Backend Sales

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!