![[QUĀY.jo]](https://theartofonlinebusiness.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/AOOB-Logo-White-150x118.png){kind=logo}
You can always turn your business’ small launches into big wins by leveraging this affiliate method we’re about to reveal today. This isn’t just your typical copying and pasting of affiliate links. Rather, it’s this system that’s guaranteed to take you to the top of any affiliate leaderboard!
That’s why we’re diving into the world of affiliate marketing with the amazing Laura Sprinkle, an Affiliate Partnership Strategist and creator of Rock Your Affiliate Program® (RYAP). She’s helped top companies establish profitable, long-term affiliate partnerships and programs.
In this episode, you’ll learn how to attract and activate the right affiliates, amplify your course promotions, and appreciate your partners for their support. Plus, stick around until the end to discover the one key factor that’s even more important than swipe files and training. Trust me, you don’t want to miss this!
If you’re looking to scale your course revenue, attract valuable affiliates, and create a supportive network for your online business, this episode is a game changer. Tune in to discover the secrets of the affiliate method and learn how to 7x your course revenue.
In this episode you’ll hear:
- The four phases of creating an effective affiliate program
- The importance of genuine connections and personalized partnership proposals
- Strategies for attracting, activating, amplifying, and appreciating your affiliates
Links & Resources:
Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie’s Links:
Laura Sprinkle’s Links:
- Visit Laura Sprinkle’s website
- Check out Rock Your Affiliate Program ®
- Listen to the Laura Sprinkle Show
Timestamps:
00:00 — Introduction
02:16 — Asking for support: the key to success
04:34 — Creating effective affiliate programs in seven steps
08:46 — Attraction and relationships as keys in recruiting affiliates
13:22 — Why sharing content authentically for personal connections matters
15:42 — Train affiliates to activate smaller audiences effectively
20:33 — Obstacles in affiliate marketing
25:27 — Continued communication with affiliate partnerships
31:46 — From poor sales to big wins
35:04 — Importance of connections in overcoming struggles.
37:48 — Appreciation: Celebrate, communicate, attract, and repeat
43:31 — Episode wrap-up
Please support the podcast by giving an honest Rating/Review for the show on iTunes!
Laura Sprinkle [00:00:00]:
We strategized. Okay, first of all, this is normal in a launch. You have to keep going. You can’t just fizzle out where you’re like, okay, this isn’t exactly going how I wanted it, so let me hide in the shadows. Let me back away. Let me not reach out and ask for support. But because I had affiliates, I did reach out, and I don’t think we changed tactics or anything. It was just like, keep going. So I kept emailing. I think I ran a Q and A the next week, and again, we ended up at think it was like 67% of sales came in on the last day.
Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:00:42]:
Well, hey, there. My name is Quajo, and I’ve been coaching with Rick for several years inside of the accelerator. If you’re wondering where’s Rick? And why is it Quajo? Well, Rick is on his sabbatical, and he has tasked me with the wonderful opportunity and honor of recording some podcast episodes for you. And you are in a super special treat today whenever you’re listening to this podcast episode, because I interview Laura Sprinkle, who’s the creator of Rocky affiliate program. Her clients have included Amy Porterfield, Todd Herman, Selena Sue, and a bunch of other names, including Brian Johnson of Heroic. Her clients altogether have made $33 million in extra launch revenue because of her affiliate training. Wow. And during the episode, she’s going to share the four phases of an affiliate launch. And a script that she shares will help either you or your affiliates rise to the top of a leaderboard and make sure to listen to the end where she shares something even more important than having all the right swipe files for your affiliates and trainings and the script that can take you to the top of the leaderboard. It’s that good. And now let’s go to the episode. Laura, what do you want to tell us? How could we use affiliates to grow our programs?
Laura Sprinkle [00:02:16]:
In so many ways? And I love that you brought it back to connections and asking for support. I think so many of us, myself included, got into being a business owner and creating a course because I’m like, I don’t want to be in corporate. I want to be independent. I want to create my own wealth. I don’t want to have caps on my income, like, all this stuff. And it’s very solo driven, right? Like, we have to be solo driven. We have to be scrappy and willing to do the things that nobody else is willing to do in order to make it as these listeners have. And there comes a limit with doing things on your own, and you are capping yourself if you are not willing to ask for support. You’re capping yourself in terms of your impact that you can make, in terms of the amount of money you can make, the freedom that you can actually have in your business as you’re growing. And so for me, affiliate programs are like 17 birds, 1 st. Right? It’s a big friggin deal. It’s having more fun in my business. It is asking for support and being able to reach out to others, not feeling so lonely, and like, I’m doing everything on my own. And it’s a super strategic way to get more qualified leads and sales in my business. So if I’ve been able to hit that six figure launch mark on my own, I’m going to be able to hit that million dollar mark when I invite other people to come on board.
Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:03:55]:
Okay, so I’m just going to have to pause you right there because I’m sure most people listening right now are like, okay, yes, we’ve had our first already five figure month. We’ve had hopefully a six figure launch by now. But that’s a big gap from going from just us and our audiences. Maybe we’re running paid ads to running an affiliate program. I know you’re going to talk about creating connections and how to ask for support, but what does that entail really setting up and how do you do it? Well.
Laura Sprinkle [00:04:34]:
It entails a lot. That’s why this is my bread and butter. And the doing it well part is really I love that you asked that as well, because so many people and I don’t blame them, but so many people are like, okay, great. I want to tap into the power of partnerships and affiliates. I think that sounds cool. I see people doing it and then they go and find a platform, whatever platform, and they set up affiliate links, and maybe they send an invite of like, hey, we just started an affiliate program. Sign up here, and then are really disappointed when that doesn’t result in mass amounts of leads and a ton more sales and like, ten x revenue growth and all these things that I have seen for our clients actually in real life. And so they’re like, where’s the money? This doesn’t work. I’d rather just continue to pay Mark Zuckerberg, which I have nothing against, running ads, obviously coming on this show, and I think that we can pay the people in our audience and our colleagues for more revenue. There’s four phases, really, to creating an affiliate program that actually works, that will actually get you those leads and sales. So the first part is really, are you attracting the right Fit affiliate partners? You can dive more into that. So attraction. Next is activation. And this is the part where a lot of folks fall off the map. So activation is between when somebody says yes and when they actually start promoting. And there’s a few different tactics and strategies that make it way more likely that people are actually going to share. It’s really easy to be like, yeah, totally, I’ll share something, but we’re busy, right? We’re busy humans. So things come up. So activation and then once people actually start promoting, we call that amplification because there’s so many ways that we get people to actually promote a little bit more than they thought they were going to and be really happy about it because they’re seeing way bigger results. We hear this all the time from affiliates for our clients of like, wow, that was so much fun. I made more than I thought I was going to. I promoted more than I thought I was going to. And then the final phase, which really just circles right back into attraction, is appreciation. So how to do payouts and all of that. So, I mean, it is like a hefty thing. And once you set it up, so attract, activate, amplify, appreciate, it becomes a system and a cycle you can use over and over and over. Like you were saying, Quajo, you just spent 10 hours this weekend creating SOPs, which no one wants to work on the weekend, and it’s putting all these systems in place that will pay you off in the long term.
Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:07:35]:
You didn’t have to air out my dirty laundry.
Laura Sprinkle [00:07:37]:
Yes.
Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:07:39]:
Especially anybody that works with me as an ad client knows that I’m not supposed to be working on Fridays. So thank you for telling everybody that he wasn’t working.
Laura Sprinkle [00:07:50]:
I was alive. It wasn’t the weekend, it was just in the evening.
Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:07:54]:
Right, and evening a weekday. Okay. All right. So I am super intrigued by what you said, especially about attraction, because I have had a course before I did the Ads agency and I know how hard it was to get people to even when I offered them a good amount of affiliate commission, to just go out and or to work with me and be an affiliate. But then the ones that did the amplification stage or the activation stage, which is funny, I feel like when you say activation, we’re talking like cloak and dagger, CIA kind of spy movie. Anyway, to get them to actually share the resources I share with them. So please jump in and tell us how we can do these four phases. Right?
Laura Sprinkle [00:08:46]:
Yeah. So I think when it comes to attraction, which is super duper important, so you might hear other people call this recruitment. I just like the way attraction sounds much better and also energetically when you set this up. Well, I have people ask me at the end of podcast interviews or when I’m out at events, I have people ask me, hey, can I be your affiliate? And we often find that with clients when they turn from, I’m going to go knock on people’s doors and recruit to I’m going to create the best program I can, and then people come to us. It also is true, right? Recruitment versus attraction. Not that you asked that, but I do think that attraction in this phase really does come down to real relationship ships. Genuine connections and a willingness to be vulnerable and ask for support, which is like a real big vulnerability for me. Which is why I believe this ended up being my calling. And my work is to teach others so that I can continue my personal growth through this process. And I will say, whether you think that you are ready to optimize your affiliate program, maybe you’ve done it before and you’re listening and you’re like, oh, I really want to go for it, or you’re like, I want to do that in the future, that’s not right for me right now. No matter where you are in your business, please be building connections and relationships because you want to be putting coins in that relationship bank way before you need to ask for the support. So I think that’s super duper important and you’re going to be able to grow your business way faster through those relationships than continuing to white knuckle it on your own. So then when you have built up these relationships over time is when I would recommend that you really ask for support. And I think people want to use all these fancy tactics and I could definitely share some attraction horror stories, if you will, of things that don’t work when it comes to attracting affiliates. And so really what works is that personal, hey, I think this would be an awesome partnership. We’re offering this commission. And you had mentioned, oh, I’ve offered really good commissions and people have said yes, and then they don’t actually promote sometimes. So I want to touch on that. And when it comes to attraction, yes, the commission is important. And I found over and over and over again across hundreds of launch that what really makes a difference in someone being excited to share and saying yes and then actually sharing and going above and beyond is not necessarily the highest commission percentage. It’s really their relationship to you and their relationship to your offer and how much they believe it can help their audience.
Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:11:53]:
Oh, really? Because, you know, I was about to ask you what is the right commission? What’s the best about? So are you going to dodge that one or is there no, I mean.
Laura Sprinkle [00:12:04]:
I’m happy to dive into it. I will say there are certain people and some of them have been my clients, adore them, but who are big names in the industry and they’ve really popularized the 50% commission. I’m not against 50% commission per se. I also don’t think that it’s 100% necessary to do 50% commission, especially when you are not already doing millions of dollars on your own and especially when you’ve got hard costs associated with your program. Like if it’s not a solely scalable digital offer, right, if you’re doing some done for you elements or things like that. I really love for course creators between 30 and 40% commission. I’ve seen that work really well and still attract high quality affiliates. And then you also have more of a buffer for budget for really fun contests and prizes as well so really reward the people that are doing well.
Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:13:11]:
But more important than commission.
Laura Sprinkle [00:13:14]:
Oh yeah, but more important than commission is the relationship.
Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:13:17]:
The relationship. Why is that though?
Laura Sprinkle [00:13:22]:
I mean, it makes so much sense, right? Because if I am sharing something that I care about, then I’m going to continue to care about it. I’m going to online to go above and beyond for this relationship. And I believe that people are sharing things with their audience. Again, not just because of the money. There are sure influencers or folks that are only creating revenue for themselves through affiliate programs. And at the same time, often those folks are sharing things through affiliate programs that have a really small percentage of commission, right. They’re sharing physical products on their social media accounts. But at the end of the day, what sells is personal stories. And so let’s say that you’re offering a really high commission and someone jumps on just for the money and they’re like, okay, great, I’m going to send one email. They’re not going to convert really well. They might not come back for more. They don’t have a personal connection to what they’re actually selling, whereas someone who does might have a really small audience. We found this time and time again where people have either no audience as related to the product or a really tiny audience, like 100 people, less than 500 people. They love the offer so much that they’re going to make a personalized list. They’re going to be like, who is everybody I know that could use this service, this product, this offer, this program? Who’s? Everybody I know. I’m going to personally reach out to them on social media and say, I took this program, it changed my life. I think it would be great for you because of XYZ, and they’re often the ones on the leaderboard and the big players are like, what? How’s that person above me on this leaderboard? But it’s because that personal connection.
Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:15:22]:
Personal connection in your program or in general when you’re coaching people, is there a template for how to take the personal connection or the passion about the affiliate offer that you’re an affiliate, the offer that you’re an affiliate for and make this work? How do you teach somebody to do that?
Laura Sprinkle [00:15:42]:
Yeah, so this is where that activation period comes in. Because I will say we found that people who have smaller audiences or who are your customers and clients and you’ve invited them, you’ve attracted them, and you’re trying to activate them to go all in. They might not be used to a big affiliate launch or an affiliate promo. They might require a little bit more training. And it is so worth it. So, so worth it if you haven’t already determined that. And so during the attraction phase, it’s when you’re training your affiliate on how to sell on your behalf and you’re also providing them with really great resources. So I like to say wherever their audience is and their audience could be, again, personal outreach. It could be on social media, it could be their email list. Wherever their audience is, you want to help them and train them on how to sell on that medium and also provide really great assets to make it super duper easy. So for our clients, we even provide assets for that personal outreach. Even though I just gave you the script on what you can say if you are an affiliate and you’re promoting somebody and you want to rise to the top of the leaderboard, even with a tiny audience, that’s exactly what I would say. I would make a list of people you think would kick butt with that offer and reach out to them personally. With the script that I used earlier, having that script in your promo and your resources area for your affiliates who have smaller audiences is huge. They’re really going to appreciate it.
Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:17:23]:
So that script needs to be somewhere. I’m going to see what I can do to get that into the show notes. So keep going because this amplification part, I’m going to say, I don’t completely get it. What’s key to the amplification page? What’s key to the amplification phase? But then more importantly for my brain, that’s learning this as you’re teaching it what happens to an affiliate launch if there’s no amplification phase?
Laura Sprinkle [00:17:58]:
Like if the product is evergreen or.
Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:18:02]:
If we just skip over this phase.
Laura Sprinkle [00:18:04]:
Oh, if we skip so there’s attraction, then there’s activation. So that’s between when they say yes and when they start promoting and then it goes into amplification. So amplification is when they actually start promoting. So if you’re doing a live launch, it would be your live launch window. If you have an evergreen product, you’re probably creating these live windows for a specific affiliate to pop into, right? Like I might be able to sign up for something and say, okay, great, this is the five day window that I’m going to be doing a launch to my audience, even though this product is evergreen, which is what I recommend for evergreen folks. But what often happens if you try to skip the activation phase, which is when you’re doing training, when you’re providing those resources, when you’re getting people excited to actually go and promote, is that people don’t promote. We often see 70, 80, 90% of affiliates that we attract actually go ahead and promote. So I do want to say there’s always a percentage of people, unless you’re talking to one person at a time, but there’s always a percentage of people that are going to say yes and they’re not going to promote. And it’s not because can I swear on here?
Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:19:21]:
Yeah, rick swears. I don’t really swear, but that’s okay because this is.
Laura Sprinkle [00:19:28]:
People, right. Have you ever signed up for an affiliate program and an affiliate link and not shared it?
Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:19:35]:
No.
Laura Sprinkle [00:19:37]:
Wow, okay. You would be the only person I’ve ever asked that question to who has said no.
Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:19:45]:
Let me qualify that. The affiliate links. The reason that I signed up for affiliate programs was to make extra money. And so most of them were software links and I went out and shared them because I was very interested in bringing in that extra revenue. And the one time that I can remember where I was admitted into a course like affiliate program was because I reached out to the creator. And at that point when she had shared her link, one, I wanted to get affiliate revenue, but then, two, I knew that she could see if I was driving traffic and so I didn’t want to be that person that had a link and didn’t do anything with it. So yeah, I actually have always shared my affiliate links.
Laura Sprinkle [00:20:33]:
Wow, you are like a god among men, I guess, Quajo, because maybe I just needed cash. Every time I ask that question on any type of training, I raise my hand and so does everyone else. And I like to say it’s not because we’re assholes, we’re not like, oh, let me go sign up for all these programs and then not follow through. I believe we all sign up with intentions of sharing and things come up. All right, we might not be signing up with and intention of like, I want to be top on the leaderboard, but we do want to share it with a few people. But things happen, right? So if you skip over the communication, the training, you don’t make it easy for me to find my links. You don’t make it easy for me to know the messaging around what you’re selling. You don’t make it easy for me to know when I should actually promote. Like if I don’t know the exact dates, if it’s a live launch, for example, then I’m much more likely to let everything else in my life take up space and not actually get to promoting. So, I mean, we find way more people follow through. Just like yourself, fairly quiet is an incredible affiliate. Everybody go recruit him. You’re going to get all these pitches now?
Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:22:00]:
Hey, sure, let’s go.
Laura Sprinkle [00:22:05]:
So, way more likely for people to follow through and then way more likely that they’re actually going to send you qualified leads. Because it’s one thing to send somebody traffic, it’s another thing entirely to send somebody right, fit people. Because let’s say I’m going to use you as an example, if that’s okay.
Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:22:25]:
Yeah.
Laura Sprinkle [00:22:26]:
So let’s say that you were wanting referrals or you’re doing an affiliate program for Facebook ads. And I went and I’m like, all I know, right? And all I know is you’re doing Facebook ads. That’s like what’s in my head? And so I’m going and I’m telling random people that are in my life and I’m like, oh my gosh, Quajo is going to fly to your house. And he is going to sit at your computer and he’s going to set up your ads for you and he’s going to take all these videos and these pictures of you. And you’re like, no, don’t tell people that.
Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:23:06]:
Come up with a package for.
Laura Sprinkle [00:23:10]:
Like, let’s say that you actually have a course on running Facebook ads, but I’m going and I’m telling people that you’re doing done for you. It’s like these little things that make a huge difference in how I’m positioning you to my audience. So it could be a messaging thing, it could be a tactical, practical, here’s what’s in what you’re getting thing. But you want to make sure that people are sharing the right information. And the best way to do that is to have those templates and training available.
Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:23:41]:
Okay, like actual email templates?
Laura Sprinkle [00:23:44]:
Oh, yes, for sure. You want swipe email in your affiliate promo packet.
Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:23:50]:
And then video training too.
Laura Sprinkle [00:23:53]:
We always do video trainings for our affiliates. Either a live training where we’re getting everybody excited, we’re walking through the Are. I actually have a whole framework for this training, and we’re announcing contests and prizes if we have those.
Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:24:13]:
Take a moment to pause for the sponsor of this episode. If you need help making your Facebook ads work like you hoped they had worked from the beginning, head over to my website, Quayjo.com, and fill out a contact form there and we can see how I can help you. I’m a Facebook Ads manager, and I’ve also been coaching with Rick for several years now. Which means in addition to managing Facebook ads, unlike other Facebook Ads managers, I can dive into your funnel, your lead magnet, your opt. In page, your webinar, your email sequences and optimize it so that you are able to work with more of the people who you were meant to serve. My website is Quayjo.com. Head over there, you can book a call with me and we can talk how I could fix your funnels, fix your Facebook ads, or even manage your Facebook ads for you. And now back to the episode. Okay, so you’re doing the video training for your affiliates. You’re giving them the swipe files. What else ensures that this is going to go swimmingly?
Laura Sprinkle [00:25:27]:
Well, the biggest thing is actually not the training or the swipe files. Those are really important and super duper helpful. And the biggest thing is continued communication, which makes sense because the basis of the best relationships is communication. And the same is true when it comes to your affiliate partnerships. So assigning somebody on your team to be in touch with people throughout the entire process is super duper important. Whether that is personal check ins, which I highly recommend, whether that’s sending emails also recommend, or if you’re going to run some type of group or community. We’ve seen people do it on Slack, on Instagram, on Facebook. There’s a lot of different strategies as far as getting people excited to continue promoting. And it’s really important that you personally check in something that we really love to do with folks who do have a team member and the person has a relationship with that CEO. So with Rick, but Rick doesn’t necessarily have time to go check everybody’s emails and see who’s mailing, doesn’t have time to go check everybody’s social media to see who’s actually posting and tagging him. And so we have somebody on the team who is looking at all of that and compiles a short list of three to five names every day, for example, and says, hey, Rick, can you reach out to Quajo? Can you reach out to Laura? Can you reach out to is, you know, unexpectedly crushing it, so just send him some love. Laura said she was going to promote, but she hasn’t had any traffic yet, so could you just give her a little nudge? I’m just calling myself out so, like, their name, where to reach out, and a quick little note, and we’ve seen really great results with, you know, it is that personal touch from Rick or the CEO or the creator, and they’re know, spending all this admin time searching and looking for stuff.
Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:27:37]:
Okay. All right. So before we started recording, I had asked and we’re not done with this episode, but I had asked you, okay, your program, the Rocky Affiliate program, how do you sell it? And you just kind of looked at me and you’re like, well, I sell it most through affiliates, of course. I’m like duh. Did you always sell it through affiliates? Like, how did you start out?
Laura Sprinkle [00:28:08]:
Great question. So the first time that I launched our affiliate program, I did not use affiliates. My goal with that launch was really, let me just create this webinar. Let me create the actual program. I wasn’t like, oh, let me go get a bunch of revenue from this. And so I used personal outreach from the relationships that I had made running affiliate programs and just being in business for several years. So I used personal outreach. I had a webinar, and I just emailed my pretty small list at the time, and I got 25 people to sign up for my webinar, and I think two or three people were on Live. And I’m like, great. I had to create the webinar. I believe I was creating it up until the very last second. And the final three slides were not designed. They were just black and white text, because that’s my style, because I’m a deadline chaser.
Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:29:09]:
We’ve been there before. I’ve been there before. Just not on the weekends.
Laura Sprinkle [00:29:14]:
Just not on the weekends. Never working on the weekends, of course. So I launched it, this 25 person launch list, and we made a few sales. I invited a few clients to come in as well. So I believe we had, like, eight students. I made 15K, which was awesome. And I created the program live during that time. And my webinar had been titled how to Double Your Launch Revenue Without Creating More content. Spending Money on ads or something, I don’t remember. But anyway, that was my webinar title. And so this was January 2020. And then in May of 2020, I was like, okay, well, I have to follow my own advice now. I have to go find some affiliates and make sure that I can double my launch revenue to make sure that this thing works.
Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:30:16]:
Okay.
Laura Sprinkle [00:30:20]:
So I found eight people, eight affiliates. They were just my friends. I really did not go outside and try to attract a bunch of names or even a bunch of like, you know what I mean? I was just staying within my little circle. So eight folks shared my webinar. I was running the same webinar, although I did design those last three slides sharing the same webinar. And I think they brought in it was 297 leads. So immediately, ten X the amount of leads just through having a handful of folks share, and then we four X our sales. So we went from fifteen thousand dollars to sixty thousand dollars, and only four affiliates made sales.
Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:31:12]:
Whoa. Okay.
Laura Sprinkle [00:31:13]:
So eight shared, four made sales, and we forexed our overall revenue. And I doubled my take home revenue because I was doing 50% commission at the time. And I was like, all right, I just proved that this can work. You can double your launch revenue with affiliate.
Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:31:35]:
So which came first, the chicken or the egg? For you? It was the egg.
Laura Sprinkle [00:31:39]:
Exactly.
Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:31:40]:
All right, well, okay. Was it all smooth sailing?
Laura Sprinkle [00:31:46]:
Oh, absolutely not. Absolutely not. I mean, not just in terms of that launch, although that launch was not even smooth sailing. But I will say and actually, I did a debrief call, which is now a bonus in my program, where I got super vulnerable with those affiliates. I ran the debrief for them, and I was just sharing behind the scenes. And so I think we did two webinars for those 297 people. I don’t remember the split. This is back in 2020, so I don’t remember all the details, but I ran two webinars. It was like a Wednesday and a Thursday and Friday afternoon. I had not made any sales. Zero. And I was devastated. I’m like, this doesn’t work. I don’t know what I’m doing. I can’t believe I invited affiliate on board. And now this is going worse than last time, right? At least the first time, when I had three people and I made one sale on my webinar. But this is not going well. And the benefit of having a small handful of affiliates, who were actually my friends, too, was I got out Voxer and I sent my friend Chantel a message. I was like, crying. So on the debrief call that I mentioned, that the bonus debrief, I actually played that Voxer for everybody, because I was just like. I don’t know what doing. Like, this isn’t working, et cetera. So immediately, like, she had a stake in it, right? Like, she wanted to do well as an affiliate, also as my friend. And so she popped on Voxer. I don’t know if we hopped on a call and we strategized, okay, first of all, this is normal in a launch. You have to keep going. You can’t just fizzle out I don’t know if you’ve ever done this yourself, Quajo maybe, where you’re like, okay, this isn’t exactly going how I wanted it, so let me hide in the shadows. Let me back away. Let me not reach out and ask for support. But because I had affiliates, I did reach out, and I don’t think we changed tactics or anything. It was just like, Keep going. So I kept emailing. I think I ran a Q and A the next week, and again, we ended up at think it was like 67% of sales came in on the last day.
Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:34:22]:
I was going to share that earlier. Every successful course creator knows the struggle. After you give the webinar, maybe a trickle of sales happen, and it’s like, nothing. And you’re like, Please, God, let this stat be true, that on the final cart close day, 60% of my sales will come in.
Laura Sprinkle [00:34:42]:
Exactly. And on the final day, everyone finally decided that they were right for this offer. And, I mean, I do it too. I said, I’m a deadline chaser. I’m queen of signing up for something at the very last possible moment. And so that is also why it’s so important to send so many dang emails on the final day.
Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:35:03]:
Preach.
Laura Sprinkle [00:35:04]:
To remind people like myself that, hey, this ship is sailing. You got to get on board. Not really smooth sailing as far as that, as far as the emotions. And I think that that little microcosm plays out so often on a broader spectrum where things dip in our businesses. And if we don’t have that support network, if we are not creating connections, our tendency is, let me hide. Let me back away. Let me lean back and go in the woods, or I love the woods. Let me go in the woods or not go to conferences or you know what I mean? We’re like, I need to go figure this out myself on my own, because I am scrappy, and I can do it, and then I can come back, and I can share the nuggets and, oh, wow, I never knew that you were depressed during those months. Laura I’m calling myself out here right when we’re backing away, but every single time. And then I’m like, oh, wait. The thing that gets me out of this is reaching out, is asking for support, is leaning in, is going even though I feel uncomfortable, is admitting, hey, I’m struggling right now. You all and the beautiful connections and conversations that I’ve had with business owners when I’m willing to raise my hand and say, I’m struggling right now. You all, they’ve changed my life. Truly. I didn’t mean to, didn’t know all these emotions were going to come up, but they’re so important because otherwise I would have quit and I would have quit my business. I maybe would have quit being around, and we don’t want people to do that. So connections are really important.
Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:37:01]:
I’m glad you didn’t quit, and I’m sure lots of your clients are super blessed that you didn’t quit because this affiliate thing is not easy. And so the fact that you train well, how to do it, we need you, we really do. Tell us about that last appreciation phase? Because there might be well, I’m hoping there’s a few more nuggets in this last part where we talk about paying people out. And then I want to know how can we get in touch with you if somebody is stuck and wants to eight X, six X something X their launch, how can they get in touch with you after? Please? The appreciation phase.
Laura Sprinkle [00:37:48]:
Yeah, so appreciation is so much fun and something that we have been suggesting to our clients recently, which is super fun, is actually hosting some type of a celebration call with their affiliates. Now, if you’re doing Evergreen or one off affiliate launches, you could also host a debrief one on one with that person of like, okay, what went well? What will we do differently? When can we schedule this again for next year or whatever? But if you have a lot of affiliates hosting some type of celebration because there was just a lot of energy put into this experience. And so often as humans, we really ignore the things ending and things closing and right. We’re like very anti death in general as humans. And I’m not saying you need to embrace death, but I do want us to embrace the fact that we’ve rallied this group of people who are sharing on our behalf and to have this moment of expressing gratitude for them, handing out prizes, of having them share their experience, it’s just really beautiful. So I definitely recommend some type of if you’re woo a closing ceremony, if you are not like a celebration and then also really being clear with your communication of this is when you’re going to get paid, this is how and just really making sure that all the numbers add up. I think it’s really always wise to double check that there’s just so much beautifulness that goes into appreciation, and appreciation done well, leads right back into attraction. Because people are like, I’m coming back for this. Right. I was just at an event and in the final moments of the event, they were like, did you have fun? Well, guess what? Tickets are on sale for next year. I already bought my tickets for next year because I’m really excited. So it’s like the same kind of loop that you want to create with your affiliates.
Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:39:54]:
So four phases. Awesome. How can somebody learn more from you? And how could somebody find that program who maybe has a launch coming up and needs some affiliate support for their launch?
Laura Sprinkle [00:40:09]:
Yeah, great question. So I’ve got a couple of different options. So if you want to get a taste, maybe you heard me on this podcast and you’re like, Sounds good, and are her templates any good? Then I think that you should start with how to attract your dream affiliate partners. So that’s a mini course. It’s only $47, and you can get that@laurasprinkle.com, Rick. And if you do want to dig in, I have a full program called Rocky Affiliate Program where I’ve got templates from how to set up your commissions, how to figure out the best launch mechanisms and email strategy around your affiliate program all the way through. Attracting your affiliate, activating them to go all in and what resources to provide amplifying those sales so what to say to partners and when during the actual promotion all the way through. Making payouts and inviting them to come back for more. So that’s called Rocky Affiliate Program and you can find that@rockyaffiliateprogram.com.
Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:41:16]:
Awesome. I think I’m going to end and thank you for sharing that. That’ll be linked up in the show notes below with an axiom. No man, no woman is and island. And this is the way forward to how many x did you do on your launch once you put your affiliate system into place?
Laura Sprinkle [00:41:36]:
So I did four x. I would say that most of our clients who are coming in, my client, Lisa Johnson, was doing 200K on her own. Her first time using affiliates, she went to 2 million.
Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:41:50]:
Oh, my gosh.
Laura Sprinkle [00:41:51]:
Ten x is super possible. I like to say to clients, if you’re not getting to ten x within three to five affiliate launches, then we need to talk, because that is super.
Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:42:03]:
Duper possible if you’re not getting to ten x within three to five, because it does take practice.
Laura Sprinkle [00:42:10]:
Takes practice.
Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:42:11]:
Affiliate launches.
Laura Sprinkle [00:42:12]:
Yes.
Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:42:13]:
It’s time to talk to Laura.
Laura Sprinkle [00:42:15]:
Yeah, well, I mean, talk to me before so that you can make that happen, right? Because we had another client, Jackie, she was doing 30K on her own. Her first time with affiliates, she hit 120K, so she hit her six figure launch, and then the next time, she hit 300K with affiliates. So for me, I mean, this is the same with launches, right? It’s never about the first launch. It’s never about the first launch. It’s never about the first affiliate launch. It’s about continuing to use that system over and over and over again. That’s where you’re really going to see the results and you’re going to be able to optimize and tweak. So I know you had stopped, and now I’m like, let’s keep talking about.
Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:43:06]:
Stop. We’re going to stop here. And if you want to find out more about how to work with Laura. Go to Laura Sprinkle, which I love. Your last name Laurasprinkle.com slash Rick, and you can find out there. Laura, thank you for being on this podcast.
Laura Sprinkle [00:43:23]:
Thank you for having me. This was so fun.
Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:43:26]:
You’re welcome. And hope to have you back again.
Laura Sprinkle [00:43:30]:
Let’s do it.
Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie [00:43:31]:
All right. Hope you enjoyed that conversation with Laura. You can listen to it again, because that’s the beauty of a podcast. I will link up how to connect with her in the podcast show notes. And if you haven’t yet left a rating or review over on Apple podcasts, please take, like 10 seconds to do so. It super helps out the show. Also, make sure that you’re subscribed to the podcast so you don’t miss out on any future episodes. And if you’re listening on Spotify, there’s that yellow follow button. Can you do me a big favor and hit that, please? My name’s Quajo. Just filling in for Rick while he’s on his sabbatical. If you need Facebook ads help or you want to get your funnel fixed or like we talked with Laura, you’re just having the launch and you didn’t quite see that traditional 60% of sales come in at the end, and you want to know, Quajo, what’s wrong? How can we tweak this? Go to Quajo.com Quayjo and fill out the contact form so we can see how I can best help you out. Thank you for listening.
