The Do's and Don'ts of Affiliate Marketing, from finding top offers to boosting commissions

Zach Johnson

Dylan Carpenter

Thomas McMahon

Episode
98
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Thomas McMahon

,

Senior Business Development Manager

ClickBank
Apple PodcastsGoogle PodcastsLive on SpotifyLive on Youtube

Thomas McMahon is the Senior Business Development Manager at ClickBank. The offers he helped to onboard and scale on ClickBank have done over $100million in topline revenue across almost every niche and business model.

Episode Summary

TAKE AWAYS

  • What affiliate offers are on FIRE right now.
  • Best ways to boost commissions as an affiliate marketer.
  • Best way to frame offers while remaining compliant and what NOT to do

RESOURCES/CONTACT:

Transcript

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Episode
98
Transcript

Thomas (00:00):

Well, the thing is like, well, the thing is behind the marketplace, right? There's this network effect that happens when you get some semblance of traction, right? Whether it's ad spend, whether it's on email lists, the thing is, all these affiliates are watching what each other, what each other are doing. So they're all on each other's email lists and things like that. So when you start to get someone big mailing regularly, you're going to see this like, Hey, what's this, you're going to see this traction gain that way. Not so much from the marketplace at that point, but just from what's happening in the, you know, emailing ecosphere with the ad running, right. People that are using spidey tools are seeing it. A lot of the things I get from a Phillips, there's a, Hey, what's this offer, right? It keeps popping up. What is this? Right? How do I get on it?

Speaker 2 (00:51):

[inaudible]

Zach (00:51):

You're listening to the rich add poor ed podcast, where we break down the financial principles that rich advertisers are deploying today to turn advertising into profit and get tons of traffic to their websites without killing their cash. These advertisers agencies, affiliates brands are responsible for managing over a billion dollars a year in ad spend. You'll hear about what's working for them today. They're rich ads and we'll roast their Epic failures and crappy ads on the internet with poor ads. Let's get into it. Welcome to another episode of the rich dad, poor ed podcast. This is your host, Zach Johnson, founder and CEO of FunnelDash I'm with Mr. Dylan Carpenter today. Dylan, you ready to talk about some affiliate marketing? I got the pen and paper. I'm man. I'm ready to take some notes. Yeah. Good man. Well, today we have the senior business development manager. Who's been at click bank for over gosh, maybe almost coming up on five years.

Zach (01:45):

It looks like. And, uh, and ClickBank, I mean, you've been sleeping on a rock if you don't know what ClickBank is, but they've got over 6 million clients and are really the top performance marketing, uh, platform to sell digital products on line it's, uh, also affiliate marketplace. And, uh, I'm excited to get into it, man. I don't know that we've had anybody on the podcast yet. That's going to dive this deep into the world of affiliate marketing. So let's get into it, Thomas man. How you doing, man? Thanks for being on the show. Thanks for having me. I'm stoked to be here. Yes, sir. So tell everybody, uh, tell everybody what you do at, at, uh, at ClickBank and how you make it rain over there.


Thomas (02:29):

Yeah, I mean, long short is that I help new sellers, the right people with products to sell online or affiliates. Can I get spun up and onboarded and scaling onto ClickBank. So right. If you're a seller coming on, I kind of help guide you through the onboarding product setup phase, um, help you get introduced to affiliates and kind of, kind of smooth over any friction points that might come from that. And then from the affiliate side, right. Kind of help get offers, get into your channel and kind of get promoting and then tee up, you know, channel partnerships when they make sense and things like that too, which I'm not

Zach (03:00):

What you just said was introduced me to affiliates affiliate summit. I spoke at affiliate summit earlier this year and, um, and uh, you know, that's like what? They it's like a way. And it was like promising everybody promises that, Oh, we'll make a couple of introductions. You know, they were trying to get there like, um, there was just like no networks out there for, you know, for the world of B to B. Uh, and, uh, and so it was, it was not really a fun conversation for like a business credit card product. But, um, but yeah, like that's like the, that's the, that's the carrot to dangle in front of. It's like, okay, cool. All right. You manage my payouts. Cool. You manage my check. Yeah. Cool. You have Angela have cells. Yay. Yeah. Oh, you're going to introduce you in affiliates.

Thomas (03:52):

Never everyone thinks they've got the best offer to, for the affiliates. And it's like,

Zach (03:57):

That's amazing. Yeah. I was just wanting to like, know your Rolodex of like who your go to affiliates are for new offers. Sure. Let me just list them off, just get those guys on the show. That is amazing. What's very cool, man. And you've been doing it a while, right? Like what were you doing before, before ClickBank? Yeah.

Thomas (04:18):

Before ClickBank, I was working in SEO, so it was specifically like link building and SEO at an agency out here. I got started there just guest blog, writing, building back links, making minimum wage as a writer because I got a creative writing degree for some reason. And

Zach (04:35):

Landed

Thomas (04:36):

There, worked my way up, was managing a team of clients and, you know, as an account manager team manager there and then yeah, kind of outgrew it and moved over to ClickBank and do an account manager role. So I was kind of just managing platinum affiliates. Right. Were kind of the top affiliates on the platform and then vendors or sellers in the biz-op MMO space, uh, make money online, um, kind of cut my teeth with ClickBank, just direct response marketing in that role. Realizing, I didn't know, as nearly as much as I thought about it in the marketing. Um, yeah. And then like a year and a half later moved into a biz dev role and it's, uh, it was a really good fit for me. So I've been able to kind of Excel there and do some fun stuff.

Zach (05:16):

Well, biz dev in the world of affiliate can get off the chain pretty quickly. Uh, but I feel like you guys keep it pretty kosher over there at ClickBank and the BizDev side of things.

Thomas (05:27):

Yeah. I mean, direct response in general, right. It always tells that line of aggressive claims and marketing and things like that. And it's, it's a balance right. To help people land on converting, but still compliant copy and kind of keep thinking, check. Yeah,

Zach (05:41):

We don't, we don't use the word compliant. I mean, we just say, I converted, I love man. So yeah. Dylan, let's get into it, man. Let's, let's dive into our rich and poor ed segment. Yeah. Yeah. So Thomas, we'd love to kind of dive into, you know, what see is working good.

Thomas (05:58):

So, I mean, was

Dylan (05:58):

Your rich ad? My rich ad, gosh,

Thomas (06:03):

Well right now in our space supplements kind of weight loss, remedy supplements have been selling really well. Right. Um, it's hard to tell if that's just a good timing or if it's, COVID driving a lot of it. Right. Of course e-com buyer behaviors has changed as we've seen with, COVID kind of more people at home shopping online, so that's been a big part of it. Um, but what we're seeing, right, is that a supplement funnel can just draw more dollars in than say digital can, right? So you see much higher margins, which higher payouts, well, I shouldn't say margins, right. A digital funnel can have higher margins because there's a lot less overhead. Um, but it's a lot harder to get, you know, a $200 checkout, right. And if you can pay 50% of $200, it's still better than a hundred percent of 70. Right. So, um, things, you know, the economics just kind of go towards that multi skew, you know, upsell flow, um, with supplements. And the other part of that too, is that we see a lot of digital sellers adding supplements to their backend, right. And starting to flush out their average order values that way. Um, we've seen a lot of people leveraging joint ventures, why putting other people's products in their upsell flows or one click, right. And be able to kind of boost earnings, more money, things like that

Zach (07:24):

About what is the go-to supplement funnel. All right. I got some drain juice here. I got some like green juice to go take this every day.

Thomas (07:33):

That's a good one. No, I mean, uh, weight loss has been big, right. If, you know, if you're an affiliate listening to this, you might've seen no research or get proven kind of at the top of the charts. Um, you know, it's usually a weight loss supplement wrapped in a curious hook, if you want to call it that, right. Like research is all about sleep, right. They lead with sleep and getting better sleep and all that, but it's weight loss offer on the back end of it. Right. And that's kinda how they sell it. Um, gosh, a great one I've seen that have onboarded this year is a better pooping, right? It's it's a, it's a camp poop. Right. And that's the main headline and it's a weight loss supplement on the back. End of it. With a gut health kind of hook. Right. It's like a probiotic, but for weight loss around,

Zach (08:14):

I'm trying to pull these up as you're saying, okay. Oh no, pull these up. We're going to link these in the show notes for everybody that's listening. So get leverage or

Thomas (08:23):

Leverage yet proven here. Can I chat and I can chat you the land.

Zach (08:29):

Oh yeah. Okay. Look at all these ads and Google affiliates. There we go. Oh yeah. You got some, uh, get proven and then

Thomas (08:39):

Research research. Okay.

Zach (08:44):

Okay. Let's just assume I am a seller and I have a weight loss offer. Okay. That is my core offer. Uh, but I can't get approved on Facebook to run a weight class offering, even if I say the word metabolism. And even if I say, if I take this one drink every night at 9:00 PM, before I go to sleep and I can't get that ad approved and my ads are getting shut down. What would you do as an affiliate? Like what front-end offer would you put in front of that to be able to like drive coming back to your word compliant,

Thomas (09:21):

Uh, traffic,

Zach (09:22):

Both at the ad level and um, you know, at the awful of it, cause you get to see, you get to see, you have this God's eye view, man, millions of sellers, you get to see a supplements and you know, there's weight loss is all like on the back end of like everything here, but it's all about how you're getting creative on the front end.

Thomas (09:40):

No know. So the biggest affiliates I see scaling on Facebook are doing pretty simple things. Honestly, we just kind of pretty basic, you know, Landers of either blog type articles or quiz Landers is a super common, I'm sure you guys have heard that right. With like a kind of basic quiz, a funnel. So I'm going through and it's going towards that. I'm sure Facebook's getting a little hip to it too. If they see the same thing around all the time. Um, but what I've seen housing affiliates adapt to that, um, or media buyers adapt to that. It's just better quality looking quizzes and Landers. Right. It looks more like a fleshed out website. It's not like a regular content production piece. Right. But it looks more like a blog that's out there, not just a single Lander, but the whole sites frame that way. So now it's looking and then you're redirecting people through the other part. Right. Is that these really aggressive Landers that you might see, that's probably designed for email or non-Facebook traffic. Right. And a lot of these cell

Zach (10:33):

Ones you're sharing with us right now

Thomas (10:36):

And like the, um, right. Those are, I'm sure they're getting a lot of Facebook traffic don't get me wrong and they're just kind of getting ad account arbitrage shutdowns on them. Right. Um, but the, a lot of these sellers produce more compliant pages for affiliates to run to that are maybe not as converting. Um, but they're safer. Right. And they can still back out well, and that's kind of been the shift, right? If people going from hardcore direct response, like these lenders have sent you, which like the default Landers to bridging more of like an e-com direct response page that has a message.

Zach (11:09):

I'll drop out some links we're going to, we're going to show like an AB comparison here for like email traffic, Landers for affiliates. You're gonna get a lot of business from this Thomas.

Thomas (11:20):

It's going to be great,

Zach (11:24):

You know, versus, um, yeah. Versus like this email traffic, right? Cause like all of our, like our whole audience is media buyers, Facebook advertisers, Google advertisers, they, they wouldn't, they would run away if they saw these landing pages

Thomas (11:40):

Where it says, I feel like I saw that video

Zach (11:45):

And get, prove it. And like in the past like week or so it was white pants.

Thomas (11:50):

No, it's, uh, it gets, and I'll be honest. Right. A lot of these aggressive lenders are getting Facebook traffic. Right. I don't know exactly how those media buyers do it, but they have some sort of competitive advantage that can run at scale. I don't know if they're just turning through ad accounts and nobody's there or [inaudible] exactly what they're doing. Yeah. Yeah. You're giving them all credit cards. Right. Yeah. Right. So they're there, those are still getting scale on Facebook. It's just that shut down issue. But the, um, here's a no, yeah. That, um, they can't poop one that has actually has some decent traffic. Yeah. So you're saying this poop,

Zach (12:36):

It's ultimately a weight loss angle behind it.

Thomas (12:39):

Yes. Yep. Yeah. I mean, there's, there's some other ones. Right. But a lot of them come back to weight loss. That's when you know, that weight loss was huge, like five, six years ago. Um, and it kinda, it didn't go away. It's always big, but it's really come back a lot this year again and again, I don't know if that's, COVID just people feeling lethargic and conscious about it. Not wanting to get too fat at home or anything like that, but

Zach (13:08):

Right. So if I'm an affiliate, right. And I, and I promote like a weight loss offers and I just got all my accounts shut down and I need to think about switching and I go, and I want to, I'm listening to this podcast, Thomas. And you're like, Hey man, um, if you're an affiliate, what offer should I, which what offers should I be promoting right now

Thomas (13:29):

For like violent? Or just like, of course, of course. No. So honestly like this, uh, this poop offer, right? I mean, it sounds funny, but that one is solid. It does really well. Um, there's quite a saw the creative writing major. I gotta fit it in. Um, there's some other like less aggressive, like, I mean, Emily, Emily LARCs back to life offers really good. She's got some compliant, Facebook Landers, um, that she's gonna really honed in. It's her face on it. There's a pelvic floor offer. I'm not sure if you know what that is, but it's a, it's an incontinence, right. For women who have been pregnant and right. They've often lost their, you know, their app floor. Um, so that's been backing out really well for people. That's a pure digital offer, but you know, really aggressive commissions on it. It's her face. Right. It's kind of a lot more compliant than some of these bigger weight loss ones. And it's a less, uh, how, how should I say it? Like I, the niche isn't as monitored as weight loss, right?

Zach (14:33):

Yeah. Oh yeah. There you go, man. It's like, Hey, you want the short list of what to promote your guy.

Thomas (14:43):

What's really the biggest fit. Right? Like if I can really help an affiliate, like our media buyer, if they're like, here's offers, I've run in the past. Here's what I've done really well with. I go, Oh, okay. Similar ones you should start with, um, that are backing out well. Or if someone tells me, Hey, I need at least this commission on it, I need this, you know, CPA or rupture on it. It's like, okay, well here's what matches up with that. Right. These kinds of things. And here's where to start and here's right. Cause we'd go to the marketplace. We'll find some good things in there, but it'd be kind of hard to sort through a know what's, you know, backing out where, but we can see, you know, I can see the media buying accounts that I know are running and go, okay, these are, um, pushing these types of offers and you've done well with X.

Thomas (15:21):

You should try Y how many these beds, how much do these guys spend on tests? Typically if they're testing a new offer. So it's funny, it's like the newer hungry guys in the game, like right. The 21 year olds who are just going to crush it and send it right. Um, they'll just 21 year olds, you know, the 19 like fresh out of high school, they just, they just seem to build, start really slow, then just drop the hammer. Right. And just kind of like blow it up. And then they'll find something that is barely matches, use the same creatives and just see if it backs out and just find the next best thing and do the same thing. The more established agencies, or like the people that are a little more long in the tooth at the game, they seem much more comfortable running with like tighter margins, right?

Thomas (16:05):

Let's say the younger guys, they need like 50% ROI or a hundred percent ROI on their ad spend. And then they'll blow it up. You see the longer in the tooth guys, right. They're like, they know they can scale a 10% or 5%. Right. They just needed to have the payment terms locked in, which is why they like ClickBank because they know clipping will pay them, um, versus, you know, another random person that met. Um, but once I know it's dialed in, they can scale it with five or 10% margin and kind of hit, you know, five figure ad, spend a day kind of thing without an issue. And this is a margin game. They will test much more steadily. Right. And kind of like, they'll start, you know, in the low hundreds and kind of drive a couple hundred clicks and then keep going and then kind of creep it up until you just see this nice little toe. And then, uh, it seems like the turn and burn guys will just, yeah. Like, Oh yeah, this is working right. That's interesting. Amazing.

Speaker 5 (17:01):

This episode is brought to you by funnel Dash's ad card. The only charge card exclusively for your digital ad spend in partnership with MasterCard. And if you are an aggressive affiliate dealing with dozens of ad accounts, or you are in gray hat or black hat verticals, such as drop shipping CVD or other verticals where you're dealing with ad accounts, getting shut down business managers, getting shut down, or even deep platform from platforms like Facebook and Google, then you absolutely need to check out FunnelDash is add card. We give you unlimited free virtual debit and credit card. So you can have a dedicated card for every single ad account campaign. And you can attach any name and address and you S you have complete anonymous entity on the card and at the card level, plus one of my favorite features is that you have to pre-fund or even top off like most typical virtual card solutions today. So if this is you and you're operating these verticals, whether you're an agency or an advertiser, then check out ad card@funneldash.com. All right. So let's talk about some poor ads.

Thomas (18:11):

I wouldn't say. Yeah. I mean, if you have a good system for sure. Number, and it works for some people, like I wouldn't build my business that way, but I've seen, you know, we've got people running the eight figure businesses that way. So it's, I can't knock it. I mean, if you're 21 years old and you got a land and you live in Thailand, I think we're talking about the same people. Yeah. Um, no, so, I mean, I think that what not to do, gosh, it's, it seems really rooted right now in the really, okay. Sorry. Let me back up the affiliates and the media buyers, I see that are struggling for success. Right. And kind of like hitting some blockers is they're hitting the really hot offers and thinking that's going to convert for them. Right. When really those are probably the most saturated offers, uh, in the market.

Thomas (19:04):

Right. And they're proven, you know, um, so there's no harm thinking that, but if you're going up against, you know, all these great media buyers that are already scaled on it, you're just going to be picking up pieces behind them kind of thing. It's gonna be harder to kind of get some traction. So that's where it's like, I kind of push people if you know, the clipping marketplace at all, it's built on like a stack ranking of performance based on how many affiliates are promoting it. Right. So if you don't have a unique traffic source, if you're leveraging Facebook or something where it might be saturated a bit with this bigger spins on it, go to like page five of the marketplace, right. Page five to 10, and those are still proven enough and backing out well that you can find not sleepers in there. Right. But ones that have not hit that really high scale yet the ones that will be on page one in like a month or two, right. Are kind of in that group. And that's where to start testing kind of new campaigns on

Speaker 5 (19:58):

Kind of offers expiring. And maybe they do, maybe they don't. I really don't know. But I mean, if somebody is hitting something hot, how long has it simply lasts? Or I'm kind of curious on how that kind of works or if it just disappears one day or

Thomas (20:10):

Yeah. So the expiring thing is an interesting question, right? Because people, Oh yeah, the offer's tired is expiring and it's really not the offer being tighter expiring. It's getting, we just kind of mentioned saturated in the market or the audience is getting tired of it. So if the seller, the vendor is refreshing the offer, right. And if coming up with unique angles on it, unique hooks on it and allowing other types of customers to get access to it or convert on it, that's when you see offer sustained for a while. Right. So like, we'll use Emily Lark, for example, you know, that one looked like it was gonna be one that was gonna fatigue after a year or two, she went from $0 seller to an eight figure seller in the course of like a year and a half. It seemed like, uh, you know, okay. Yeah, it's going to kind of rise and sunset, but she's done a great job pivoting at building different Landers kind of targeting different types of audiences for it acquiring different affiliates for different traffic sources. And that's maintained that for three or four years now. Right. So in my opinion, that's like the offer doesn't really expire. The traffic sources get tired of something. So either need more traffic sources or different types of it, or refresh Landers and refreshed angles on an offer. And that's interesting.

Zach (21:17):

I love it. You didn't think you were gonna be talking about the affiliate side when he came on this podcast, come in here and talk about why people should, should actually put their offers. We aren't just talking about, uh, affiliates and we'll just insert a advertisement for unlimited virtual cards. Oh my gosh, man. So let's talk about a really bridging the gap here in the, in the world of advertising and finance. And I think you can really speak to pay outs here, um, both for the affiliate and negotiating those terms. Uh, but also in terms of, uh, the, the offer owner. So what are some, what are some, uh, principles and tips and tactics that you would recommend for, for somebody to have success on, uh, on ClickBank?

Thomas (22:13):

Yeah. So I think the misconception to start there is that affiliates are cheap. That they're free traffic, yada, yada, yada, right? They are in the sense that you don't pay for the traffic until a sale happens. Right? So it's, performance-based in that regard, but compared to like say 10 years ago, commissions have come up drastically, right? It's almost like a cold war kind of scenario of arms racing to pay the most. You can to gain affiliate attention, right? Because it's two sides of that coin of conversion and commission. Both of those have to be on par or better than other offers in the space for you to earn that traffic from those affiliates right now, I feel like they're always wanting to test new offers cause they write their offers fatiguing for their traffic source. They need to find other offers to supplement it. If that offer isn't refreshing.

Thomas (22:59):

Um, so they're usually happy to test new offers. It's just winning that same traffic from that affiliate month or month or week over week, wherever it might be your neighbor day, that's where the economy of scale comes into play. So what I have to coach a lot of sellers on with the products is like, Hey, you're, you know, on average, right? For a, let's say a supplement funnel. It's like your initial payout on the front end is going to have to be in that gosh, 60 to $70 range. And then the upsell is going to have to get it to that a hundred to $150 range, right. If not better. Right. And the good ones are better than that. That's just like in that, on par level. So your average, payout's going to have to be in that a hundred plus range for you to get what you're probably hoping for.

Thomas (23:48):

Right. And now how that shakes out for your profit margins and your skews and how you bundle things well, that's where, right. Where you get getting the one, three, six models you get into the upsell flows and how those all work. Like that's where you can get really creative, right with BOGOs are kind of different kinds of like funnel structures and like really get like how to increase that AOV. Um, what we see right at 30% uptake on an upsale is good. Right? Um, typically the upsell has to get you 50 to a hundred percent of that cart. So if you're not getting that right, those are some levers to, um, I kind of just start at the top of funnel though, right? If like, if you're not getting at least 1.5% conversion rate on your land or at scale, right. Whatever that means, there's probably plenty of meat on the bone to peel back there and kind of improve conversions on the get go. Um, and then look at AOV and like old courier look where you are leaving money on the table,

Zach (24:45):

Front end AOV, before you even put in like any upsell. It should be what

Thomas (24:54):

Very first, very first one that's typically gotta be in that $60 range. Right. If not more usually looking at like a one, three, six, and we're talking supplements still, we're talking digital, that's lower. Right? That's in like that 25, one three six, Oh, sorry. One bottle, three bottles. Six bottle. Yeah. That's what I was looking at it. A lot of the people follow that there's some different takes on it now and stuff, but typically you give the customers, you know, the one bottle option that's most expensive, three bottles, six bottles that have discounts on them.

Zach (25:28):

[inaudible]

Thomas (25:29):

Yeah. Um, in most cases, right? You see people mess with that and then they have the one six, 12, or all kinds of crazy things that are just, yeah,

Zach (25:38):

You need to be at one and a half conversions, $60 average order value on the very first offer. And then the upsell needs to get you upwards to 90, to $120 on one upsell. So price point wise.

Thomas (25:55):

So I'm usually looking at three upsell steps, but that first upsell is going to give you the always the biggest take rate. Right. So

Zach (26:03):

It needs to be a 30% take rate for success on the OTO. And what do you think price point wise? The ranges like if I'm sitting at $60 on the AOV run in what price point?

Thomas (26:17):

Well, so typically I'll see people kind of, uh, try to at least match or double that, right. With another bundle, if it's a supplement still, and then they'll say

Zach (26:27):

Price point and 30% take rate, you get an extra 50 bucks. You, that's going to put you at one 10, right.

Thomas (26:34):

And then you down sell from there. And can I have, at each time is a common one I see. Right. You'll kind of take something away, down sale, take something away, down sale. And then in the funnel, if they're not taking

Zach (26:45):

It's fun, man, we don't get into the, all the tactics here on upsells and down sells on this podcast. I'm really trying to,

Thomas (26:53):

But like for like, for a media buyer, right. He's like just looking at like, just pay me, right. It's like pay me what you owe me. Um, I think it's important for them to understand that a lot of these offers are running at margin, if not negative already, right. When they're paying you a commission. And so when you go ask for more commission, if that's what your strategy is, there's often not a lot. They can really give without even going more negative to making it riskier. So it's a big ask a lot of the time now this right. Um, unless, unless they're giving themselves margin to play with and negotiate up to which smart runs will, right. So there's usually some wiggle room there, but if you're doing, if you're a media buyer, just asking for more money, that's only going to get you so far with an offer owner. What you could ask instead is a customized Lander, no customize add swipes, different kinds of things like that. Like different like ways to leverage your traffic, to get some conversion boost, which is the other way to like lift your average earnings rate. So

Zach (27:50):

Yeah. Do you see a lot of, um, do you see a lot of book funnels? This was, this is kind of like, like our agency growth book and our rich ed poor ed book. And those were, um, you know, if I were to like, you know, they were, I did not do free plus shipping. Um, on those, I did a digital version for $9 and you know, those converted at like two to 3% on the front end. And then we did a physical, um, bundle an audio book bundle for $49 an OTO one. And then we did a $300, like a masterclass course as OT, number two that had like a 15% take rate, 20% take rate, something like that. And then we had an order bump that was like the cheat sheet. Um, they had like a 40% take rate and it was like a $37 like order bump. And, um, but like, that's the problem with book funnels is you're starting at like $9. You're starting at $20. And so to make that work, that was Russell Brunson's like innovative, like, you know, order bump, right? Like the order bump like a credit to click flaws is cause it's like, well, that's, that's what you get stuck with. And you live and die by if you're doing on any, anything that's where your core offer. Isn't $60.

Thomas (29:12):

Yeah, no, that's right. I mentioned like some of these digital offers do have lower right. Payouts kind of thing, but you know, with a skilled offer like that, there's plenty of affiliates looking for additional offers to mail, to, or to send traffic to or arbitrage. So they're still winning plenty of traffic, you know, at scale kind of thing where like, in the example of using before these are like the top offers scaling. So they're in a different kind of league of their own a bit. Um, I wasn't asked to though, would that offer, did you offer on the front end, did you test the, uh, digital at X dollar and then the full bundle on the same like right to connect?

Zach (29:47):

No, I didn't. I wanted to because, um, that was right when Facebook was starting to, or this was actually before Facebook was offering like the, the video ads with the yes. You know, cause we were going to do like, do you want the physical version? Yes. Do you want the digital version? No. Um, but that was kind of the next iteration, but the margins are so crap on the physical versions. We kind of just didn't want The cost of the book and the shipping and all that jazz. Uh, okay. So here's a question I have for you. How much ad spend do you think goes through? Like, so you know what the revenue is, right? Like how much rev or like how much revenue does ClickBank produced for all their sellers? Um, annually. This is going to be a couple of billion dollars. Yeah. Like a year.

Thomas (30:35):

Yeah, no, it's like the, I can't get too specific for privacy reasons, but um,

Zach (30:41):

Really you can't narrow it down to the center.

Thomas (30:45):

Here's the P and L yeah. Don't count something as the CEO. No. So it's yeah, no. It's

Zach (30:52):

You talk about advertising then, right? Like, let's talk about like how much advertising do you think, like all these affiliates is spend per year?

Thomas (31:02):

Gosh, I honestly have no idea. I'd be taking a huge guess at that.

Zach (31:05):

Pretty close to like the revenue number though. Right?

Thomas (31:08):

Well, it's gotta be more, right. I mean it's because, well, not more, but I mean, you're getting a multiplier of that or at least break even, but it's, I mean the sad state, right. Is they have a lot of beginner affiliates in the platform probably losing money. Right. Who knows how much that offsets the positive ROI on that.

Zach (31:26):

If I were to guess, I think it's probably like two to 5 billion, like in ad spend a year.

Thomas (31:32):

No, it's pretty crazy. It's I was, I was trying to, I was thinking about another way is like how many clicks are heading are right. Cause I see it on our offer basis. Like how many clicks are hitting these landing pages on any given day? Like it's just like so many eyeballs out there.

Zach (31:47):

You just think about that. I would say even if you expand that out, right. Like I would say two to 5 billion in ad spend, like in the ClickBank ecosystem on ClickBank offers. But if you were to kind of say, Hey, of all the affiliates and your guys's world and all the customers, like they're spending a ton of money on other offers, right. That their own, um, I would, I think you're going to bump that number up past 5 billion at that point, right? Yeah.

Thomas (32:14):

They start to look at the cross selling that happens and it's like yeah. Different things that cause it right. The highest use case on ClickBank is customer acquisition, right? I mean, that's what people are leveraging clipping fours, access to customer acquisition. And then what they do with that customer after, right. If it's upsells off of ClickBank or cross sells to other channels, you know, it's just like, that's where they're making the real money. And that's where a lot of the profit comes from. Well, one

Zach (32:40):

Of the things that we see in this space right now is a lot of, uh, agencies, you know, it's getting very competitive and they're starting to, um, become more performance driven. Right. And they're not fully blown affiliates because they don't have the cash. And so there's a lot of innovation happening around the contracts between agencies and offer owners to where there's like loss pools. Now, you know, where they'll the offer owner will put in like five grand of a loss pool so that the agency's willing to put it all on performance, but they're not going to be the first like five grand

Thomas (33:15):

Make. Right. Kind of thing in a way that makes sense. Yeah.

Zach (33:19):

You call it a, you call it a make. Right. I call it a loss poll. Yeah.

Thomas (33:22):

I forgot about we had Mr. James on talking about that stuff. I was like, huh?

Zach (33:26):

Yeah, we have, uh, we have other people, you know, talking about how they're gonna, you know, guarantee certain performance. Yeah.

Thomas (33:34):

I think that's been really common. Yeah.

Zach (33:37):

Agency, world and the affiliate world are kind of like getting more and more closer together. And I think it's creating a new, a new ecosystem right. Where it's not affiliate and it's not agency. It's like partnerships.

Thomas (33:53):

Yeah. Well I've seen agencies for a few years now operating on a just affiliate basis just for cashflow. Right. They'll have their agency, retainers love their percent of ad spend they're running and that's their right on the books kind of like client work and then they'll run straight affiliate offers just for increased, just for cashflow. Right. And they just want to charge that. And it's just like,

Zach (34:13):

If you're an offer owner and you know, listening to this and you think about like how I want to, I want to get started on ClickBank, but I don't know how to recruit affiliates. Like if you're paying agency retainers five or $10,000 a month right now, like, what I would do is I would set aside, you know, I would negotiate with your, your current agency, save yourself like five K a month in base retainer fees or something. I would go put your offer up on ClickBank. And I would just give out like 10 or 20 affiliates and say, Hey, look, I want you to run this. I'm going to give you $500 in like a, in like a test budget. And um, you sign up for ad card, you spin up a virtual card, you set a limit on it for $500. And then you give that card number to, you know, to that affiliate. Right. And now they're going to load that up into their account. They can run it like, this is my opinion, like the best way to recruit affiliates. I think it's difficult to do in, in ClickBank. Cause it's so you guys are so big at this point. So difficult to really find a way to, you know, get in front of these affiliates and do this affiliate recruiting and networking. Um, because like new offers, it's like, you're you live and die by that ranking system?

Thomas (35:26):

Well, the thing is behind the marketplace, right? There's this network effect that happens when you get some semblance of traction, right? Whether it's ad spend, whether it's on email lists, the thing is these affiliates are watching what each other, what each other are doing. So they're all in each other's email lists and things like that. So when you start to get someone big mailing regularly, you're going to see this like, Hey, what's this, you're going to see this traction gain that way. Not so much from the marketplace at that point, but just from what's happening in the emailing ecosphere with the admins, running are great people that are using spy tools are seeing it. Now a lot of the things I get from a Phillips, there's a, Hey, what's this offer, right. It keeps popping up. What is this? Right. How do I get on it? And it's they didn't, they weren't coming to the marketplace for that. They were just, you know, going through their regular swipe files and different kinds of, uh, seeing this.

Zach (36:15):

Yeah, totally. Well, Tom has said, this is like a, this is not at all where I thought this conversation was going to go. Totally. And we'll definitely have you back on to like focus more of the conversation for the sellers and the offer owners, but, um, yeah. And I tell Rhea how we can support you and how people can get in touch.

Thomas (36:36):

Yeah. Well, my website is Thomas J mcmahon.com. Um, my social is linked to there from there and everything like that, you know, it was obviously gonna click bank dot confident men were about what ClickBank does. Um, we've got recommend checking out money, call.clickbank.com. If you're looking for offers that are kind of new and upcoming, that's a monthly thing we do where we just highlight kind of top half dozen offers that might not be top of the marketplace, but toppy PCs that are coming out, this is a good way to keep in, check on that. Um, yeah. And if you're at all interested in chatting about ClickBank writer, how you can come on board, happy to chat through all with any of that kind of stuff.

Zach (37:15):

I love it. I love it. Well, thank you so much, man. This has been awesome. Really appreciate it.

Thomas (37:19):

Of course, man. Yeah, it's been, it's been fun. I hope this was valuable for you and your listeners.

Zach (37:27):

Thanks so much for listening to another episode of the rich, add more at podcasts. If you're like me and listen to podcasts on the go, go ahead and subscribe on Apple podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and rich dad, poor dad.com/podcast. And if you absolutely love the show, go ahead and leave a review and a comment share with a friend. If you do take a copy screenshot of it, email me zach@funneldash.com. Show me you left a review. I'll give you a free copy of the rich add or ed book to learn more about the book. Go to rich ed for a.com to leave a review that a rich ed or at.com/review. Thanks again.


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About The Podcast

Jason Hornung is the founder and Creative Director at JH Media LLC, the world’s #1 direct response advertising agency focusing exclusively on the Facebook ads platform. Jason’s proprietary methods for ad creation, audience selection and scaling are responsible for producing $20 million + of profitable sales for his clients EVERY YEAR

Zach Johnson

Zach Johnson is Founder of FunnelDash, the Agency Growth and Finance Company, with their legendary Clients Like Clockwork solutions. Under Zach’s leadership, FunnelDash has grown to over 5,000+ agency customers managing over $1 Billion in ad spend across 41,000 ad accounts on. Zach’s private clients have included influencers such as Dr. Axe, Marie Forleo, Dan Kennedy, Dean Graziozi to name a few. Zach is also a noted keynote speaker and industry leader who’s now on a mission to partner with agencies to fund $1 Billion in ad spend over the next 5 years.

Dylan Carpenter

Dylan Carpenter

Dylan Carpenter will be diving into what he and his team are seeing in 200+ accounts on Google and Facebook when it comes to trends, new offerings, and new opportunities. With over $10 million in Facebook/Instagram ad spend, Dylan Carpenter had the pleasure to work with Fortune 500 companies, high investment start-ups, non-profits, and local businesses advertising everything from local services to physical and digital products. Having worked at Facebook as an Account Manager and now with 5+ years of additional Facebook Advertising under my belt, I’ve worked alongside 60+ agencies and over 500+ businesses. I work with a team of Facebook, Google, and LinkedIn experts to continue to help companies and small businesses leverage the power of digital marketing.

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