Selecting Your Core (Affiliate) Offer#
Selecting your core affiliate offer is a really important part of the affiliate marketing process.
Let's eat the elephant one bite at a time...
The Video - Affiliate Core Offer Selection#
What's The Core Offer?#
We define the core affiliate offer as the first offer you present to any new subscriber on your list.
If you're using a (separate) lead magnet to motivate people to subscribe to your email list - like a valuable, short PDF - the core offer (often called "entry" offer, or SLO (self-liquidating offer), or "tripwire" offer) is the very fist offer you present to your new subscribers.
You'll present your chosen core offer in several places:
- On the "Thank You"-page after people opted-in to your list
- In your first email ("Thank You"-email) after people subscribed to your list
- In your lead magnet (PDF for example)
- In several follow-up emails to your list
All other affiliate promotions will come after you presented your core offer.
That's why it's extremely important that your core offer is really attractive to the majority of your audience/list and truly irresistible.
What Makes An Offer Irresistible?#
There're a couple of factors that make an offer irresistible (or a "no-brainer offer"):
The offer has to have an extremely low threshold resistance, meaning: It's very easy to say "yes" to it.
Here are a few important pointers that make an offer truly irresistible:
- Broad appeal (in relation to your target audience! We don't go after true mass markets like grocery stores)
- Price (good: relatively cheap, like $7 - great: free trial, no credit card required - ideal/perfect: free)
- Very high perceived value (would the outcome/result make a real change in the buyer's mind?)
- Beginner friendlyness (must be relatively easy to do and follow for most)
- High quality experience (incl exceptional support) even before a final purchase decision is being made
- "A deal so great that you’d be a fool to pass it up."
That's why most marketers use as their "bait piece" a high-value, free content type offer for their lead generation.
Criteria For Selecting Affiliate Offers#
You can use these criteria whenever you choose an affiliate offer to promote to your list, not just when selecting your core offer:
- EPC (Earnings Per Click)
- CR (Conversion Rate)
- Refund Rate
- Attraction / appeal to the market
- Message To Market Match
- Message To Your Audience Match
- The State Of The Market
- Quality & Availability Of Support
- Responsiveness Of The Vendor & Support
- Vendor's history: Results & Product Creation History
- Vendor's ability To Follow Up ("raw/naked links")
- Vendor's ability to keep things fresh/updated/evergreen
- Vendor's ability to manage and deliver exceptional support, moderate groups, etc.
- Vendor's back-end
- Overall client / customer experience
- The "Sleeping Well" Factor (Value & Value For Price)
Testing Offers The Right Way#
This is a huge topic that we could create an entire course on its own on.
But here are a few important pointers for you to start with:
- Don't promote something new every other day or week
- Speak with your clients / list
- Ask questions
- Get real, honest, critical feedback on products you recommended in the past
- Adjust if necessary (offer not converting, too low EPC, too high refund rate, too many chargebacks/disputes, too bad reviews, ...)
- "Mystery shopping" (go through the whole purchase process & sign up "like a client")
Again, this topic is too huge and complex to cover it here in a short and quick way.
Obviously, the most important criteria for you as an affiliate - from a purely financial point of view - is this:
Does the offer convert well for me / for my list?
There's no point in continuing to promote an offer that doesn't convert.
No point in riding a dead horse.
Criteria For Your Core Offer#
All criteria we discussed so far to find and choose great offers to promote apply to your core offer, too.
But here are a few points worth repeating and underlining when it comes to selecting your core offer:
- Broad appeal in your niche (example within MMO/IM: Affiliate marketing)
- Extremely valuable content (very helpful, giving honest low-cost options, not just ripping people off)
- Free trial or even better: Entirely free front-end (high converting entry-type offer, no purchase resistance, extremely low barrier to entry, easy to say "yes" to)
- Complete affiliate funnel that you earn commissions from
- Gets updated frequently (product creators who truly care, update the product, keep it evergreen)
- An option to get 100% commissions throughout the entire funnel (via the purchase of license rights)
- Ideally: Getting access to your buyers' data (true "make this offer your own" option, unfortunately very rare in today's market)
A Few Thoughts On "Recurring Billings"#
Other marketers will put special emphasis on the requirement of the offer having a "recurring billing" component, like a subscription.
While we understand how powerful it can be to generate monthly/yearly recurring commissions from a product (with an ideally high retention rate, which is rare), we think that it's even more important that the offer converts very well for the (new) affiliate marketer and gives him or her a great chance to get to get some quick wins.
It's true that recurring affiliate offers can potentially bring a lot of stability for the income situation of the affiliate, but if the offer is "difficult to convert" because of a relatively high, forced monthly payment for the potential buyer, then making an insignificantly low, monthly recurring affiliate commission is worse than a truly high-converting offer with a relatively broad appeal.
This is especially true within the MMO (Make Money Online) niche, because average retention rates are often 3 months or lower.
Potential Core Offer Idea: Lazy Commissions#
No surprise here, right? =)
But in all seriousness:
If you like the training so far, and especially if you're choosing to get the special license rights with access to your buyers' data, you've got a really decent core offer.
In fact, we couldn't find an offer like this in the market place, and that's why we created Lazy Commissions.
Otherwise we'd have been happy to promote it as affiliates.
The license rights put you in the position to get 100% commissions throughout the entire funnel, and with the special license rights you'll be able to additionally segment and follow up with your buyers.
That's really powerful - especially over time.
More information here: