video.

Ask yourself, what can I learn from the success of a company I have an affiliate relationship with?

How can I use that company’s example, and the principles behind its success, to help my audience and deliver them value?

When you do that, you’re getting the product in front of people—but you’re also giving them so much more.

8 best affiliate programs and networks

Reminder: always start your affiliate marketing journey by building a relationship with your audience and never recommend products you haven’t used or don’t love.

That being said, I want to give you a starting point for finding affiliate marketing programs that might be a great fit for you and your business, and give you some insight into what you should consider when evaluating affiliate marketing websites and opportunities.

Note: I’ve used many but not all of the below networks and programs myself, but am familiar with the others from my research and recommendations from friends and colleagues.

So while I’m comfortable sharing them with you there isn’t any direct financial benefit to me for doing so.

For more useful affiliate marketing tools, check out this guide!

Affiliate Marketing

Monetization

12 Affiliate Marketing Tools to Take Your Business to the Next Level

Want to upgrade the affiliate income potential of your business? This list of 12 affiliate marketing tools features software to help you do just that!

Find Your Next Tool

Top affiliate marketing networks

Affiliate marketing networks are platforms you can join to get access to hundreds, sometimes thousands of affiliate marketing products and programs.

Let’s explore a few of the most popular:

Impact

Formerly Impact Radius, their Marketplace was built to offer content creators a seamless way to monetize their work and offer their audiences a lot of value through a huge list of brands looking to advertise and a suite of tracking and automation tools.

With direct access to global brands like Airbnb, Adidas, and Allstate, flexible payment processing, and robust reporting and alerts, there’s a good chance you’ll find them a great fit for your audience and business.

CJ

Formerly Commission Junction, CJ has spent the last 2 decades building relationships with brands and publishers to create an affiliate marketing platform worth exploring.

Advertisers you’ll find here include Priceline.com, Overstock.com, and J. Crew.

CJ also includes some one-click join affiliate programs to make it easy for beginner affiliate marketers to start their journey, while also offering omnichannel tracking (across browsers, devices, etc) and strategic recommendations based on business size, vertical, and region for when you’re more established.

ShareASale

ShareASale helps beginner and expert affiliate marketers alike create profitable long-term partnerships with brands their audience will love.

With 260+ affiliate programs launched every month (businesses like Etsy and Rebook are already on board), a product discovery bookmarklet for quickly generating affiliate links, and a slew of analytics and reporting tools, if you find a product worth promoting to your audience here you won’t be going astray.

ClickBank

ClickBank has done a good job of owning the information product affiliate program space, offering products like online courses and ebooks that you won’t find as readily on other affiliate marketing platforms.

A word of caution: I’ve seen a lot of shoddy products that were created with an earn-a-dollar first approach on offer so be sure to do your due diligence before recommending what you find here.

If the affiliate product checks out, though, this is an affiliate marketing network you can rely on for ease-of-use and on-time payments.

Best affiliate marketing programs

What is an affiliate marketing program?

Beyond the products you can promote, affiliate programs include the commission rates, payment terms, marketing materials, and promotion rules a business with an affiliate product offers affiliate marketers like you.

Again, please do not start by seeing the financial opportunity in these programs and working backward from there to fit your business around them.

These affiliate marketing programs are great examples of what’s available to you as an affiliate marketer so use them, but only if they’re truly going to benefit the audience you’ve built a relationship with.

Amazon Associates

You know Amazon, now you know about their Amazon Associates affiliate program!

They’re the world’s largest retailer so if your business is related to any sort of physical product, you’ll find a quality option to offer here.

Worth noting, Amazon recently caused quite a stir by drastically lowering their commission rates (from 8% to 4% in many categories), which is a good example of why building relationships with your audience and eventually creating your own offerings is so important.

That being said, on top of having the world’s largest catalog, Amazon has poured billions into optimizing their site for conversions and you earn a commission for any product purchased visitors purchase within 48 hours of clicking your links, so they’re still a top recommendation for physical affiliate products.

Learn more about making Amazon Associates work for your audience and business in my Amazon Affiliate Marketing Program guide here.

Fiverr Affiliates

Fiverr, the popular marketplace for freelance services, offers a few different affiliate products and services that might be a good fit for promoting to your audience.

These include:

Fiverr, the freelance marketplace offering services for everything from graphics and copywriting to complete websites and custom apps.
Fiverr Business, their suite of premium tools and vetted talent for business owners.
Fiverr Learn, their online courses platform.
Fiverr affiliates, their affiliate program (links to Fiverr on this page are NOT my affiliate links)

If you work with clients who might need support from freelancers available on Fiverr’s platform or have an audience of entrepreneurs, a partnership with Fiverr is worth considering.

In addition to being a good fit for a broad set of businesses, I decided to add Fiverr to my list of affiliate marketing programs because they introduce some interesting commission structures you can find in some other programs.

Many affiliate programs will offer flat commissions per sale.

In Fiverr’s case, this includes a $15-150 Cost Per Action (CPA), depending on the service the person you refer buys.

They also offer percentages of the sale price, 30% for Fiverr Learn courses as an example.

Something you don’t see as often but is very valuable as an affiliate marketer is a revenue share option.

In this case, Fiverr’s “Hybrid” payment structure lets you earn $10 for a first-time purchase and 10% of all further purchases made by someone you refer for 12 months.

The beauty of revenue share commission structures is twofold:

You have the potential to earn a lot more than flat-rate plans
Revenue share smooths out your earnings curves

For example, as people get outside during the summer months, you’ll sometimes see a natural dip in traffic and sales for software-based products as people are spending less time on their computers.

But, if you earn a piece of the monthly fees a person you refer pays for their software, you’re less likely to see a dip in your monthly revenues.

HostGator Affiliate Program

HostGator is a popular web hosting and domain registration company you’ve likely heard of because their affiliate program is so popular.

And because so many different audiences from entrepreneurs to crochet enthusiasts can benefit from having a website, chances are your audience may be interested in a web hosting service.

While I use and prefer Bluehost because I know them, trust them, and have a great relationship with their team, I mention HostGator here because it shows us another element of affiliate marketing commission structures: pay for performance.

What does this mean exactly?

HostGator offers a tiered payments structure based on how many monthly signups they receive from you:

1-5 signups per month: $65/signup
6-10 signups per month: $75/signup
11-20 signups per month: $100/signup
21+ signups per month: $125/signup

Again, please think about your audience’s needs and the quality of the product/service first, and commission rates and structures second.

But if all else is equal between two tools, it’s worth investing your time and effort in creating helpful content and building a partnership relationship with the company that helps you grow your commissions as you grow their sales.

Wix Affiliate Program

Our last affiliate marketing program example is Wix, the popular website-building software.

I mention them here for two reasons:

Again, website-related products and services are useful for a lot of audiences, so chances are Wix might be a good fit for you and yours.
They’re an example of one other element of affiliate marketing program commission structures – minimum payouts.

To point 2, many affiliate programs have minimum earnings targets you have to hit to get paid. In Wix’s case, you have to generate at least $300 in commissions before they’ll send your earnings to your bank account.

This is a fairly common practice and thus a nice example of why I say affiliate marketing is not a get-rich-quick scheme.

Affiliate marketing tips for beginners (and experts)

Affiliate marketing is not a “push-button” solution. It takes focus and commitment, and a certain choreography to make it happen the way you want it to.

Thankfully, there are things you can do to increase the number of people clicking on your affiliate links and buying the affiliate products you’re promoting.

So below, let’s go over my 22 tips to help you succeed with affiliate marketing.

Some of these are things we’ve covered already but they’re definitely worth repeating!

Others will be new to you. But all of them are potentially important keys as you build your affiliate marketing business.

22 affiliate marketing tips for beginners

Build trust first
Know the product
Ask yourself: Can I trust the product will be good for my audience?
Show your own results (Proof)
Help your audience learn as much as possible about the product (Evidence)
Become a source of information and support for a product
Use your website (or build one!)
Give people multiple opportunities to click on your affiliate links
Disclose that your links are affiliate links
Keep track of your click-throughs
Use your own language to promote your affiliate links
Thank people in advance for going through your affiliate links
Thank people afterward for going through your affiliate links
Establish a relationship with the owner of the product
Offer special deals just for your audience
Ask for a landing page on the owner’s site
Focus on how it will help your audience (not features, but benefits)
Believe in your recommendation
If it doesn’t work out, try another offer
Test, test, test
Make your own product instead
Be patient

Laying the groundwork

A great affiliate marketing strategy starts with a solid foundation. Here are the fundamentals you need to keep in mind as you’re getting started.

1. Build trust first

Surprise, surprise! My number one tip is to build trust!

Trust takes time to build, and energy to maintain. This is why I wanted to give you this tip first because I want you to expect things to take a while, and to focus on building your community and the trust within that community first.

The recommendations for products and the affiliate love you’ll get from your community comes almost naturally after you EARN that trust from them.

Trust is earned through 2 things:

Giving—and giving away as much as possible. Content, information, freebies, high-value stuff, and sometimes even your own time.

Online karma does exist, and the more you give away, the more you get back in return—and maybe not from the very same people you gave to, which is why the second piece of earning trust is . . .

Recommendations from others. Get on other people’s radar and have them do the marketing for you. Not for the affiliate products that you’re promoting, but you, or your brand.

YOU.

Trust is earned faster through the friends and relationships people already have with each other.

That’s why it’s important to give to everyone, no matter how big or how small they may seem to your brand.

Because you never know—they may know somebody who knows somebody who will become your biggest client, or a multi-product customer, or maybe the window to an opportunity that would have never happened otherwise.

Relationships with other people are extremely important to your success, and you won’t have sustainable success with your affiliate marketing until you earn your audience’s trust.

2. Know the product

One of the biggest mistakes I see people make when attempting to sell a product as an affiliate is not knowing much about the product.

This usually stems from a desire to push a product for the primary purpose of earning money from it, which is a no-no.

Don’t get me wrong—it’s smart as a marketer to take into account what the commission is and how much money you might make per sale, but the commission shouldn’t drive the decision to promote a product.

It should be just one part of the entire decision to promote a product.

So, know the product.

Why?

Because if you really know the product, it will shape how you promote it, what you say to promote it, and the overall feeling people will get when you offer or recommend it.

So what’s the best way to get to know a product? Use it. Get to know it.

If you’re not extremely familiar with a product, don’t promote it.

It may not be a rule most affiliate marketers follow, but it’s one I’ve followed for years with great success, because it helps with tip #1, building that trust factor with my audience.

All of the products I promote on my Tools page, such as Kit for email marketing, Leadpages for landing pages, and Bluehost for web hosting, are ones I’ve used myself extensively.

I know all about them, and I’m very comfortable with how they work, so I’m happy to recommend them to my audience.

This goes along with tip #3, which is . . .

3. Ask yourself: Can I trust the product will be good for my audience?

This is crucial. It’s the idea that you should be sharing or recommending something that will actually help your audience.

Do you trust that after you send people through your link that the sales page for that product, the product itself, and the customer service for that product, if any, will be good to them?

This is important, because the dictionary definition of affiliate is:

Officially attach or connect to an organization.

The moment you decide to promote something as an affiliate, you attach yourself, your brand, and your business to that company and that product, and if that product isn’t going to be good for your audience, then it’s going to reflect ultimately on YOU.

If it’s an awesome product that totally helps them out?

Awesome! You’re going to look that much better and be thanked for it, and it’ll be a win–win–win for everyone.

If it’s bad? It’s a lose–lose–lose for everybody.

I was once approached to promote a product I knew would sell well and make me a lot of money.

But I didn’t end up promoting it, because I didn’t like the way the company managed the upsell process—it was very aggressive, and even ended with an automatic 30-day trial.

That didn’t sit right with me, so I didn’t promote it. I may have lost some money up front because of that decision, but in the long run, it was the right thing to do.

4. Show your own results (proof)

One of the biggest ways I’ve been able to take my affiliate income to the next level is by showing people what I’ve gained as a result of using those products.

For example, I use a tool called Kit to help me run my email campaigns to build an even bigger following. I then use these results as proof when I’m promoting Kit as an affiliate product to my audience.

By showing that I’ve actually used and succeeded with a product like Kit, it helps to build that trust and lessen the “I don’t know exactly what this product is about so I’m not going to buy it” mentality among my audience.

You want to show them as much as possible, which leads us to our next tip . . .

5. Help your audience learn as much as possible about the product (evidence)

So a person sees an affiliate link for a product you recommend on one of your sites. Big whoop!

Instead of just a paragraph or two explaining the product and what it can do for them, show them how it works.

Tell them what it’s like to sign up for the product, share some tips to make the experience of using that product even better, give answers to the most frequently asked questions about that product . . . show them everything.

The more you can show, the more comfortable people are going to be actually making a purchase.

Giving your audience thorough information about a product like this will help you to . . .

6. Become a source of information and support for a product

The next level is to make yourself available to your audience as a source of information and support for that product. To treat the product as your own.

This can help in the pre-purchase phase. If someone has any questions about a product before making a purchase, tell them to go through you (or maybe someone on your staff or a VA).

If a person is on the fence, it may just take an answer to a simple question to get that person to click through your link and make a purchase. Plus, they’ll feel more secure with their purchase, again, since they know if they have any questions they can come to you.

The next thing you can do is provide support for it too.

You don’t necessarily have to be available 24/7 for customer service questions.

But when you promote these products, you want to say, “Hey, if you have any questions about this, let me know. Because I know this product, and I want to show you how it can help you achieve your goals or address your pains and problems.”

And when you do that, your audience will automatically think, “This guy knows what he’s talking about, and if I ever have any questions, he’ll be there.”

Now, if you’re worried this means you’ll be deluged with support emails, don’t fear!

You’re not going to be buried with questions.

In all my years of offering support for my affiliate products, I’ve never had an issue with receiving too many questions.

But the value of offering this support is huge, and will help your audience trust your recommendations.

A lot of people think, “Oh, I don’t want emails from people about my affiliate products.”

You should!

Because the people who email you are the ones who are most interested in being successful with a product.

Must-Dos

These next 7 tips are things many affiliate marketers don’t realize when they get started—to their detriment.

7. Use your website (or build one!)

There are many ways to build an audience today: on social media like Facebook, X, or Instagram, or via your own website.

But when it comes to affiliate marketing, one of those is a must-have: a website.

I know a lot of people who are generating an income via Facebook, X, LinkedIn, and YouTube, without even having a website. Power to them—but if you want to set yourself up for success with affiliate marketing, you absolutely need a website.

What if Facebook or X were to shut down tomorrow?

That probably won’t happen, but these sites can still make changes that can greatly affect your business.

We’ve seen this time and time again, especially with Facebook. Facebook loves to make changes, especially since they went public and are trying to make money for their investors.

Affiliate marketing is your business, and so you need to take control of it, and if you put your business in the hands of something like Facebook, X, or even Google, you’re risking everything.

The smart approach is to create a website where you have full control over the experience of your audience and customers.

Platforms like Facebook are limited when it comes to delivering a custom experience to your audience.

X is extremely limited.

LinkedIn and YouTube are limited in customer experience, and you want those places to be the start of a conversation and always drive people back to your website.

The website is where all the action happens.

It’s where people buy stuff.

It’s where people click and share things mostly, and it’s where you can get the most leverage.

It’s where you can most easily build an email list.

Yes, there are affiliate marketing tools available that allow you to do everything without a website, but if you’re in it for the long haul and want to do affiliate marketing right, you need to have a website.

Why would you ever put your business in the hands of somebody else?

8. Give people multiple opportunities to click on your affiliate links

This next one is a pretty obvious tip that, sadly, many people fail to implement.

I say “sadly” because a lot of people are missing out on potential income as a result.

When you only give your audience one opportunity to click on your affiliate link—by adding a single link near the top of a blog post, for example—you’re losing out on potential income that could come with not much more work.

Of course, you should avoid the other extreme too.

You can definitely go overboard with stuffing affiliate links into your posts. The best thing to do is just naturally place links where it seems like they work.

For a blog post, this could be the first time you mention the product, somewhere in the middle of the post, and then again at the end.

You can catch the “low-hanging fruit” with that first link (since lots of people will click it just because it’s there).

But the people who continue to read the post are likely to be more engaged and take action.

That’s where adding links in the middle and at the end can come in handy, so these engaged readers don’t have to scroll all the way back up the page.

Another quick and easy tip is to link product images with your affiliate link.

Also consider adding affiliate links to other content, including YouTube videos, podcast show notes, and your Tools page.

Bottom line: make it as easy as possible for all of your visitors to use your affiliate links, without overdoing it.

9. Disclose that your links are affiliate links

Most of you know I’m all about transparency and authenticity—and it’s no different with affiliate links. So, I do my best to always reveal when links are affiliate links.

Why?

Well, for one, at least in the US, Federal Trade Commission (FTC) regulations require that if you’re receiving any compensation for promoting any other product or company, you have to disclose that relationship.

There’s a lot more to it than that, but the best thing you can do is just be honest and upfront with your links.

But more than that, people appreciate honesty.

Along with that, if you give away enough information and really help people out, some of those people will likely want to pay you back for your generosity.

If you disclose that you have an affiliate link they can click on, that right there is a good call to action for people to give back to you.

When you mention that you’re using affiliate links, you should also say you’re getting a commission, but at no extra cost to them, so if they are going to buy the product anyway they might as well buy it from you and help you make some cash too.

10. Keep track of your click-throughs

One thing you should always do with your affiliate links is keep track of them—where they’re located in your content, how many clicks are going through each one, and what your conversion rates are.

This takes time to set up, but you have to know what’s happening to each of your links in order to understand what works and what doesn’t.

If you have just one affiliate link for every location—your videos, podcasts, blog posts, webinars, etc.—then how do you know where you’re getting most of your sales from?

How do you know what campaigns aren’t working and which ones are?

You don’t, unless you track.

You can use a tool like Pretty Links, a WordPress plugin, to shorten your affiliate links into custom links that are trackable.

There is more on this in my affiliate marketing tools post, where I cover Pretty Links and other tools I recommend to augment your affiliate marketing efforts.

11. Use your own language to promote your affiliate links

When you sign up as an affiliate with a company, they’ll often send you marketing language to use in your emails, blog posts, and social media messages to help sell the product.

While this language can be helpful, I absolutely recommend not using it 100 percent verbatim. Instead, use it as inspiration to craft personalized language to sell the products.

Why?

Because of trust.

Your audience wants to hear from you in your voice. It’ll be obvious to them if you’re just copying and pasting from somewhere else.

12. Thank people in advance for going through your affiliate links

When I disclose affiliate links on my blog posts or videos, I will sometimes thank people in advance for going through them.

Is this a small thing that probably doesn’t make a drastic difference in sales?

Yes.

Is it something that’s easy to do and people will appreciate it?

Definitely.

With that in mind, here’s the next tip, which is . . .

13. Thank people afterward for going through your affiliate links

If the company you’re an affiliate with is able to provide you with the name and/or email of people who purchase through your link, you should definitely follow up with those people and thank them.

Maybe give them a surprise bonus if you want to, something you didn’t mention they’d get in the first place.

This will help make them want to make a purchase through one of your affiliate links again in the future.

Advanced tips

Here are 3 tips to consider once you’re up and running with affiliate marketing, to take your promotions to the next level.

14. Establish a relationship with the owner of the product

Imagine this: you’re promoting a product and you get the owner of the product to answer some questions about the product, which you post in a blog post, or a podcast episode, or maybe a video interview.

Or maybe you have that person on as a guest and he or she offers some really high-value content, with a small promo for the product at the end.

This does a couple of things.

One, it starts to foster the necessary relationship and trust between your audience and the owner of the product, if your audience is ever going to purchase that product.

Second, it helps the audience trust you even more, by showing them that you’ve established a relationship with the owner of the product— you’re not just messing around when it comes to recommending this product.

You’re familiar with the product and the people behind it, which will help your audience feel even more comfortable with their purchase.

I’ve done this a few times here on SPI, and it’s worked really well.

I have a great relationship with the team at Bluehost, even having gone to their offices to meet the team.

Not just to get to know them, but to ensure they’re A) on top of things and helping out my audience, B) learn about new product plans that might be coming up that I can help promote that could be a win for all, and C) see if there’s anything else they can do to help make my life easier, such as creating customized landing pages (as in tip #16 below).

I have a great relationship with the team at Kit as well.

Because I’ve cultivated this relationship, I’ve had the chance to speak at their event, and they’ve let me offer a longer free trial period that my audience seems to really appreciate.

One other advantage of developing a relationship with the product owners is you might even be able to negotiate higher commission rates.

It’s always worth making a connection!

15. Offer special deals just for your audience

This is the next step in building a relationship with the owner of a product you’re promoting.

If you can negotiate a special deal from the product owner just for your audience, that will give your audience an even better value and more of a reason to purchase from you.

Try to work out a deal with the owner before you have them as a guest on your podcast.

What’s the worst that could happen?

They’ll say no, and that’s it.

I’ve done special deals on several products here on SPI.com, and each time it has driven the affiliate sales through the roof.

You can do a limited-time deal, or one that is evergreen.

16. Ask for a landing page on the owner’s site

Most of the time, the actual sale of an affiliate item takes place on the website of the company that owns the product.

Unfortunately, it’s complicated to keep the entire sales process on your own site, so you’ll need to be willing to send people to the company’s site to complete their purchase.

By vetting the product and the company beforehand, you can help ensure that your audience will have a positive purchase experience.

But you’re still sending your audience into another company’s “territory” where you usually don’t have any control over their experience.

In some cases, you may be able to handle the purchase process on your own site, but that requires the company to agree to it, along with a lot of technical know-how.

But there’s another, easier option that can help increase your audience’s trust and comfort in purchasing: having your own branded landing page on the company’s site.

When people click on your affiliate link, they’re taken to a custom landing page on the company’s site that has some elements from your brand on it.

For an example of such a personalized landing page, see askpat.com/bluehost. [Full Disclosure: I’m a compensated advisor and affiliate for Bluehost.]

like you’re still there with them as they go through the purchase process.

The big caveat here is this will not always be possible, which is why it’s an advanced tip.

Some companies may not be open to creating a custom landing page for you, and even if they are, you may need to already be a successful affiliate with them before they’ll agree to it.

When the Going Gets Tough

As with anything in online business, affiliate marketing will throw up roadblocks along the way.

Here are 6 ideas to help you keep your head up when things get rough.

17. Focus on how it will help your audience (not features, but benefits)

When talking about the product to your audience, no matter what platform you’re using or methods you choose to deliver your content, always focus more on the benefits for your audience.

In other words, what’s in it for them?

In each section of your blog posts, in your videos, in podcast episodes, don’t forget to remind your audience exactly how the product will help them.

Features are good, but benefits are what people want.

“Sure, it’s cool that this link building tool helps you get links from high Page Ranked sites, but the benefit is that your site will have more authority, so you’ll rank higher in Google and get more traffic.”

“Sure, it’s cool that this in-ear headphone comes with a flat, tangle-free wire, but the benefit is so that you don’t get frustrated trying to untangle the darn thing every time you take it out of your backpack or pocket.”

If you’re having trouble with the whole feature vs. benefit thing, it’s okay—a lot of people get confused, but the simplest way to understand it is to think of a feature, then add the words “so that.”

“We have this feature, so that you can blah blah blah.”

It works every time.

18. Believe in your recommendation

If you really believe in the product, in your recommendation, then so will your audience. If you have motives other than trying to help people out or give them something they need—if it’s for the commission, or you’re just doing a favor for a friend who owns a product—then you’re not going to perform as well with your sales.

Believe in it, and your audience will believe in you.

19. If it doesn’t work out, try another offer

Let’s say you have an affiliate product you’d like to promote.

You’ve used the product, it’s great, and you know it will help your audience.

You set up a promotion with links in your posts, create an epic post with videos, the whole nine yards . . . and it doesn’t work out.

It’s not the end of the world.

Sometimes you think your audience will respond one way, but they surprise you and go the opposite way.

The campaign you thought was going to be a home run turns out to be a bust.

Why? Figure out why and evaluate the circumstances, and try again knowing what you now know from what you learned.

Then use what you learned and try another offer!

It’s all a learning process, one that happens through taking action, and trial and error.

That’s what affiliate marketing is all about.

In fact, the more things don’t work out, the better, because the more likely you’ll be to eventually get to something that does work.

And the more you’ll learn along the way.

Related to that . . .

20. Test, test, test

As in the previous tip, test your offers, yes, but more than that—test everything.

Test how you promote, to see what your audience responds best to.

Test the placements of your links, the number of links within posts, whether they’re bolded or italicized, whether images work better, whether interviewing the owner helps, whether Thursdays convert better than Tuesdays for webinars . . . test everything you can possibly think of.

Test, test, test.

21. Make your own product instead

If all else fails, but you know there’s a market out there for a particular product that’s perfect for your audience, and it doesn’t exist—create it yourself.

Yes, this isn’t affiliate marketing.

And when you create your own product, you waive the benefits of affiliate marketing, such as not having to create the product, dealing with customer service, and other aspects of being a product owner.

But affiliate marketing doesn’t always work out, and there are advantages to creating your own product.

You get to keep people in your own brand.

You get to keep all the profits.

You can even set up your own affiliate program for other people to sign up and promote your product.

And lastly . . .

22. Be patient

No matter how quickly people say you can make money online, realize that it’s going to take time.

Relatively speaking, yes, things can happen pretty fast—that’s the beauty of online business.

You can have a site up today and start sharing content with the world, but in order to make an impact and really make money online, you’re going to need to get your message out there, and build relationships with people.

In time, this will drive traffic to your site, and eventually clicks, sales, and affiliate commissions.

Learn, but take action and keep learning as you go.

Things take time, but by following these tips, and everything else you learn in this post, you’ll give yourself the best chance to make things happen as fast as possible for you with affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing mistakes to avoid

Affiliate marketing: it’s easy to do—and easy to do wrong.

Anyone can grab a link and promote it from behind the scenes. But successful affiliate marketing that delivers value for you and your audience in the long term?

That takes work.

It also means knowing what not to do.

We’ve covered how affiliate marketing works, how to start affiliate marketing, my top tips for succeeding as an affiliate marketer, and a whole lot more.

Now, I’d like to give you some insight into what to avoid when it comes to affiliate marketing.

I’ll start by sharing with you what happened to me the first time I ever tried affiliate marketing—and what I learned when I fell flat on my face.

Then, I’ll give you the four main affiliate marketing mistakes and traps you need to look out for as you’re getting started on your journey.

My $300 affiliate marketing mistake

First, let me tell you the story of my $300 affiliate marketing mistake.

It was 2008. I had just been laid off from my job in the architecture industry. In the months leading up to my layoff, I had been experimenting in online business with my very first effort, GreenExamAcademy.com.

As I was building Green Exam Academy to help others in the architecture industry pass the LEED Exam, I discovered affiliate marketing and learned how others were making money with it.

So I signed up for an affiliate network and I picked a product I felt would be okay for my audience and got an affiliate link (I didn’t really know if it would be okay—unfortunately, that wouldn’t become clear until later).

I set up a Google AdWords account to start advertising it, and created my first ad. In the ad, I drove people to click on the affiliate link for the product I was advertising.

A couple hours after publishing the ad, I saw that it already had a few hundred impressions—i.e., views by a visitor.

Not bad! After a few more hours, it was over a thousand impressions.

But how many clicks had the ad gotten?

Zilch, nada, none.

I waited and waited until I finally got my first click, but that person didn’t end up buying the product.

I had spent $300 on a couple dozen clicks, and those clicks had amounted to zero sales.

I began thinking about those clicks, and the people on the other end of them.

Who were they? What compelled them to click?

At that time, I was a terrible marketer and copywriter—but that wasn’t the biggest issue. What I realized after a short while was that there was really no way for me to know the answer to those questions about who was clicking on my ad or why.

I had created an ad based on a product I didn’t understand inside and out.

I hadn’t spent the time getting to know the product and understanding how it could serve my audience.

And by failing to do that, I was failing myself and my audience (small, at the time) who counted on me.

I had left them behind while I panned for gold in the wrong place.

A wake-up call for doing affiliate marketing the right way

My $300 mistake was a wake-up call.

I decided right then and there I wasn’t going to do that ever again. I learned how integral relationship building is to effective affiliate marketing.

My learning process would continue from there, of course, but the building blocks were set.

Affiliate marketing isn’t a quick, impersonal thing.

It’s the exact opposite. You need to start from an authentic place.

Affiliate marketing is about fostering genuine long-term relationships with people you trust, products you love, and companies that align with you and your philosophies.

And unless you truly know the product, have used it successfully for yourself, and can prove that to your audience, you can’t expect others to just take your word for it.

Any healthy relationship takes time to build and a great deal of trust.

And that’s what we need to focus on in our affiliate marketing relationships.

Too often, I see people wasting time and energy promoting products under the guise of affiliate marketing while ignoring the relationship aspect of things.

But affiliate marketing should be a natural extension of your authentic efforts to build and serve an audience—not a tack-on just to make a little extra money.

The four biggest affiliate marketing mistakes

On the spectrum of affiliate marketing mistakes, my $300 mistake wasn’t too serious. You can chalk that one up to a beginner’s lack of good judgment or experience.

But there’s a bigger picture here we need to talk about too.

Like everything, affiliate marketing has its positive and negative sides. And in fact, for a long time—and especially when I first started out in online business back in 2008—affiliate marketing has had a negative connotation.

I’ve made it part of my mission to show that affiliate marketing can be done in a legit way, one where everybody can be a winner.

But at the same time, because affiliate marketing is technically easy to do, it’s easy to fall into an aggressive, income-first approach rather than one centered around serving your audience.

I want you to be aware of how affiliate marketing can be abused, or how your efforts can be derailed.

My intent isn’t to worry or scare you from going down the affiliate marketing route, because it can be a fantastic opportunity if done the right way—but I do want to arm you with knowledge about the traps to look out for as you build your affiliate marketing business.

I feel it’s my responsibility to show you how to do affiliate marketing right—and that includes knowing how not to do it.

Whether you’ve just started learning about affiliate marketing, or you’re already promoting other people’s products via affiliate links and want to make sure you’re going about it the right way, I’m going to share with you four rules to keep in mind in avoiding the dark side of affiliate marketing.

These are the four biggest traps to look out for, so that you have an even greater chance to succeed with this powerful tool that can help you better serve your audience, generate an income, and build relationships with the owners of the products you’re promoting.

The four biggest affiliate marketing mistakes:

Promoting a product that doesn’t make sense for your audience
Not keeping an eye on the quality of your audience’s experience
Not being honest about a product or promotion
Earning all of your income from affiliate marketing

Okay. Let’s talk about these four dangers you need to look out for on your affiliate marketing journey.

1. Promoting a product that doesn’t make sense for your audience

Perhaps the biggest affiliate marketing mistake people make is not promoting a product that actually makes sense for their audience.

This often happens when someone takes an income-first approach rather than a serving-first one.

You should look for solutions that can help your audience—whether there’s an affiliate opportunity there or not.

If there happens to be one, great. That’s a bonus.

If there isn’t, but you know the product could still be helpful to your audience, it’s your responsibility to share it with them.

Since my brand is focused on helping people build successful online businesses ethically, the products and services I promote are all things that support this focus: I recommend services that help people host their website (Bluehost), start an email list (Kit), plan their editorial calendar (CoSchedule); audio and video gear to create great content; and books and courses, both mine and others, to help people learn and improve their skills.

Most of these are things I recommend as an affiliate—but a good number of them are not.

Even if I can’t form an affiliate relationship with a company, if their product is the best one for my audience, I’m going to recommend it.

As your brand grows and you start to build an audience, you’re going to get noticed. The affiliate marketing opportunities will start to trickle in, as companies see the traffic you’re getting and the trust people are putting in your brand.

These companies will also know you’re a human being who can potentially be swayed by a commission.

Sometimes, they’ll offer you payments for simply sending them leads, because it’s basically easy advertising for them.

They know how much money they need to spend, and how many leads they need to collect, to convert a certain percentage of them to customers.

Either way, as you grow, you’re going to notice an increased number of those kinds of inquiries—many from companies you’ve never even heard of before.

At the start of my online business journey, every couple months I’d get an offer from a different company saying, “Hey, we have this new product. We think your audience would really like it. Promote it to your audience and we’ll give you $75 for every person you send our way.”

I implore you, please: do not be persuaded by the dollar value of the commissions you’ll be offered.

Sometimes when a new company reaches out to me with an affiliate offer, I’ll look at the product and realize it’s obviously not a fit for my audience.

In those cases, it’s easy to say, “No, thanks.”

But when you’re just starting out, the promise of a commission can make it hard to see things clearly.

You might think, “Wow, this opportunity is in front of me right now. Maybe I should say yes. What damage could it do?”

The damage it could do is potentially huge: the destruction of the trust you’ve worked hard to build with your audience.

That’s why my recommendation is to stay on the safe side by always offering and recommending products you’ve used before and understand, so you know exactly the kind of experience people will have with them.

You should also get to know the company itself, and ideally have a personal relationship with someone in a leadership role there.

That way, you can be certain that the company behind the product you’re promoting is one that will take care of your people.

Again, be careful.

Often companies will reach out to you based on a simple algorithm—if you’ve reached a certain threshold of social media followers, for instance, they’ll send you a message asking if they can pay to get in front of your audience.

You may have even heard of these products, and know they have a good reputation. Sometimes those products may actually be a great fit.

Still, don’t immediately say yes to the opportunity.

You need to be aware of this, because the vultures start to come out at a certain point once you start to gain some notoriety in a space.

In the early days, I’d get affiliate inquiries from companies every couple months.

Now, almost every day, I get emails from companies I’ve never heard of that want to get in front of my audience.

The nature of these offers also ranges more broadly now, probably because my audience is much larger.

For instance, I sometimes get offers from financial planning companies to get in front of my audience for tens of thousands of dollars.

But it’s not in my best interest to say yes, because even though those services might help my audience, financial planning isn’t what my brand is about.

Bombarding my audience and saturating my brand with stuff that doesn’t fit would dilute the brand and confuse people’s perception of what I stand for.

I don’t need to give my audience financial planning assistance to help them the best way I possibly can.

There are plenty of great brands out there that focus on financial planning, but it’s not my realm.

So, realize you have a choice, and that it’s okay to say no. Opportunities will come your way, but your priority should be to protect your brand and your reputation.

Choose wisely.

2. Not keeping your eye on the quality of your audience’s experience

This next one is similar to #1, but it has more to do with how things can change after you start promoting what seems to be a great product that you know is a good fit for your audience.

Let’s say you recently started promoting a new product, and it’s working out well. Everybody’s happy—you, your audience, and the company.

But then the company gets bought out, and new management takes over.

This creates a ripple through the entire company, affecting your audience’s customer support experience with the product.

Sound unlikely? It’s happened to me before, with the web hosting company Bluehost.

I still recommend Bluehost, and in fact, they’ve been one of my top affiliates over the years. But it hasn’t always been a smooth road.

I began recommending Bluehost in 2009, and was soon making a few thousand dollars a month from affiliate promotions. Even better, the company was taking great care of my audience.

Everyone was happy.

The next year, my monthly income continued to grow into the five-digit range. Things were looking good.

But then in 2013, I started getting a few emails from people who weren’t too happy with Bluehost’s customer support, especially when they had issues with the service.

The following year, things got a little better—the negative emails dropped off—but then they got worse again.

At that point, I started to really pay attention.

I decided to fly out to Utah to meet with the company and share my concerns with them directly. I met with the founders and told them, “Hey, this is not okay. This can’t happen.”

The Bluehost team told me they were aware of the issues, and that they were making changes to address them.

I said, “Okay, but these changes need to happen now.” Of course, with a big company like that, I understood changes can take time, but I wanted to do as much as I could to move them along.

Thankfully, the Bluehost team took my words to heart and put together an action plan to address the issues.

They also agreed to let me offer my audience a special connection to a customer support person who could take care of them more quickly than the company’s traditional support channel.

During my visit to Bluehost headquarters, I also kept in touch with my audience about how my meeting was going, and what the Bluehost team was doing to improve things.

I sent an email to my list about what was happening during my visit, and wrote about the experience in my May 2016 Income Report.

Although this kind of situation may not occur with every company you partner with as an affiliate, you have to be open to it.

Companies grow and evolve, and people come and go. You can’t assume that if things are going well, they always will.

The lesson here, especially for affiliate relationships you’d like to maintain for the long term, is to keep close tabs on your audience’s experience with the product.

In addition, you should cultivate relationships with the product owners, so they know how important your audience’s experience with the product is to everyone involved.

In an ideal world, your audience’s experience with a product should only improve over time—but if it’s going in the opposite direction, you’ll have to act to make things right, and having a direct line to the company leadership makes it easier to do that.

You also need to have a backup plan.

Right now, I’m really comfortable promoting Bluehost, especially knowing they have a customer support person I can send people to when things go wrong.

But there’s a point at which, if things were to go badly again, I’d consider promoting a different hosting provider.

Most of my audience is still having an amazing experience with Bluehost, but it’s important to stay aware and be prepared if things need to change.

3. Not being honest about a product or promotion

When I recommend products, I’m always very honest about what the product can and can’t do.

But I’ve been on the other end of this before—and not in a good way. I won’t name names or products, but let’s just say I’ve been recommended products that came with certain promises, promises that didn’t come to fruition.

These were products that, shortly after I started using them, I realized they weren’t at all what I‘d expected.

When you’re promoting your affiliate products, you need to make sure you set the right expectations for your audience.

Otherwise, what happens? You lose the trust of the person to whom you recommended that product.

In one case, someone I knew and looked up to recommended a software tool to me.

His recommendation also came with some lofty claims of how the tool could help me. I ended up buying the software based on his recommendation.

But what I quickly found was that in order to take advantage of the capabilities I was promised, I would have had to pay more—more than five times the price I was paying already.

Needless to say, I wasn’t happy about this.

I shared my frustration with the person who’d recommended the tool to me, and he apologized. It was an oversight on his part, and we’re still on good terms today.

Our story turned out okay—but this won’t always be the case if you’re not totally honest and upfront with your audience about the affiliate products you promote.

You have to be careful, because if you make a mistake that skews your audience’s expectations, you might lose them for good.

You need to be totally honest about what a product can and can’t do, and make sure you’re not recommending it to someone who’s not a good fit for it.

What if you find yourself in a tricky situation where you’ve promoted a product to your audience, then realized later that it wasn’t what you thought it was?

Thankfully, I have a special “rule” that comes in handy here. I call it the 8 Mile Rule.

[SPOILER ALERT] If you’ve never seen the movie 8 Mile, Marshall Mathers (aka Eminem), plays the main character, a rapper named B-Rabbit. In the finale, B-Rabbit faces off against another rapper in a huge rap battle.

B-Rabbit decides to rap about all the weird things about himself, things his opponent would likely call him out for in his rap.

Why does he do this?

By calling himself out first, he leaves his opponent without any ammunition to use against him.

Do you see where I’m going with this?

When you’re promoting an affiliate product, take the 8 Mile approach.

If something goes wrong, be the first one to say something.

If you make a mistake, own up to it.

Perhaps you recommended a product you realized wasn’t a good fit for your audience.

The quicker you can say, “I’m sorry.

That product wasn’t the right fit for you.

I hope you’ll give me the benefit of the doubt and stick around,” the more likely your audience will be to do that.

This rule is handy for a lot of other areas of your business, too. It’s all about taking ownership and being honest and forthright.

This is not always easy to do, but always the right thing to do.

Being honest fosters trust, even if the circumstances aren’t totally favorable.

And if you’re being honest and serving your audience in a way that’s valuable to them, they’ll often jump at the chance to help you back.

This is where the law of reciprocity comes in—when you do something helpful for someone, they often feel compelled to do something for you in return—and affiliate marketing can be an amazing way to give your audience a way to pay you back.

So when you tell people upfront, “Hey, you know what? This is a product I’m promoting as an affiliate, so I get a commission if you go through that link,” I guarantee some of those people will be excited by the opportunity to click on that link.

There are people out there you’ve served who are looking for ways to pay you back.

So make it easy for them.

4. Earning all of your income from affiliate marketing or treating it like a get-rich-quick scheme

This leads me to my final point related to the dark side of affiliate marketing.

That is, you don’t want all of your income to come from affiliate marketing.

Back when I started out—and this is still true today in some spaces—a lot of people were doing affiliate marketing by running promotions, not through a brand they’d created or trust they’d earned from an audience, but by using copywriting, targeting, and advertising techniques to get people to click on affiliate links.

Remember my $300 mistake?

Before I ran that fated ad, I signed up with an affiliate marketing network.

This is essentially a site that allows you to sign up and choose from a huge number of products you can promote.

Once you pick a product, you get a link you can share with as many people as possible.

Because most people who go this route don’t already have a brand established, they have to resort to advertising—things like Google Adwords—to get their link in front of people.

Unfortunately, there are several things wrong with this model.

As you learned from my $300 mistake, if you just throw a link up there hoping it’ll do all the work for you—well, it won’t.

That’s not to say that you can’t make money with this kind of affiliate marketing. You can, if you go about it smartly.

But there are still two main ways you can go wrong with this model.

First, as soon as you stop putting effort into it, the income stops flowing. It’s not passive.

Second, because it doesn’t require you to build a brand, it means it’s not unique to you. Just about anyone could leapfrog you if they master the copywriting and targeting required to be successful with it.

As a result, this kind of affiliate marketing can become a very scary game to play.

That’s why I recommend instead that you take the time to build your own brand and grow an audience you can serve.

Build that audience’s trust in you as the go-to resource in your area of expertise, not just someone they don’t know who’s only serving them ads.

This is at the heart of how I teach online business: to help people become recognized for their efforts in serving an audience, whether that’s through creating their own products, blogging, podcasting, building physical products, or affiliate marketing.

Focus on building your brand and serving an audience.

When you make this your primary aim, you’ll find you have plenty of options to make money—with affiliate marketing being just one of those options.

Think about it this way: With whatever path you choose to generate an income, make sure you give the people you serve a way to thank you.

If you’re not thanked for the products you’re promoting, you’re doing affiliate marketing wrong.

In episode 9 of the Smart Passive Income Podcast, author and online business consultant Nicole Dean shared one of the most memorable quotes from the hundreds of interviews I’ve done.

She told me the motto of her business was “to make the web and the world a better place.”

And when you approach your business like that, it trickles down to everything you do.

It affects how you advertise and promote.

It affects how you interact with people.

It helps you look beyond strategies and tactics, like affiliate marketing, and stay focused on the most important thing: making things better for others.

So give your audience a reason to thank you, and the (affiliate) income will flow in.

Serve first to succeed with affiliate marketing

As we’ve seen, there is a darker side to affiliate marketing.

But if you know what to look out for, you can avoid falling into the common traps and mistakes that befall so many aspiring affiliate marketers.

As a reminder, here are the four keys to staying in the “plus” column with your affiliate marketing:

Being careful to promote only products that make sense for your audience
Keeping tabs on your audience’s experience with your affiliate products
Being honest and forthright about the products you promote
Not relying solely on affiliate marketing or using it as an impersonal, get-rich-quick scheme

Use these four keys as your guiding light, and you’ll be able to make the most of this powerful tool that allows you to tap into the incredible array of products, services, and tools out there that can help your audience succeed.

My best resource for beginner affiliate marketers: The Affiliate Marketing Cheat Sheet

This guide was my first ebook on the topic of affiliate marketing.

I wrote it after lots of trial and error with affiliate marketing—starting, failing, and eventually succeeding.

I learned a lot, and I came to believe that there’s a “right” way to approach affiliate marketing.

That’s why I created my free ebook guide to doing affiliate marketing right, the Affiliate Marketing Cheat Sheet.

Sadly, there are a lot of misconceptions about affiliate marketing out there, which is what this guide specifically focuses on.

In the Affiliate Marketing Cheat Sheet, I address these misconceptions by tackling some of the most common questions about affiliate marketing rules and strategies, including:

What specific mediums work well for affiliate product promotion?
How do I find my number one affiliate product or service?
How do I make my affiliate product stand out in a crowd?
How can I improve the relationship I have with the product owner?

At just 11 jam-packed pages, the Affiliate Marketing Cheat Sheet is full of insights I’ve learned through years of real-world experience in affiliate marketing—insights I’m excited to pass on to you.

Here’s what a couple readers have to say about how the Affiliate Marketing Cheat Sheet (formerly called Affiliate Marketing the Smart Way) has helped them:

“Pat’s guide, Affiliate Marketing the Smart Way, really lives up to its name. Soon after implementing his tips, I saw a sudden $500/mo rise in my income. Reading it was enlightening!”

—Mike Martyns

“I gained a lot in the 30 minutes it took to absorb such valuable information. It was precise and to the point—a tool that is ready and available for any newcomer to GET STARTED.”

—Louisa Barzey

The Affiliate Marketing Cheat Sheet is filled with all of my best advice on the topic, and makes a fantastic free “pocket” companion to this article.

Make affiliate marketing part of your success.

Learn how to:

Find products to promote
Stand out from the crowd
Find tools to help you with the setup and execution

Join Now!

The sky’s the limit with affiliate marketing

If you’ve stuck with me for this whole post, then you’ve taken an exciting journey into the heart of affiliate marketing!

And you’ve hopefully emerged from that journey armed with some serious knowledge, tools, strategies, and possibilities to take with you as you strike out into the wide, exciting world of affiliate marketing.

As with anything, what you get out of affiliate marketing is about how you approach it and what you put into it.

If you treat it as just another tactic, then you’re not going to be very successful with it.

But if you treat it as a way to build more trust with your audience and serve them better, then the sky’s the limit.

So now that you’ve made it this far, what’s next?

Hopefully this article has given you a great starting point, along with a wealth of resources to support you as you strive to become a pro at affiliate marketing.

It will always be here for you as a free affiliate marketing resource, along with the Affiliate Marketing Cheat Sheet.

And beyond those resources, I’d love for us to stay connected as you go down this exciting path.

I cover affiliate marketing-related topics often on my blog and in my podcast episodes, so stay tuned there. And if you ever want to send me a note, whether it’s a question about affiliate marketing, a success story you’d like to share, or anything else related to online business and entrepreneurship, you can reach me at pat@smartpassiveincome.com. I’m here to support you on your journey, so let me know how I can best do that!

Cheers,

The post Affiliate Marketing – A Simple Step by Step Guide appeared first on Smart Passive Income.

16 Best Email Marketing Services: Which Emailing Software Should You Pick?

Pat Flynn — Fri, 29 Sep 2023 02:15:03 +0000

16 Best Email Marketing Services: Which Emailing Software Should You Pick?

Ready to take your email marketing to the next level with top-tier software? Find the best email marketing service for you and your business in my epic guide!

ConvertKit is now Kit!

Our recommended email service provider has changed their name to Kit. We're working to update our content to reflect this change. In the mean time, you may see us reference the product by either name—please know that our recommendation has not changed. You can read more about the name change here.

Email marketing is an incredibly valuable asset for your business. It has the power to help you build effective relationships with your contacts, drive conversions, and ultimately propel your business’s growth.

In fact, maybe you’ve heard that email marketing brings an average 4,300% return on investment (ROI) for businesses. It’s true, and the best way to accelerate your success is by using one of the best emailing services.

You may have noticed that there are a ton of email services out there, though—so, it can feel overwhelming trying to navigate choosing the right one on your own. It’s especially tricky when you’re just starting out learning email marketing, and you’re not really sure what you need to launch your success.

Well, I’m here to make this process easier on you. I’ll walk you through some of the top services that will support you to be as successful as possible in your email marketing efforts, and I’ll share my personal recommendation for the best of the best.

Ready? Let’s get started.

What are email marketing services and why should you use one?
What to look for when choosing the best email marketing software
The 16 best email marketing services and software I've found
My top email marketing service recommendation
Email marketing tools FAQ

What are email marketing services and why should you use one?

Emailing marketing services are dedicated email marketing platforms that aim to take the legwork and stress out of your email marketing efforts.

They work by providing a platform that facilitates not just sending and receiving emails, but they support you with more advanced features as well, such as:

Managing and segmenting your email lists
Sending bulk and automated emails
Providing ready-made and customizable templates
Creating dynamic content
Providing valuable analytics
And more

Basically, email marketing software helps you to send the right messages, to the right people, at the right time. By doing so, you can form real relationships with the people behind your contact list.

And that’s the most important part of email marketing: building relationships.

When you’re just starting out, it can be tempting to stick to a free account you’re familiar with, like Gmail or Outlook. But, as you may have already realized, your marketing efforts are going to be pretty limited with these.

Perhaps the most important difference between a generic email account and an email marketing service is deliverability. A basic email address could place you in your recipients’ spam folders, throwing your marketing efforts in the bin. How can you foster a relationship with someone if your communication efforts aren’t actually reaching them?

Plus, you won’t be able to reach too many people at once without an email marketing platform. Outlook and Gmail both cap your email recipient list to 100 addresses per email, leaving your 101st subscriber to the wind.

With the right email marketing strategy, you’ll be surprised how quickly your email list can grow, and how quickly you’ll be needing to upgrade.

Focusing on growing your email list from the get-go is one of the best ways to build a successful online business. So, don’t limit yourself here; set yourself up from the beginning for the growth you want to achieve. When you’re ready to learn more about the power of your email list, I discuss everything you need to know on how to build an email list here.

Not to mention, trying to actually manage your email list on your own can quickly put you in over your head too. Without an email marketing tool, you’ll be stuck with manually keeping track of your contacts. Things like segmenting your audience or removing unsubscribers on your own can turn into hours of unnecessary work.

These are just a few examples of things that can cause you trouble without an email marketing service.

All this to say, to scale up and cultivate loyal and engaged subscribers, it’s going to be really helpful to have access to the advanced features that email marketing software provides.

You’ll have so much more money-making potential with an emailing service in your toolbelt.

What to look for when choosing the best email marketing software

Every emailing service will have different features, price points, pros, and cons. The right one will depend entirely on your unique needs.

So, what factors should you pay attention to when choosing the best email marketing service for your business?

Features
Deliverability
Ease of use
Price
Customer Support

It’s a good idea to assess your business level and define your goals from the start to help you determine which factors meet your needs.

Certain criteria like user-friendliness, deliverability, and customer support will always be important to look for when picking your email service platform.

But when weighing things like features and price, keep in mind what’s going to suit your business both now and as you scale.

The 16 best email marketing services I've found

Email Marketing Software #1: Kit

Kit is my number one recommendation for email list management.

Kit makes managing your email list and setting up autoresponders so easy and user-friendly. Segmenting my email subscribers into groups so that they get content specific to their individual needs has never been more simple.

Kit is a powerful email marketing platform that does a tremendous job of automating processes in email list management, allowing me to focus my efforts elsewhere while it hums along beautifully.

There are three main reasons I love Kit:

It’s easy to use and set up. Kit was designed from the ground up to be really easy to set up, use, and understand.
The statistics are incredible. Kit makes it really easy to see exactly what’s going on in all your campaigns, forms, and broadcasts.
It comes with a variety of advanced features, including segmentation and tagging. And with their rebranding from ConvertKit to Kit, they releases a bunch more features!

If you want to learn more about how I came to rely on Kit in my own business, and why I love and recommend it as a great way to build your email list and stay in touch with your audience, keep reading!

And if you want to give it a try (and get a whole month free—twice as much as the usual 15 days) go to smartpassiveincome.com/kit. [Full Disclaimer: I am a compensated advisor and affiliate for Kit. SPI Media will receive compensation, at no extra cost to you, if you purchase through this link.]

Email Marketing Software #2: RightMessage

RightMessage integrates your website with your email service provider (including Kit), and serves up custom messaging for your website visitors based on their interests.

This on-site personalization tool lets you talk to your site visitors in a relevant way—and in turn grow your email list with high-quality subscribers.

For SPI, RightMessage has been incredible. This tool helps us understand more about our audience, which lets us deliver them more targeted messaging on the SPI website. This helps foster trust and makes people more likely to stay in touch by joining the SPI email list. It also gives us valuable information we can use to send more personalized emails to list subscribers.

For instance, if someone in an advanced segment of the SPI audience comes to the website, we can use RightMessage to tailor our language to them. It tells us if they’re already on my email list, and even if they’re in a particular segment of the list. We can also look at how they answer a few custom survey questions through a tool RightMessage provides called the RightMessage toaster.

I use this question to determine how established a visitor's business is, so that I don't suggest advanced strategies to someone just getting started.

Based on a person’s survey answers, we can tailor content on the home page and other parts of the website to talk to them in a more relevant way. RightMessage has put together a collection of recipes that show how online business owners are customizing their offers.

We can also use this information to tailor the content we send that person via email. Based on what we learn via the RightAsk survey, we can have RightMessage update the tags associated with that person in our email tool, Kit. If the visitor is not yet a subscriber to my email list, RightMessage will hold on to their answers, pushing them to Kit when they do decide to subscribe.

In this way, RightMessage helps you go beyond just segmenting your email list, but using what you learn about each audience member to provide them targeted content both on your website and via email.

And this can have a direct positive impact on the size and quality of your email list. If someone is visiting your site for the first time, you can use the RightAsk survey tool to learn a lot about that person, then use that information to personalize the web content they see. This helps build trust and engagement and makes it more likely they’re going to want to join your email list.

RightMessage is very easy to work with. It’s a simple, powerful tool you can use to personalize content for the different kinds of people on your email list—and to build trust that can make new visitors more likely to join your list.

Part of the beauty of RightMessage is you don’t need an email list to start taking advantage of its website personalization features—but it’s an even more valuable tool if you’ve already started building a solid email list, both in terms of using what you know about visitors who are already on your email list to deliver them relevant on-site content, and using personalized site content to build trust that inspires new site visitors to join your list, and to send more relevant emails to existing subscribers.

RightMessage helped me earn over $100k in a month! SPI listeners get a 30-day free trial (that’s an extra 15 days) and a free playbook to help you get started generating results right away.

Email Marketing Software #3: Leadpages

No matter which email service provider you use, Leadpages is a must-have tool you should be harnessing to grow your email list with quality subscribers.

Leadpages is by far my favorite tool for creating high-quality landing pages and other lead-generating resources quickly and easily. What does this have to do with email marketing? A beautiful, well-constructed landing page can help you convert visitors into email list subscribers or buyers.

In this way, Leadpages enhances the capabilities of your email service provider, whether you use Kit, AWeber, Infusionsoft, or another service. Leadpages itself does not collect emails—for that, you need to connect it to your email service provider. What it does provide are tons of awesome templates for lead magnets, webinars, and landing pages you can use to build your email list.

Leadpages also makes it easy to customize the design of these resources to match your brand and help you stand out. If you’ve ever signed up for one of my courses, then you’ve probably shared your email address via one of my custom-designed Leadpages landing pages.

One of the biggest advantages of Leadpages comes if you offer lots of lead magnets/content upgrades/freemiums to your audience. You see, when you offer multiple lead magnets, it can get cumbersome to deliver them using only your email service provider—especially when you’re sending them to people who are already subscribed to your list. You don’t want people to have to reconfirm their email address or start receiving an email autoresponder series they’ve received in the past. That’s a really lousy customer experience.

Leadpages makes it really easy to have a new lead magnet automatically sent to someone without creating friction. You upload each content upgrade to Leadpages, and when someone subscribes via a Leadpages landing page, they get an email with a link to download it. Instead of your having to do a lot of configuring and creating new segments in your email service provider, Leadpages knows who’s already on your list, and sends them the lead magnet without any extra work on your part.

One of the most popular episodes of the Smart Passive Income Podcast is number 78, which features Clay Collins, the founder of Leadpages. In this episode, Clay and I go deep into the tactics and strategies that will help you optimize conversions into your email list.

I highly recommend you check it out! And if you want to get a free trial of Leadpages, go to smartpassiveincome.com/leadpages.

[Full Disclaimer: I am a compensated advisor and affiliate for Leadpages. SPI Media will receive compensation, at no extra cost to you, if you purchase through this link.]

Email Marketing Software #4: HubSpot

As a highly-integrated marketing tool, HubSpot could be a great choice for your business because it goes beyond email marketing software; it also functions as an all-in-one customer relationship management platform (CRM).

When you sign up for HubSpot, you’ll have access to various features—landing pages, email marketing, marketing automation, chat, forms, email and ad analytics, and more than 650 integrations.

HubSpot uses a drag-and-drop editor, so you can easily create polished emails and landing pages. They also allow you to personalize and direct your content to certain users, helping you engage them more effectively.

And, don’t forget to optimize for other devices! With HubSpot, you can easily preview how your content will be viewed across different devices.

One of HubSpot’s biggest pluses is the integration of data analysis; it’s easy to view your metrics. And since the platform is all-in-one, you can keep track of a variety of customer interactions with your emails, landing pages, and website, and how they correspond.

This is super beneficial; after all, Pearson’s Law states that what you measure grows, and what you measure and report back grows exponentially.

Plus, HubSpot ensures high deliverability rates—your emails won’t end up in the spam folder.

And if you need help figuring something out, you can search the forums or ask the community. HubSpot also provides customer support for their paid plans, with the highest-paid plans offering direct contact by phone.

They do offer a free plan that comes with great features, like twenty landing pages, one autoresponder per form, and 2,000 monthly emails.

But, the bundled plans jump from $20 per month all the way up to $3,600 per month, so unless your business model plans to afford a $3,600/month subscription as you grow, you’ll want to make sure that the free or $20 starter plan has everything you need to scale.

Check out all that HubSpot has to offer here!

Email Marketing Software #5: Bonjoro

Bonjoro is a fantastic tool that lets you enhance your automated emails by sending personalized video messages that can boost engagement and enhance customer experience!

I can vouch that since I started using Bonjoro to send individualized video messages, my email open rates have been through the roof.

Here’s how Bonjoro works: After signing up, you can integrate it with anything, from your email service provider to your payment processor, and have the app notify you when a new customer or email subscriber comes on board.

One of the biggest ways I’ve used Bonjoro is to welcome new students after they purchase one of my online courses.

When a new student signs up, I’m notified on my iPhone. I open the Bonjoro app, where I’m presented with an interface that lets me record a short personalized video to welcome that new student into the course, and let them know my team and I are here for their support. After adding in a quick text message to go along with it (e.g., “Thanks, John!”), I hit a button to send them an email with the video inside. Boom. That’s it.

Back in 2017, I started sending a unique, personalized video to each new student of my Power-Up Podcasting course. Although it did take a bit of time (thirty seconds per video, plus a few extra seconds to hit send for each of the four hundred-plus students), it was absolutely worth it.

The responses were off the charts!

Over half of the videos I sent out earned a response back. Here are a few of the amazing responses:

“Thanks! It was awesome to hear from you!”
“OMG, you sent me a video. I can’t believe it!”
“Thanks, now I know I’m in the right place!”

Little touch points like this are so important. The least you can do for a new customer, especially one who invests money in you and your program, is to offer them something personalized to let them know you’re there for them, and hopefully different from the rest.

A screenshot from one of the welcome videos I sent to new students of my Power-Up Podcasting course.

I’m not the only one who’s seen massive success with Bonjoro. In fact, the people at Kit, my email service provider of choice, have used Bonjoro to delight their new customers and reduce churn (the percentage of people who choose not to continue their subscription) by a massive 16 percent.

Not only is Bonjoro a beautiful tool that’s easy to use, but it’s a lot of fun too! I highly recommend adding Bonjoro to your email marketing toolkit.

You can get access to a free 14-day trial of Bonjoro by clicking here.

[Full Disclaimer: As an affiliate, I receive compensation if you purchase through this link.]

Email Marketing Software #6: Mailchimp

Mailchimp is a good option when you’re beginning to build your list and just starting out with email marketing platforms.

And if “free” is as much as your budget currently has room for, they offer a forever-free plan that permits 1,000 emails per month and up to 500 subscribers.

Some of their features include a drag-and-drop email builder, autoresponders, segmentation, landing pages, a website and form builder, and simple tracking for analytics. They also integrate with a great deal of other platforms and software, like WordPress and Zapier.

But keep in mind that they don’t offer customer support for the free plan, though there is a broad FAQ library with guides and tutorials.

One of the things that makes Mailchimp so popular is that they’re really intuitive to use. While they don’t offer highly sophisticated features for scaling, the platform has developed more advanced features for its premium plan like advanced segmentation, comparative reporting, and behavioral targeting. And, viewing and understanding these analytics won’t be overwhelming for beginners.

Mailchimp also provides best practices and has certain filters in place to keep your campaigns compliant with anti-spam laws, but they also leave some of the legwork to you—like requesting that recipients add you to their contacts—to ensure that your emails don’t end up in the spam box.

When looking at their pricing, Mailchimp gives the option between 4 plan types, ranging from 500 subscribers on the Essentials plan at $13/mo to 10k subscribers on the Premium plan at $350 per month.

The lower tier plans include email and chat support, while the premium plan offers phone support. Each plan—essentials, standard, and premium—also increases in price as you hit new subscriber thresholds.

This pay-as-you-go option really suits some businesses, while others would prefer not to be hit with new invoices every time they collect more subscribers. That said, Mailchimp is overall a really affordable option among email marketing tools.

Email Marketing Software #7: OptinMonster

One of the most popular and effective ways to grow your email list is through smart use of pop-up forms on your website.

OptinMonster is a premium WordPress plugin that makes it incredibly easy to add pop-ups to your site to collect email addresses. You can set them to show up immediately when people come to your home page or another page on your site, or even when they reach a certain point on that page. You can also specify the pop-up to show a certain amount of time after they’ve landed on that page.

And very importantly, OptinMonster has options that let you ensure that if someone closes the pop-up window the first time it shows up, or has already signed up for your email list, it won’t show them the pop-up anymore.

There are lots of pop-up tools you can use to augment your email marketing, and you can probably do just fine with a number of the options out there. But OptinMonster is a great pick, so if you’re looking for a tool that will help you capture email addresses on your site, give it a try.

Email Marketing Software #8: AWeber

A veteran of email marketing services, AWeber offers small businesses all of the mainstays when it comes to email marketing tools.

With them, you can have unlimited email lists within one account, allowing you to differentiate client groups or even run two separate businesses with one account.

Some tools you’ll find through AWeber include:

Campaign sequence builders
Transactional and marketing emails
Segmentation
A/B testing
Autoresponders
Sign-up forms
Landing pages
A lot of integrations
Plus compatibility with many types of files: XLS, XLSX, TXT, CSV, and TSV

Another great thing about them is that creating emails is simple. They have a drag-and-drop builder and a variety of curated design templates (700, to be exact), including some more classic looks.

When you’re feeling stuck, which does happen with email marketing, AWeber is known for its customer service and 24/7 support team. They’ll even migrate you from another platform for free.

AWeber offers a free plan that includes one list of up to 500 subscribers with many of the features found on the paid option. And, yes, the 24/7 customer service is even available to free plan users.

All in all, AWeber is very affordable and a great emailing service to meet your main email marketing needs.

Email Marketing Software #9: KingSumo Giveaways

In terms of growing your email list, contests and giveaways are another great way to attract quality subscribers.

There are several tools out there that can help you do this, but my preferred option if you have a WordPress website is a plugin called KingSumo Giveaways. One of the big features of KingSumo (and other similar tools) is that helps your contest spread virally by incentivizing people to gain more entries by doing things like subscribing to your email list, your YouTube channel, Instagram profile, or Facebook page, and sharing the contest on social media.

Whenever I run contests, I typically grow my YouTube channel by over 10,000 followers, and my Instagram account by a few thousand.

But when it comes to email marketing, contests and giveaways really shine. It’s incredible how much a contest can move people to join your email list. We’ve seen new subscribers in the range of 10,000, 20,000, and sometimes even 30,000 in a very short period, with a contest or giveaway.

Contests and giveaways give you a great opportunity to generate leads and build your email list with quality subscribers—as long as you do it the right way.

The key is to make sure you’re giving away something that’s relevant to your audience and in line with what you teach. For example, one of our recent giveaways was for a bunch of podcasting gear. Because podcasting is such a big part of the SPI brand, it’s likely that many of the people on the SPI email list are already podcasting or at least interested in podcasting.

And because the contest prize is something that’s relevant to my audience, these new subscribers or followers add to both the quantity and quality of people on my email list.

So consider how you might use a contest or giveaway to grow your following among your target audience. You can also check out episode 320 of the Smart Passive Income Podcast with KingSumo’s founder, Noah Kagan, if you want to learn more about what KingSumo Giveaways can do for you.

KingSumo Giveaways is a totally free plugin, and you can check it out (and get a free quick-start guide to run your first contest or giveaway) at kingsumo.com/spi.

Email Marketing Software #10: Demio

Webinars are an important piece of your online marketing toolkit—especially your email marketing. Quite simply, they’re a fantastic tool for building your list.

For a long time, though, webinars were something I avoided doing. Why? I was daunted by the available technology. You see, most webinar software is hard to use and not very user-friendly.

Demio is different.

Demio is an easy-to-use webinar platform that helps you automate and manage your webinars. It also runs in almost any web browser, which makes it easy for your audience. Demio makes it easy for you too, with a super-intuitive interface, lightning-fast support response time (under five minutes), and features like auto-recording for all of your webinars.

Demio lets you automate a lot of your email marketing related to your webinars by creating handy rules, such as [If a person watches X percent of the webinar, then send Y email or perform Z action]. Or, [If a person registers but doesn’t go, do this instead]. Demio also offers a really cool replay feature. The tool automatically records your webinar sessions in HD quality in the cloud, so you can share them on your website later on.

With Demio, I’ve overcome my fear of webinar tech, and I’m hosting a lot of webinars now, including my Podcasting the Smart Way and Affiliate Marketing Masterclass webinars.

I love Demio for their seamless integrations, beautiful interface, and powerful marketing tools. If you’ve been looking into creating webinars, maybe as part of an evergreen sales funnel, you’re going to want to check out Demio. It’s a super cool webinar tool that can really augment your email marketing efforts.

Check out Demio at smartpassiveincome.com/demio.

[Full Disclaimer: As an affiliate I receive compensation if you purchase through this link.]

Email Marketing Software #11: Typeform

Once someone has joined your email list, it’s important to keep learning about them so that you can talk to them in the right ways and direct the right products and services to their attention. It’s also important to check in and ask them if they’re getting what they need from your business.

There are several ways to learn more about the people on your list so you can start talking to them effectively. One of those is a tool I described above, RightMessage.

Another way to gather this valuable information is through a web survey—and my favorite tool for creating and delivering surveys is Typeform.

Surveys allow you to collect information you can use to segment your list—to place people in the buckets that make sense for them. In my business, I have three main segments: one for people who don’t have a business yet, one for people who have a business that makes zero to $500 a month, and one for people who have a business that makes more than $500 a month.

If you haven’t started segmenting your list, then Typeform provides a great way for you to do that. You can also use Typeform to see what people think about the products and services you provide, then use that information to improve your offerings.

Typeform is also really versatile! You can use it to create longer external surveys that live on your website, or shorter ones that you embed directly inside an email.

Typeform offers a basic plan that gives you 100 responses per month for $25. There are also three advanced plans starting at $50 per month if you need more than that.

Go to typeform.com/pricing to find the plan that works best for you.

Email Marketing Software #12: Constant Contact

Constant Contact is especially great for solopreneurs and small businesses, standing out for their ease of use.

Some things I find great about Constant Contact: you’ll get unlimited emails, built-in social media sharing tools, list segmentation, various integrations, marketing service and calendar, and access for up to three users.

Plus, they include anchors like a drag-and-drop email editor and visually appealing templates that can be personalized.

Their basic plan allows for only one automation, but the Email Plus plan also includes sequential automation for drip campaigns, surveys & polls, coupons, online donations, and subject line a/b testing.

Another benefit to Constant Contact is their simple yet effective website builder that comes with free hosting, unlimited storage, and a blog that connects with your email list.

Though Constant Contact may not be as sophisticated as something like HubSpot, they’re definitely a solid email marketing platform, as well as one of the most affordable.

While there’s no free plan, Constant Contact does offer a free trial to send up to 100 emails. And, the lite plan starts at $12 per month, increasing with the number of subscribers.

With the advanced plans, you’ll be able to create multi-email automations with behavioral triggers when you’re ready to scale your marketing strategies.

And when it comes to customer support, all plan levels come with it, which includes live chat, phone calls, email, community support, and an ample knowledge base.

Check out Constant Contact here!

Email Marketing Software #13: Brevo

Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) is a great option for those on a budget. Some key things that differentiate them are that they put their focus on streamlining workflow, and they boast deliverability rates of up to 98%.

Brevo is also an email marketing tool that’s well-programmed for triggered or transactional emails—email messages triggered by events, interactions, or preferences of the client making a transaction.

Their range of features and pricing plans make it a good choice for solopreneurs all the way up to bigger businesses. The platform allows users to use email marketing, SMS marketing, and live chats and can function as a CMR.

Brevo’s features are pretty typical among the best email marketing services—they offer:

Segmentation
Automation
Invoicing
A/B testing
Sign-up forms
Landing pages
Ad integration

Their intuitive drag-and-drop design tool, email personalization, and mobile preview make for a user-friendly experience to start out with. And, the platform’s origin as a triggered automation platform provides ample room to scale your business.

Brevo also offers customer support via email for the free account users, with phone support reserved for the people who sign up for the higher tiers.

The free plan offers a wide range of features to interact with unlimited subscribers up to 300 times per day. And their business plan starts at only $18 per month, increasing proportionally with your subscriber count.

Email Marketing Software #14: MailerLite

MailerLite is particularly great for startups and ecommerce businesses.

They’re not the most high-tech email marketing service, but they’re super easy to use and cover all the important bases, especially dependable deliverability.

MailerLite integrates with Shopify, WooCommerce, PayPal, SendOwl, Coupon Carrier, and EasyStore. You can drop products from your eCommerce platform directly into your emails and integrate your POS system; you can also create as many forms and landing pages as you want for free with the Free Forever Plan, which goes up to 1,000 subscribers.

MailerLite’s other features include:

A/B testing
WordPress
Landing pages
Sign-up forms
Automation and advanced segmentation
Campaign reports
A free website
Surveys
Landing pages
And more

They were definitely built with beginners in mind, and if there’s any confusion, all accounts have access to their knowledge base with video tutorials and 24/7 email support.

Premium accounts will have access to their live chat support and some additional features, like a logo remover, newsletter templates, promotional pop-ups, clickmaps—a heatmap that shows where people click to track engagement, and auto resend—a tool that automatically resends unopened messages.

Once you’ve gained 1,000 subscribers, you’ll be automatically upgraded to a premium account at just $10 a month.

Email Marketing Software #15: Keap

First and foremost a customer relationship management (CMR) software, Infusionsoft, which is now known as Keap, has been around for a while.

I’m including it in this list as an alternative for businesses who are ready for a little bit more. Keap isn’t cheap to start, so this is a good option for those who are already making consistent sales.

Keap helps its users organize and analyze all of their client data in one place; they also have a whiteboard tool that can help you envision your entire campaign with all of its components from start to finish.

Their Lite plan offers behavior-triggered automation, text and email marketing, quotes, invoices and payment receiving capabilities, reports, and reminders. And with their Pro and Max plans, you’ll have the ability to create landing pages, sales funnels, and check forms, and the ability to use A/B testing and other analytics.

Keap also offers some integrations, notably with WordPress, Leadpages, QuickBooks, and Zapier.

As far as customer support goes, they provide 24/7 live chat and phone support during certain hours. Plus, their team will help you to migrate from other platforms for free. But, of course, once you get there and finish the 14-day free trial, it’s not cheap.

To get the entire Keap software platform it will cost you $299 per month.

The bottom line here is that Keap is more than just an email marketing tool; they’re an all-in-one CRM platform—comparable to HubSpot—for higher-level businesses who are ready to organize and level up their client experience to convert more paying customers.

Learn more about Keap here!

Email Marketing Software #16: Drip

If you’ve started an online store or moved your brick-and-mortar shop online, you’ll definitely want to consider Drip. Drip is considered by many to be one of the best email marketing software platforms, specifically for eCommerce businesses and entrepreneurs.

Drip defines its service in terms of three simple categories: customizable forms; email, SMS, and automation; and segmentation and reports.

Visual automation and reporting dashboards help Drip users really gain insight into their customer’s habits and preferences. And automation tools, landing pages and sales funnel, make it even easier to convert interested shoppers into paying clients.

Behavior-triggered emails and CTA’s will also help you to make sure you don’t lose out on a potential sale—for example, directing certain demographics to specific items that are more relevant to them or following up with a shopper who abandoned his cart.

Drip offers integration with all of the major eCommerce software, plus over 100 other tools.

Plans start at $39/ mo for up to 2,500 email subscribers and reach $2,000 for 180K subscribers. If you want to include SMS marketing, this price increases a little bit depending on how many texts you plan to send per month. If you think you might grow to 10M subscribers, you can talk to an expert.

Get the complete low down on Drip here.

My top email marketing service recommendation

As you learned at the beginning of this epic guide to email marketing, when I started my first two online businesses in 2008, I didn’t create an email list. That was a huge mistake! Thankfully, it was one I eventually corrected.

Next, I’ll take you on a little journey from my earliest email marketing days to the present, and tell you about the email service providers that have been an integral part of that journey—including the one I use and recommend today.

Getting my start with email marketing services via AWeber

In 2009, after trying to grow my businesses without an email list, I finally got my head on straight and signed up with AWeber, an email service provider (ESP) that a number of my online business friends had recommended.

Almost immediately, I started seeing returns on my investment.

I learned how to get a sign-up form up on my site, and I dropped my first one on the homepage of one of my first businesses, GreenExamAcademy.com. There were no giveaways or lead magnets as opt-in incentive. The only thing I offered was my “exclusive newsletter,” although I quickly added copy to include “exclusive deals on my study guides and LEED-related products.”

Seven days later, I had built a list of just over 200 people. I sent a broadcast email which included a link to my ebook, The LEED AP Walkthrough, and a $5 coupon code that expired within twenty-four hours.

My very first ebook, which I sold to my email list using AWeber.

Within a day of sending that email, fifty-three people had purchased the book for $24.95, grossing just over $1,300 in sales with one single email to my list of 200 people.

It was the most money I’d ever made in a single day in my life, and it blew me away. This email thing actually worked!

A couple of months later, I discovered the power of having an autoresponder series—a series of pre-written emails that are sent automatically and sequentially to subscribers after they sign up.

I experimented with creating a short three-email series, which was sent over the course of seven days after people subscribe.

Email 1, sent immediately after someone subscribed, was about how to get started studying for the exam, giving people all of the background information they needed to know before getting their feet wet with the material.

Email 2, sent a day later, pitched my ebook study guide. I promoted it as everything they needed to know to pass the LEED exam, conveniently packaged into a printable PDF file and delivered immediately upon purchase. The link in the email sent people to my sales page, which had a lot more information on the features and benefits of the product.

Email 3, sent to subscribers one week after subscribing, shared an affiliate link to a set of practice exams sold by another company I partnered with.

Apparently, the experiment worked very well because sales started to increase month after month, parallel to the growth of my email list!

Next Stop on the Email Marketing Platform Search: Infusionsoft

Things had been going well with AWeber and my basic autoresponder series. For years, the same email list and autoresponder series worked its magic, and I didn’t touch the copy or add any more emails to the series until the exam changed in 2012.

But there was untapped potential.

As a beginner marketer who tried to do everything himself, I didn’t have the tools or knowledge required to track my sales data very well. I was intimidated by all of the fancy tools out there that could possibly help with tracking and conversions. And I didn’t want to break what already seemed to be working.

I was pretty happy with the results of building my list on GreenExamAcademy.com, and with AWeber as an email service provider.

But I was also starting to outgrow AWeber. I needed access to more powerful tools that could help me track my sales and conversions. I was also becoming frustrated with some elements of the software. With AWeber, if the same person was on multiple lists, they counted more than once, which meant I was paying for them more than once.

So I took the next step in my email marketing journey, which involved migrating my list to Infusionsoft (now Keap).

Infusionsoft, I discovered, is much more than an email service provider. It’s a complete small business CRM (customer relationship management) and automation tool.

That’s one of the things about Infusionsoft—it’s so powerful and there are so many possibilities with it that it can easily become overwhelming.

And that’s what happened to me. Infusionsoft was one of the most powerful software tools I’d ever tried to use, but that power came at a steep price, which was confusion.

At points, it got so bad that I had to reach out to individual friends who were using Infusionsoft to get answers. Many were kind enough to help me out, and almost all of them said Infusionsoft took a while to get used to but was worth the initial struggle.

I was starting to feel like an idiot just trying to get my email service provider to do the things I needed it to do.

When I’d finally start to get the hang of things, I’d realize that I’d wasted so much time trying to figure things out on my own that I didn’t have much time left to actually set things up. I just wanted to focus on producing content and writing my book again. I was feeling frustrated.

Then I started to run into issues with my emails not being delivered. Even after asking for help from an expert on the Infusionsoft team, we couldn’t find a suitable answer for why this was happening.

I was nearing the end of my rope. Although it was an incredibly powerful email solution, the more I looked into what I was trying to accomplish, and the amount of time and expertise I had to dedicate to making it work, the closer I got to dropping Infusionsoft as my email service provider.

Cutting my losses, and stumbling onto ConvertKit's email marketing tools

With Infusionsoft, perhaps I’d just overshot and started using something that was way beyond what I needed. But whatever the case may be, I knew I had to look for another solution—a simpler one—and I needed to find it quickly.

Although there were literally hundreds of other email service providers out there, I started with my network and reached out to a friend who I knew had started an email service provider of his own called ConvertKit (now Kit). I met Nathan Barry for coffee in downtown San Diego a couple weeks later, and after catching up for a little while, he said to me, “Hey, if Infusionsoft doesn’t work out for you, let me know, and we can see how you might be able to use ConvertKit.”

We parted ways that day, and although I had yet to see a demo of ConvertKit at that point, the seed had been planted.

I was still using Infusionsoft, but I was frustrated with it, so I reached back out to Nathan to see how ConvertKit was doing. I wasn’t surprised to hear that the company was experiencing constant growth month after month. New features were being added on a regular basis, and, after a couple of side conversations with other users, I was happy to hear extremely positive reviews.

Then Nathan demoed the software for me over Skype, and I was blown away.

His talent for user interface design was the first thing I noticed. Everything just made sense to me. In five minutes, he was able to demonstrate and teach me all of the important things I needed to know.

Five minutes!

I asked Nathan several more questions, and he took me deeper into the software to show me some cool automation tools and how tagging and segmentation worked. He also took me into the analytics and even some of the early integrations ConvertKit had created with other companies’ tools.

I was sold. I knew what my next step was going to be: making the move from Infusionsoft to ConvertKit.

The Final Hurdle: Making the email marketing platform migration

When Nathan and I sat down for coffee that day in San Diego, one of my worries about him going into this space was the process of migrating people’s email lists. It’s not usually easy to migrate an email list—it’s a headache, to be honest.

I think I remember saying to Nathan that day, “I wish it could just be done for me.”

And that’s exactly what happened. The migration of my email list from Infusionsoft to ConvertKit took less than a day, courtesy of the ConvertKit team, and it was completely hands off on my part.

Soon, I was up and running with ConvertKit, and the shift couldn’t have been easier.

Shortly after I started sending emails with ConvertKit, Mindy, my team member who’d been in charge of handling the email list migration, sent me this message over Slack:

“Now that we’ve switched to ConvertKit, I’ve seen emails from users saying ‘Oh, you’re sending out emails again. I had wondered why you stopped.”

I hadn’t stopped sending emails—Infusionsoft had stopped delivering them.

All the emails Infusionsoft wasn't delivering for me.

With ConvertKit, normalcy had been restored, and I started to feel good about my email service provider again.

Kit: My emailing service provider of choice for nine years and counting

Ever since that day in 2015, I’ve been using Kit (ConvertKit) to manage my email list, connect with my audience, and grow my business to new heights. I’ve come to love and appreciate this tool and this company even more for what they bring to the table for email marketers.

There are several huge reasons why I love Kit and recommend it as my email service provider of choice.

First, the user interface and ease of use is unlike any other email service provider’s. Kit is easy to use, it’s intuitive, and it’s actually useful. Kit makes it really easy to see exactly what’s going on in all your campaigns, forms, and broadcasts. You can easily see and understand the trends in your email marketing performance so you can figure out what’s working and what’s not. This has always been the case with Kit. Nathan Barry, the founder of Kit, used to be a designer, and his specialty was user experience (UX).

Next, Kit continues to improve over time as more advanced features come into play. And these advanced features come without advanced prices. These features—things like segmentation, tagging, automations, ecommerce integration—are actually pretty simple to use once you understand them. These are features a lot of other tools have, but with Kit, they’re less expensive and less complicated to use.

If you want to get under the hood of ConvertKit before trying it yourself, check out this demo video I created.

There’s one more huge reason I love Kit. And it’s that they care about your success. They know that they get better when you get better.

Maybe you’ve seen or have experience with Mailchimp. Don’t get me wrong—Mailchimp can be a great platform for some folks. But the company is growing at a really fast rate, and the product is expanding beyond email marketing and evolving into a full marketing platform, including things like social media integration and advertising. This is great for Mailchimp, but what does it mean for the individual creator who wants to focus on email marketing?

The big reason I’m singling out Mailchimp is it’s always been a competitor to Kit. For a long time, Mailchimp was thought of as the ideal email service for beginning entrepreneurs, thanks to their free plan if you have fewer than 500 subscribers. But I would guess that very few people who get the free account actually go above 500 email subscribers. Why? If you get something for free, you’re likely to just let it sit because there’s no incentive to grow your list. But if you’re spending even a small amount every month on a platform that will help you grow your business, that’s skin in the game that will inspire you to take action.

That’s where Kit stands out. They offer a free plan for up to 10,000 subscribers and you’ll have skin in the game. Just as importantly, Kit provides a ton of support and education to help you get to that next level. The help section of the Kit site provides a ton of articles on everything from beginner-level basics to advanced email strategies, data security and GDPR compliance, integrations with other platforms, and much more. The Kit team is interested in your email marketing success. They’re here to help you learn, grow, and succeed.

Try Kit for a month and see if you agree

Kit simply makes it really easy to do email marketing. And if you want to get a 30-day free trial of Kit, simply go to smartpassiveincome.com/kit.

And if you’re using another email service provider and have over 5,000 subscribers, Kit offers a concierge service that will migrate your entire email system for free. That includes not just your email list, but even automations you already have in place with your existing provider.

So there you have it. Kit is beautifully designed, it’s ridiculously easy to use, and it makes your analytics simple to understand. It also comes with higher-level features like segmentation and tagging, so it’s perfect for users at all levels with all kinds of needs.

There’s so much you can do with Kit, and Kit is adding new capabilities every day to make your email marketing experience even better. I’ve found so much success already with Kit, and I recommend it wholeheartedly for you too, even if you’re just starting out.

Again, to try it out free for 30 days, just visit smartpassiveincome.com/kit.

[Full Disclaimer: Pat Flynn is a compensated advisor and SPI Media is affiliate for Kit. We will earn a commission, at no extra cost to you, if you purchase through this link.]

Email marketing tools FAQ

What is email automation?

Email automation is a method of creating emails in advance to automatically send to specific recipients when a specific event occurs.

For example, think about when you sign up for someone’s newsletter, and you immediately get a welcome email in return. There’s no person on the other end who’s scrambling to type out a response: it’s automated. A rule and message were set in advance that stipulated, “when someone fills out this sign-up form, I want this specific email to send to them.”

Email automation is incredibly valuable; it helps you send timely, personalized communication, helping to create meaningful results.

Can you send bulk marketing emails with a Gmail account?

No, a free Gmail account limits you to a maximum of 100 addresses per email, capping your ability to send bulk emails.

What are the top high-volume email marketing services?

Many of the email marketing services listed offer great high-volume plans.

As far as affordability goes, Kit, Brevo, and MailerLite are some of the most budget-friendly options for high-volume email marketing services.

But keep in mind deliverability rates too. To get the most bang for your buck, AWeber, Kit, and HubSpot are some of the best software out there for dependable delivery, even with a large contact list.

Build your audience and monetize your work.

We transform beginners into pros by teaching proven methods we use ourselves. Join 100k+ creators and subscribe to our weekly Unstuck newsletter.

Free newsletter. Unsubscribe anytime.

200+ reviews

The post 16 Best Email Marketing Services: Which Emailing Software Should You Pick? appeared first on Smart Passive Income.

How to Start and Build an Email List

Pat Flynn — Fri, 31 Dec 2021 15:07:00 +0000

You're on the right page if you know you need to know how to start an email list and you want to get it done the right way—and fast.

After this step-by-step tutorial, you'll have an email list up and running, an autoresponder sequence laid out and ready to go, and even learn some more advanced stuff that'll help you stand out from your competitors, too.

Looking back at the first business I created back in 2008, not having an email list was like shooting myself in the foot. It was a huge mistake, because I sold products, but had no way of letting people—interested people —know that they existed.

Even here, on Smart Passive Income, I didn't collect my first email address until 1.5 years after I started the blog. Big mistake—and I made it twice!

That’s exactly what I want to help you with in this tutorial, because you need an email list so that you can grow your business, or even start one if you're right at the beginning stages of your online business journey.

Keep reading, and then get ready to take some notes, and take some action, too!

What is an email list?
Why email list building is essential
First, find the best email service provider
Email list building step by step video tutorials
25 pro tips on how to build an email list
Mailing list growth do’s and don’ts
Email list building tools
Your mailing list questions answered: AskPat on email list building
Grow your email list to the next level

What is an email list?

Put simply, an email list is a collection of subscribers who choose to receive content and updates from you via, you guessed it, email.

Sometimes people call email lists “subscribers lists” or “mailing lists.”

You can start an email list or grow your existing email list in several ways that we’ll cover later on.

First, let’s take a look at why email list building is essential for your online business.

Why email list building is essential

As much as email might seem like an internet marketing dinosaur, email marketing to this day brings the highest return on investment (ROI) for many businesses in the US according to the Direct Marketing Association.

For every $1 spent on email marketing, the average expected return is $42.

Regardless of the size of your business, prospects on an email list are vital for successful marketing campaigns.

Using the right email marketing software, you can get useful information such as email open rate, click-through rate and conversion rate to help you get real, data-driven insights into what works best for your business and audience.

Although a solid ROI is a great enough reason for me to recommend you adopt email list marketing, there are a few additional reasons why email list building is essential:

Email is personal

An email lands you directly in your audience members’ inboxes. There’s no ranking system or opaque algorithms here that limits your reach.

Email marketing is a direct and personal approach to communicating with your existing audience and potential customers.

Email is purposeful

People join your email list because they are interested in hearing directly from you.

You probably have them double opt-in to join as well (since you’re not building a spam list), and anyone doing that much work is definitely among the most interested in getting as much value from you as possible.

Email is targeted

Especially if you layer in sophisticated tagging and segmenting into distinct lists and groups, email marketing allows you to have a clear idea of what different parts of your audience like based on what free downloads they’ve grabbed, what pages they’ve come from, what products they’ve purchased, etc.

This allows you to deliver highly relevant offers to get better results if you spend the time to think about and cater to their different needs.

Your email list is your own

Unlike Facebook page likes, Twitter followers, or Goggle visitors, you own the contact information in your email list.

Sometimes past social media growth campaigns and SEO efforts can go from very successful to completely shut down overnight when those platforms change their policies.

With a list of emails you’re in charge of, you’re business becomes sheltered from the changing winds of third party’s Terms of Service.

Email is a must-have for most people

There are a ton of eye-popping statistics for the number of monthly active users and total levels of engagement on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, etc.

It’s not so easy to find stats for the number of people who use email every day, but we know just from our personal experiences living in the modern world that essentially everyone on the internet has an email address since they’re needed for any platform that requires creating an account and logging in.

In a recent study by Radicati, it was found that there are around 3.8 billion active email accounts.

That’s about half of the population on Earth, and having the potential to talk to half the planet this is why most smart business owners have an email list.

Download the FREE Email Marketing Cheat Sheet

You have your email list set up, but what should your emails say? The Email Marketing Cheat Sheet teaches you exactly what to send to your list, including 10 cut-and-paste-templates for the different types of emails your audience will look forward to.

That one time my email list saved the day

In March 2013 I was in San Francisco shooting promotional video for my book, Let Go, when hackers took my website down—for an entire week. I couldn’t log in to the site. Everyone who came to the site got an error screen, and the only way I could communicate with my audience was through my email list.

The email list I had built literally saved my business for a week. I was able to keep my audience up to date, I shared podcast episodes and YouTube videos that were coming, and kept my business up and running even though my blog was completely out of commission.

Your email list is a huge asset and the experience of not being able to use my main communication tool—my blog—hammered home the benefits of having a solid email list.

How creating an email list has helped me serve others

Since 2010 when I first started my email list, I’ve learned so much. Here are a few fun facts about my email list, and how it has been crucial for my business—and how it can be crucial for yours too:

I’ve grown my email list to 200,000+ email addresses.
Email has helped me discover the top pains and problems of my audience, which can then be used to craft content and product ideas to help alleviate those pains and problems.
A single broadcast email once helped me earn over $60k in affiliate earnings.
More than $1,000,000 in total earnings can be directly attributed to my email list.
Email lists have proven to be versatile for driving new traffic to SPI by promoting new posts, and also resurfacing older posts. They also let me send out notifications when I add new information to an older post.
Automated follow-up sequences have allowed me to serve my audience with additional content that allows me to keep in contact with people over time so that I end up with higher open and click through rates.
My email segments let me send updates directly to the people on my list I know will be interested in a particular product or post, and skip notifying people who I know aren't ready for it yet.

First, find the best email service provider

Now, you may be thinking, “Why do I even need an email service provider? I’ve got a Gmail account and can just send emails to my friends and family that way.”

Here’s the thing: don’t send bulk business emails to your list through your free email service. Not only will you be breaking email marketing opt-in laws, you’ll also have no real way to grow your list.

When considering an email service provider, you’ll want to make sure you can:

Build a database of subscribers
Send emails to several people at the same time
Setup automated follow-up sequences
Place signup forms on your website and landing pages
Tag or segment your users

Signing on with an email service provider (ESP) that’s built specifically to help you manage and grow your list is incredibly important and, in my opinion, ConvertKit is the way to go. I use it currently, and it’s especially friendly to those just starting out. [Full disclosure: I am a compensated advisor and affiliate for ConvertKit.]

Also, they're offering a 30-day free trial if you get started today!

You can use the strategies and tactics you learn in this tutorial with any ESP; however I’ve personally experimented with a lot of different ESPs over the years, and I recommend ConvertKit to you because it's the one that has everything I need to grow my business, while still being very intuitive and easy to use.

You can read more about my choice to switch over to ConvertKit (from two other providers) here in this post.

As I mentioned above, I want full disclosure here: I am a compensated advisor and an affiliate for ConvertKit, but that's because I believe it is the best email product on the market for online businesses. Here are just a few reasons why I love it:

The platform is well designed and extremely easy to use. The names of the tools are clear and easy to understand: forms, automations, sequences, broadcasts, subscribers.
Emails are delivered reliably and as expected.
Their customer service team is super helpful, and they have 24 hour online chat available (a feature my team uses often when we have questions).
The autoresponder sequences are easy to implement.
It comes with powerful tagging and segmentation features.
Visual automations make it easy to create complex “if this, then that” rules.
It’s extremely easy to make changes and updates. For example, if you decide to change a tag’s name, that name automatically updates everywhere you’re using the tag.

Now, let’s get to the tutorial videos! These videos are a completely free resource for you, and they walk you through the process of setting up your list, step-by-step, right from the start.

Here’s what we’ll be covering, video-by-video:

How to setup your list and place an opt-in form on your website.
How to start getting email subscribers, including information about creating “lead magnets.”
Advanced strategies people are using to scale the list building process.
I'll show you ho to create a winning autoresponder series.
How to send broadcast emails that get opened and clicked.
How to start segmenting and tagging your email list so you can learn even more about your subscribers.

Let’s begin!

Email list building step by step video tutorials

25 pro tips on how to build an email list

How to build an email list using email

1. Create unique content

Emails that are entertaining, informative and uniquely valuable are naturally going to be a hit with your subscribers, as they’ll look forward to receiving emails from you and be inspired to share the content with others.

When you work hard to incorporate something special into each and every email you send, word of mouth exposure through recommendations by your existing audience is just a click of the “Forward” button away.

Try to include social sharing buttons on your marketing emails and encourage current subscribers to share and forward your emails.

When they do, you’ll gain direct access to their friends, family, colleagues and networks to grow your email list.

3. Use segmented campaigns

Marketers who use segmented campaigns see as much as a 760% increase in revenue according to Campaign Monitor.

Why?

Because an email recipient is more likely to read an email that speaks to their specific needs, wants, and desires.

That’s why smart email marketers segment their list by products people buy, pages people have visited, which form they opted in from – anything that connects a subgroup within your list to a distinct form of value you can provide.

4. Breathe some life into an old email list

If you have an older email list that is almost dying, now’s the time to breathe some new life into it by creating a fresh, engaging re-opt-in message.

Encourage the people on the list to re-opt in and promise to remove all contacts who don’t respond.

It may not sound like a good idea to remove people from your list when you’re trying to grow it, but, emailing contacts that re-opt in can improve your deliverability and increase the odds of the email being shared with those outside your current subscriber base.

How to create an email list fast with new content

5. Create bonus content and lead-generation offers

Creating enticing offers like a free ebook or cheat sheet to include on dedicated landing pages or relevant blog posts is the number one way I and most others have grown our email lists.

Give visitors to your site a compelling reason to trade their email address with you and you’ll find your subscriber count rising in no time.

A more sophisticated version of the above is to create some sort of free online tool that makes life easier for those who visit your website.

You can ask for an email address upfront or do like my friend Neil Patel does with his Ubersuggest SEO tool and let people use a limited version tool first, then sign up with their email address to get the full suite.

7. Host a free giveaway

Know of a cool product or service your audience would love to have for free?

Give it away as a giveaway prize to those who participate by going to your website and signing up by providing their email addresses. Facebook and Instagram even allow you to include forms right inside their apps to make this even easier.

Just be aware that this can add a lot of not-so-interested people to your list since some people will sign up just for the freebie.

Building a specific social media campaign around an ebook or other free resource can help grow your email list.

Think about those who are just at the beginning stages of solving the kinds of problems you help people with struggle with the most and craft an offer around that.

Then promote the heck out of it on all your channels by sending people to a special landing page that just requires them to trade their email for all that juicy value.

How to grow your email list using Facebook

Facebook profile cover photos are great to call attention to something you care about – your newsletter included!

Just be sure your banner is high resolution, easy to understand in a second or two (not too much text), and clearly communicates the value you offer.

10. Place a CTA button at the top of your Facebook Business page

If you haven’t already, be sure to add a CTA button to your Facebook Business page that takes users to a landing page offering your free tool or resource in exchange for an email list sign-up.

Create posts that showcase small snippets of the value you offer in your newsletter.

This is a great way to pique interest and get your audience to join your mailing list while also enabling you to leverage content you’ve already worked hard to create!

Grow your email list using YouTube

12. Take advantage of YouTube’s engagement features

Youtube offers creators various engagement tools that encourage viewers to take additional action after watching a video.

One such tool is a video outro that either tells viewers to click over to your website or to watch more videos on your channel.

The main goal here is to generate additional engagement and value for your business, so it makes sense to add links to relevant videos or a special landing page on your website offering a relevant downloadable or guide.

Place a link to your newsletter sign-up landing page in your Youtube channel header.

This image is front and center on your profile and isn’t easily missed, so placing a key CTA link here calls a lot of attention to your best offer.

14. Promote your emails in your video descriptions

Youtube video descriptions should include details and keywords related to your video content to give viewers an idea of what to expect and help you rank in YouTube’s search engine.

But you can also promote your other social channels and value channels here with mentions and links – email lists included!

Grow your email list using Instagram

15. Include a CTA in your Instagram bio

Your Instagram bio is a great place for your audience to find information about you and your business.

Add a CTA in your bio that grabs attention and include a link to your email sign-up form.

Share posts dealing with content that your audience is interested in and try to get them to click on the CTA in your bio.

If you offer products, you can post about how to use the product and then promise to deliver more information if they click on the link in your bio and sign up.

Or when you’ve got a juicy new piece of content in your latest email, tease it in a post then tell your followers they’ll get the full details if only they sign up for your email list.

Instagram Business profiles with more than 10K followers can add a clickable link to their stories, which is the perfect spot to place a link to your standard sign-up page or another offer that requires an email address.

18. Add an email button to your business profile

Adding an email button to your business profile is a more direct way to collect the emails of your followers by giving customers a chance to reach out for support or to ask questions.

Once satisfied you can send them a “want to join my email list” follow-up to keep growing!

Grow your email list using LinkedIn

Share links to your sign-up pages after having a conversation with members of your audience on LinkedIn

This way you’re giving customers a chance to continue the conversation and interaction

Links can be placed in InMail messages, comment threads or personal one-on-one messages.

Don’t forget to post snippets on your email newsletter on LinkedIn!

Let your audience know that if they sign up, they’ll unlock more value from you by getting access to your best info.

21. Publish links to gated offers

Share posts containing high-quality information that your audience can benefit from, right on LinkedIn and encourage them to sign up for more on the topic or special offers.

You can also post links in relevant LinkedIn group discussions (just make sure your offer is in line with the topic or issue being discussed and that the group is okay with relevant promotional links).

How to build an email list for free with your website

22. Ask visitors for feedback on your content

Those who are most passionate about the topics you cover love to discuss them.

Obviously comment sections of blogs are a go-to for this, but you can also include the occasional “email me your thoughts” Call to Action to create a stronger connection with your audience and build your email list!

23. Create short lead-capturing forms

It may be tempting to create lead-capturing forms to collect as much information as possible, but adding too many fields on the form can create too much friction and reduce your lead captures.

If you don’t absolutely need more, try to create short forms with just 2 or 3 fields like name, email, and message.

Once you’ve gotten the conversation started in their inbox, you can collect more later if needed.

24. Add links to offers that collect email addresses

Be sure to place CTAs on relevant pages and posts of your website that link to special offers that visitors can benefit from if they sign up.

Secret ninja hack: your About page is a great place for your best offer as it gets a lot of traffic from the people most interested in you!

25. Include testimonials with your subscription forms

Ask your existing subscribers to share what they love most about your content, then post the best ones on your sign-up page and in your subscription forms.

This will give potential subscribers a better sense of the genuine value you offer and make them a lot more comfortable sharing their inbox with you.

Build your audience and monetize your work.

We transform beginners into pros by teaching proven methods we use ourselves. Join 100k+ creators and subscribe to our weekly Unstuck newsletter.

Free newsletter. Unsubscribe anytime.

200+ reviews

Mailing list growth do’s and don’ts

It's not about the money, it's about the people

Before we get into the meat of the tutorial here, a couple of things:

Thanks for reading through this, because seriously—most people miss this stuff and it's so important for your long-term success in email marketing.
So many people in the online business space will tell you that “The money is in the list.” While that’s not entirely untrue, I happen to think that it’s just a small (but still important) part of the picture.

You see, I believe that the money is in the list because that’s where the people are. That may seem obvious, but let’s break it down a little bit more.

When you create an email list, you’re allowing a group of fellow human beings to come together in one place where they expect to hear from you. You have a huge opportunity—responsibility, even—to provide value to them. When someone essentially says, “Hey, I like you enough to give you my email address,” you owe it to them to offer up everything you can to ensure that they make progress, stay informed, or are entertained.

It’s not all about money and it’s not all about the numbers, either.

I have so many people reach out and tell me that they feel discouraged with their small email lists. But, since we’ve already established that these are actual human beings, I like to take a much more visual approach. When you think about the 50 or 100 people on your list, think about having that many people in a single room to hear you speak. They’ve all shown up to hear whatever it is you have to say.

It can be frightening to think about, right? But that is exactly how I think email lists should be treated. When you think about it this way, you can begin treating your email list more like people in a room who are there waiting to hear what you have to say and, ultimately, continually deciding if you and the information you provide is still worth being in the room for. This approach will help you craft effective emails, build trust, and remember to treat your list with respect.

And, if generating an income is one of your goals, you’re likely to do very well.

Do provide lots of ways to opt-in

Make it easy for people to subscribe to your email list from as many pages on your site as make sense.

An easy way to do this is to include a form in your website’s footer so people who care most about your content (aka they make it to the bottom of a page) will have the opportunity to get more from you – wherever they may be in their journey through your content.

Don’t send emails without permission

All email marketing should be opt-in, permission-based.

Don’t buy email lists and never dump a list of contacts you get from outside of your opt-in forms into your newsletter list without first sending an opt-in email.

Failing to do the above is a quick way to end up in spam folders and potentially end up blacklisted by the best email marketing services.

Do give subscribers a way out

Related to the above, give your subscribers an easy way to opt out of receiving your emails with an Unsubscribe link in each and every piece you send.

Not only is this critical for ensuring you’re only landing in the inboxes of people who really find value in what you offer (which is the ethical way to treat email marketing), it’s also essential for avoiding getting your domain flagged as a source of spam – which can lead to reduced deliverability and even getting kicked off of your email marketing platform.

Don’t discourage replies

Email communication from entrepreneurs like you should always feel personal and approachable to build the best relationship possible with your audience.

Don’t make your audience feel like you’re some mega corporation that’s cold and impersonal by using an email address like donotreply@yourcompanyname.com. Instead send your emails from yourname@yourwebsite.com and ask for replies at least every once in a while to keep your relationship growing!

Email list building tools

Wondering what cool software you can use to help automate your email list growth?

Here are a few top email list-building tools to further help you build a solid email marketing list.

Email marketing software tools

1. Klaviyo

Klaviyo is an email service provider designed to cater specifically to eCommerce businesses.

Their services include A/B testing, list segmentation, intuitive marketing automation and others.

Klaviyo also offers a wide range of integrations with some of the biggest eCommerce platforms like Shopify, WooCommerce to affiliate marketing platforms, social media channels, etc, designed to boost email opt-in rates.

2. Omnisend

Omnisend is another automated marketing platform for eCommerce.

They have a wide array of features to help build email lists including popups, landing pages, static forms, and more.

All the forms are fully customizable so you can collect other bits of information like phone numbers and SMS opt-in consent.

3. MailChimp

MailChimp is one of the top names in email marketing with a ton of features you can take advantage of when building your email list.

They offer complete customization and personalization of the emails that you send out, and include easy segmentation features as well so subscribers can be categorized into relevant campaigns based on their behavior.

4. ConvertKit

My go to email marketing tool (and an affiliate partner of mine) is ConverKit.

Built specifically for online content creators and businesses, their super easy to use suite of tools is perfect for musicians, authors, podcasters, and coaches looking to build a connection through through their email lists – without having to spend a ton of time learning to use their email marketing software.

Check out my full ConvertKit review here!

Landing page builders

5. Leadpages

Landing pages that are specifically designed to drive email opt-in rates are effective in growing your email list.

Leadpages is a top landing page builder that offers several newsletter sign-up templates designs to increase opt-in rates.

Their templates consist of interactive elements like countdown times, social proof, etc and they offer detailed analytics reports with real-time conversion optimization tips to help you maximize your conversion rates.

6. Instapage

Instapage is another landing page builder with over 100 optimized page templates – including email subscription pages.

Their simple drag and drop builder makes it easy to add items like buttons, headlines, images, videos and various forms to your pages to customize your offers and optimize your conversion rates.

Online survey and quiz builders

7. Typeform

Interactive content is a great way to boost lead generation efforts, which is where survey software like Typeform comes in.

Their web-based platform that specializes in providing interactive content whether it’s online form building, online surveys and quizzes – all without writing a single line of code.

And of course, they integrate with email marketing software and CRMs so you can tie your quizzes and surveys into your existing email subscriber lists.

8. Outgrow

Outgrow is an interactive content creation tool you can use to build online quizzes, polls, surveys, calculators and more.

Contests and giveaway apps

9. Rafflecopter

Rafflecopter is a unique mailing list-building tool that is focused on creating contests and giveaways on your website, social media, and email lists.

This email list-building tool include custom theme designs, email platform integrations and the ability to track metrics like the number of entries coming from all of your social media platforms.

Giveaways can be a great way to collect emails for your list since it’s common to ask for an email in exchange for entry.

Just be aware that you’ll get a lot of freebie chasers who aren’t really interested in your content if you promote your giveaway too far outside of your existing audience.

Overlay and pop-up shops

10. Sumo

Sumo is a free, super easy-to-use pop-up email capture tool used on over 906,350 sites.

Fully customizable, analytics included, ecommerce ready – Sumo’s a great, easy place to start if you want to experiment with email capture pop-ups without spending a ton of time messing with tools.

11. HelloBar

HelloBar is another pop-up tool that can help speed up the growth of your email list by allowing you to create exit-intent popups, timed popups, floating sign bars and others.

Ecommerce retailers can benefit greatly from these to recapture visitor attention by offering exclusive discounts, access to presales, etc.

HelloBar also provides access to a team of copywriters that can help review your website’s goals and suggest optimizations geared towards increasing your conversion rates.

12. Thrive Leads

Thrive Leads is an email list-building tool that offers ten types of signup forms including traditional options like embedded and inline form as well as Screen Filler Overlays, Content Locks and Scroll Mats.

The latter cover the entire page to remove any distractions so visitors' attention can be focused on taking action like subscribing.

Thrive Leads also includes a dashboard that reports important metrics so you can track the performance of your campaigns right inside your WordPress Dashboard.

Your mailing list questions answered: AskPat on email list building

The first 1000 episodes of the AskPat Podcast featured lots of questions on email list building. I am featuring many of those questions here because I think they’re issues you’re likely to encounter as you work through the advice above.

Promise me one thing: when you hit a question or a problem, you won’t let it stop you. Questions will come up. A great place to ask those questions is in the Smart Passive Income Community Facebook group. This closed Facebook group is made up of both new and established online entrepreneurs from the SPI audience. It’s welcoming and supportive—the perfect place to find help to keep you moving.

AP 0062: How do you get people from Facebook into your email list?

AP 0073: Email Marketing: How often should you send an email to your email list?

AP 0128: Is it worth starting an email list, even though I don’t have many visitors?

AP 0463: Why aren’t people subscribing to my email list?

AP 0574: I’m a musician. How can I grow my email list?

AP 0608: What should I do when my competitor joins my email list?

AP 0651: What content do I send to my podcast’s email list?

AP 0684: Should I worry about spam bots filling my email list?

AP 0800: How should I reach out to my audience to start growing my email list?

AP 0880: Is it better to have people find your email list organically or to use pop-ups?

Grow your email list to the next level

As my dear friend Amy Porterfield says, “The energy of your business is directly tied to your email list.”

Don't make the same mistakes I made. I recommend downloading the Email Marketing Cheat Sheet, my free ebook designed to make sure you never run out of email ideas.

The Email Marketing Cheat Sheet is designed to give you valuable insights into building a strong email practice. You’ll receive:

A playbook designed to help you write ten different styles of emails.
Advice on when to send each email style and what the call to action should include.
A strong understanding of the difference between broadcast and autoresponder emails, so that you send the right email at the right time.
My rules for what makes for a good email.

I want the energy of your business to thrive, and it’s why I recommend you read the Email Marketing Cheat Sheet. It’s free!

Click “Download It” below to get it sent straight to your inbox.

Download the FREE Email Marketing Cheat Sheet

Thanks! You are why I'm here

Thank you so much for reading this tutorial and watching the videos. I sincerely hope it has helped you to start and grow your own email list.

You are why I am here. Without your support and passion, I wouldn’t be able to do what I do. So thank you for that!

If this tutorial has helped you in some way, I’d love to hear about it. And, if you’d like to help me out, please share this tutorial so others can benefit too!

I appreciate you! Cheers!

The post How to Start and Build an Email List appeared first on Smart Passive Income.

You searched for segmentation | Smart Passive Income

7 Email Marketing Mistakes from High Earners (and How to Fix Them)

7 Email Marketing Mistakes from High Earners (and How to Fix Them)

About the event

May 12 @ 11:00 am – 12:00 pm PDT

Who can attend

To register

Join the community

May 12 @ 11:00 am – 12:00 pm PDT

Pat Flynn

Kit Review 2024

What is Kit?

Email marketing strategy: Why you need an ESP

Kit features

Sending emails

Collecting new subscribers

Learning about your subscribers

Growing your income

Connecting with and supporting other creators: The Creator Network

Expanding the platform’s capabilities: App store

Start your Kit account — free for your first 10,000 subscribers!

From “ConvertKit” to “Kit”: Behind the rebrand

Kit pricing

Kit Newsletter Plan

Kit Creator Plan

Kit Creator Pro Plan

Benefits of Kit

The best email service provider for new entrepreneurs.

Kit benefits from the user’s standpoint

Kit benefits for your audience

Drawbacks of Kit

Our big takeaway on Kit

Kit & email marketing: More resources to read, listen & learn

How to Get Your First 1,000 Subscribers Fast

How to Get Your First 1,000 Subscribers Fast

About the event

December 12, 2024 @ 10:00 am – 11:00 am PST

Who can attend

To register

Join the community

Pat Flynn

SPI + Kit 1000 Email Addresses Webinar

How to Get Your First 1,000 Subscribers Fast

Quickly grow your email list with quality leads!

During this live training, you'll learn:

RSVP to receive event reminders

Email Marketing Magic

Email Marketing Magic

The next Email Marketing Magic Accelerator runs from June 2 – July 13. Sign up now!

Accelerate

Learn what to write and when to send it

Ready to learn email marketing?

Learn to use Kit

Meet Your Course Instructor

Email Marketing Magic Course Outline

Resources & Tools for Entrepreneurs

Powerful tools of the trade for online entrepreneurs

Important Disclosure: Please Read Before Proceeding

Looking for podcasts and articles instead?

Our business runs on these platforms

Circle

Kit — formerly called ConvertKit

Relay

ScoreApp

Fusebox

Taplio

Poppy

Rockbase

Aura

RightMessage

Other cool tools we use across a variety of needs…

Business Platforms

Aura

Guideline

Gusto

Help Scout

ZenBusiness

Collaboration Technology

Dropbox

HeySummit