Case Study: Making Affiliate Commissions Through Social Media Marketing

This January, I spent a bunch of time & effort promoting an online education program – a program that I have personally benefited from – as an affiliate.

I share this experience with you, in full transparency, to give you an example of how I have applied the skills I learned from my online business teacher Stuart – skills he teaches in his Authority Marketing programs – to make money online through affiliate marketing.

Who & what did I promote?

Throughout a 3-week period in January 2023, I took part in a promotional “launch” event for a personal finance education product that I am a student of.

I invited friends, clients, previous customers, followers of my social media channels and my email subscribers to take part in a series of live online workshops that my “money mentor” Ann ran, called the “World of Wealth Workshops”.

For those who chose to attend, these free online workshops enabled Ann to share valuable knowledge from her subject area (financial freedom & wealth creation), teach valuable lessons about investing, and invite attendees to join her paid program if they were interested in gaining the skills to put into practise what she taught.

If anyone I personally referred to these workshops went on to join her paid program, I would receive a % of the sale as a referral commission.

This is the essence of being an affiliate – referring people to products & services, and being rewarded with a % of the sale price – known as a referral, or affiliate, commission – for any of your referrals that go on to purchase.

So, how much money did I make from it?

As a result of my marketing & promotion efforts, I generated $898.72 in affiliate commissions.

And on top of that, as a bonus for making sales, I was awarded a VIP ticket to attend Ann’s live 2-day event later this year – worth $1,197.

And what did it take to earn that?

Over the course of 3 weeks, I…

• built a registration funnel to get interested people on my email list
• set up some tracking links to direct people to the registration funnel
• shared the links via my social media channels (4 Instagram posts, 45 Instagram stories, 15 Facebook posts, 53 Facebook Stories & 1 YouTube video)
• wrote & sent 35 emails to my list to encourage them to register & consume the live workshops and check out the paid program
• had one Zoom call with an interested prospect (who went on to purchase)

I worked intensely on this project over the course of the 3 weeks, including evenings & weekends (around my regular weekly work commitments).

It didn’t cost me any money directly to promote Ann, because I leveraged resources (email list & social media channels) and software (website funnel builder & email autoresponder) that I already use for my various online businesses.

Ann & her team also provided resources (graphics & email copy) and support during the launch to their affiliates.

Was it a success?

I set out with the aim of making 10 sales, and made 1.

From an email list of 2755 people at the start, I got 133 subscribers interested in the workshops. Of those, at least 47 people registered for the workshops, and one purchased.

Although my conversion rates & sales fell below my (optimistic) targets, I know why and I know what I can do in the future to improve.

Plus there are a bucket-load of positives to take away from the experience:

• I generated leads for my email list – and made a sale – purely from content I created myself, that I shared with a network I have built by myself… without a penny spent on advertising
• I have faced my fear of writing emails! And proven I can write copy that converts to clicks
• I have learned how to segment my email list and move people along the buying chain
• I have built a stronger relationship with my email subscribers by giving value
• I have satisfaction knowing I am succeeding in my mission “to inspire, educate & empower people”
• I have a bunch of content I can reuse if and when I decide to promote this program again
• I will take what I’ve learnt and use it to improve my performance as an affiliate marketer & influencer for current & future promotions

So for me, personally, I view the whole experience as a success with a lot of takeaways.

What motivated me to participate in this launch event?

1. Affiliate Commissions

I’d be lying if I said the hope of earning affiliate commissions was not a motivating factor. Of course it was – after all, that’s kinda the point of being an affiliate marketer.

But, the fact I’ve already recommended Ann & her programs to friends, two of whom have joined her programs on my recommendation for which I received zero financial kick-back, hopefully proves that I’m not in the business of recommending things purely in return for cash.

2. Adding Value to my audience

One of the biggest problems people on my email list (people who want to start an online business) tell me they have is “I don’t have enough money”.

This was a big reason I committed a lot of time & energy to promoting Ann’s workshops, particularly to the people on my email list – because I believed what she teaches about income generation & her money mindset insights would benefit many of them.

I knew that they would get huge value from her free workshops, regardless of whether or not they decided to go on to purchase the paid program.

So it was great to see their comments saying how Ann had given them ideas & inspiration they would take back into their own day-to-day lives.

3. Fulfilling on my personal mission

The third reason I felt motivated to share Ann’s teachings is because it’s also a great way to fulfil on my own personal mission – which is to educate, inspire & empower people, particularly around the subject of money, wealth & income generation, so they can live a fun, fulfilling & independent lifestyle.

Because I believe not having to worry about money frees us up to enjoy & fully experience life.

Giving people the opportunity to become educated about money – a subject that we’re rarely taught about and so few people really understand – is something I find that hugely satisfying & fulfilling.

The fact I can reach people all over the world via social media & email is why online marketing is hugely attractive to me. I can reach the people who need, and are looking for, the information I can share – people located way outside my personal network or local area.

4. Organic Marketing – a new approach for me

Up until now, I’ve only used my affiliate marketing skills to run paid adverts on YouTube for a program that’s available all year round.

This time, I adopted a different marketing approach: Organic marketing, for a program that’s only open for registration for 2 weeks a year.

Instead of running paid adverts, I chose to test out social media for lead generation, using my existing social media channels (Facebook, Instagram & YouTube). These are channels I’ve built up gradually over the last 4 years, without investing a lot of time in them, as I never really knew what I wanted to use them for!

Organic marketing via social media is free – meaning it doesn’t cost money – but it does cost time.

.And, as I discovered, requires a distinct set of skills to operate effectively – to get attention, share links & drive traffic to my registration funnel.

5. Honing my writing & influencing skills

I viewed this whole exercise as a chance to practise two key skills an affiliate needs: writing copy & influencing people.

Writing is something I’ve traditionally struggled with (and still do), but is a key skill in communicating effectively and one I want to get better at. So writing 35 emails and 19 social media posts in a 2-week period was a real achievement!

I feel I got better, and more confident, with each one I wrote.

Being the kind of person who likes to track, measure & monitor everything I can do (so I can learn & improve by seeing what what’s effective & what’s not) I could immediately see what was working & what wasn’t and adapt quickly.

Using stats & analytics from tracking what I was doing & the impact it was having, I could create more of the types of post that were getting attention, focusing more on the platforms that were driving clicks and writing more of the kind of emails that people were opening & clicking (and less of the ones that weren’t!).

Would I do this again?

I’ll admit I found the whole process of constantly posting on social media & writing multiple emails every day (to people at different stages in the funnel) extremely intense.

While the limited time window kept me focused, which in turn helped mitigate my tendencies towards procrastination & perfectionism, being forced to create a lot of content in a short space of time created a lot of pressure & stress. Which is the exact opposite of how I want to experience life!

I also found it frustrating that the program is only open for such a short period of time. While this is an effective & commonly used sales strategy, and allows Ann to create a great experience for students who join & follow her paid program, I found that a number of my contacts – people I thought would really benefit from Ann’s teachings – were unable to attend the live workshops because they were busy with other projects at that time.

Talking to these contacts about the program now, after the event, is just frustrating because I have nothing to offer them (the workshops are no longer available) and they have to wait a whole year for another opportunity to make their own assessment.

On reflection, I prefer the idea of marketing an evergreen product, i.e. a product that’s available all-year-round. And doing it at a slightly more relaxed pace!

I’m glad I’ve taken part in this affiliate launch, and I will continue to recommend Ann & her programs fully & whole-heartedly, but as a method of generating income I personally prefer the approach of creating an automated marketing funnel that, once it’s set up, runs largely on auto-pilot – which is the Authority Marketing on Auto-Pilot method Stuart favours.

Do you have experience of a similar launch? What did you learn from the process? Share your thoughts in the Comments below!

My mission is to inspire, educate & empower people to quit the rat race & earn their income online so they can enjoy a fun, fulfilling and independent life to the full

If you’re interested in learning how to make money online through affiliate marketing, I invite you to register for a free on-demand video series where my mentor Stuart explains why it’s such a great way to generate income online, how it can be automated to generate cash-flow on auto-pilot and shows you how you can learn the skills through his online education platform.