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Scott asked a great question:
Hello,
I saw some of your posts on Digitalforums and want to let you know how much I have appreciated your insights.
I have a critically important question and am hoping you can perhaps give some advice and share your thoughts.
The question is related to becoming an affiliate for someone else’s product(s.)
One of the main problems I see with becoming an affiliate is this: you can build a list and learn valuable skills while making a small amount of money selling someone else’s product / service. However, they make all of the money on the backend after you drive a customer into their marketing funnel. In most cases, the backend is where 99% of the profit is. I saw one study where the marketer made approx. $1k on the front-end info product and approx. 200K dripping on his customer list using offline methods (all of which were brought into his marketing funnel through the front-end product which was sold exclusively through affiliates.)
So my question is this: how can one be an affiliate for someone else and still get a percentage of the backend? Or is that lost forever? I realize that you can build a list and perhaps even offer some “exclusive” bonus to them related to the high-end products…
That said, is there a way (outside of emailing your own list directly with the higher ticket offer) to become an affiliate and make a percentage on future backend products sold directly by the company you initially referred the customer to?
I do realize that another alternative would be to only sell higher priced products and forget about the smaller front-end product.. but it seems that this strategy may prove difficult as it appears as if it would be difficult to sell a higher end product without building a long term relationship (via a list or otherwise) first. Also, if they are marketing the bigger products offline I cannot figure out how to make sure I am getting paid as there are no controls in place? Is this accurate?
Anyway, I realize that this is a bit long winded but any thoughts appreciated. My goal is 10K Net per month so I feel that I will need to earn a nice percentage on relatively high ticket items to reach this level.
Thanks in advance for your time. It is sincerely appreciated.
Scott
Scott, you have some great points! As affiliates, 99% of the time, we don't make back end sales! Let's take a look at some of our options which I have used.
The most obvious and commonly used option would be to use an email capture system like Aweber. Personally I have used this to capture thousands of emails on my landing pages.
This way, you can build up a huge list of what would have been 1 time sales into a stream of reoccurring income. But I'll be honest with you on this one. I'm not the best at this method just yet. It takes a lot of skill and effort to make this method work.
Another way for you to capture backend sales is by setting up a special deal with the advertiser. Some affiliates (some hosting companies for example) will give you a nice slice of whatever business comes from that affiliate. Sweet!
The benefits of affiliate marketing
Not being able to have backend sales does seem like a pretty big problem but let's think about this.
As an affiliate, I am able to send thousands of dollars worth of customers each day. Do I ever get calls from them complaining about customer service? Do I ever get a support email (besides from this blog lol)? Nope.
The benefit to me is that I never have to deal with the customer. I stick to what I am good at, getting sales and eventually am branching out to service industries.
I do realize that another alternative would be to only sell higher priced products and forget about the smaller front-end product.. but it seems that this strategy may prove difficult as it appears as if it would be difficult to sell a higher end product without building a long term relationship (via a list or otherwise) first. Also, if they are marketing the bigger products offline I cannot figure out how to make sure I am getting paid as there are no controls in place? Is this accurate?
You'd be surprised how easy it can be to sell a high priced item to the right audience.
If someone searches "buy Kenmore refrigerator," chances are, they're ready and willing customers. The same goes with other products. If you find the right audience, you can sell anything.
Hope that helps!
[...] Original post by Jonathan Volk – Ready, Set, Super Affiliate [...]
Backend sales is beyond affiliate marketing. Like Jon says, there is a compromise between freeing yourself from customer service, inventory etc and maximising income from return business.
That’s the love of affiliate marketing if your good at it you can make a ton of cash and if your super good you can make more then what these CEO’s make and you have no over head; your business is portable; you have no customer to take care of; and etc.
The life of affiliate marketer is great, but then again if you want to build your own brand, your own name, then it will take a lot and you will have to deal with a lot of things before you get it to the “point” where it runs on your own and you don’t have to do anything.
This is very interesting. Because before I ever learned about PPC affiliate marketing and landing page AM, I studied list building/email marketing.
I think his question is a little flawed. Because if I’m not mistaken some of the biggest affiliate marketers ABSOLUTELY sell on the back end.
An example:
“The Rich Jerk” — He first started out selling a low cost, low end “make money online” product (at the time 50 or 100 bucks… now it’s like 4.95 for the same product…) Anyhow, he’s built a HUGE list, that he sends affiliate offers to quite regularly (esp. huge product launches aka Frank Kern’s not Mass Control, etc.). Effectively making affiliate marketing his back end. Sales.
And as far as I understand it. The BIGGEST AFFILIATES are those that have huge lists that they market to regularly.
The way to build a good list: to market to is to create a low cost front end alternative product. (You can even use Elance to do this cheaply.) Or you can even get an exclusive license to a product to sell for 100% of the profits as well.
Sorry for the long comment. But basically, my view is. In the long and short of it. Affiliate marketing CAN BE a great BACK END.
Yeah. In our case, we just work the best part of it. The marketing aspect. Let the others do the dirty job.
Dealing with the customers. 
Forgive me noobs question ,what exactly backend sales mean?
Terman,
A Backend sale is usually referred to as a “Bump” or, as some may know it, a “One Time Offer” (OTO), or even being able to grab more sales down the stretch…
In the Original Question, he may be referring to an Affiliate sending traffic to a Sales page, getting a sale – yet not getting additional commissions later down the road.
I can understand some frustration from this, but as Jonathan stated: LOOK AT THE BRIGHT SIDE AND CAPTURE YOUR OWN LISTS!
Look at the bright side: NO customer service, no problems dealing with the customer AT ALL… unless you really want to, through your list(s)?
Capture leads: Use aweber or getresponse to provide opt-in forms on your Website and you can capture the leads, then turn around and make a few sales on the “front end” and, later down the stretch, get more “backend” sales.
@Clint: Great comment.
Thanks.