A Question for Affiliates and List Owners

by Exire
8 replies
Hi all,

I'm in the preliminary stages of creating a membership site. Specifically, it's looking like it will be a fixed-term membership site of about three months. For those not familiar with this idea it simply means that the member joins for $X/mo. and they pay only for a certain length of time--three months in this case. The membership site will be in a lesson format. Each week the members will receive access to a new "lesson" that teaches them how to do something.

I'm planning to sell the membership at $29/mo. and offer a 50% commission to affiliates. I'll be offering a two-week free trial to the membership site to (hopefully) encourage people to subscribe. There will also be some OTO upsells in the $39, $49 and $97 range, which I'd be willing to give 75% commission on. I'll be using Clickbank as the payment processor so they, of course, get their cut too.

Those are the basics. Now for the questions:

To affiliates: Is this enough to entice you to promote such a membership site? After Clickbank fees the affiliate and I would each get about $12/mo. per member for three months. Then, of course, there's the one time payments for any OTO the customer buys when they sign up to the membership--which you'd get 75% of. The two-week free trial means that the recurring commissions don't kick in for two-weeks (though I'm hoping the OTO commissions would make up for that slight flaw). So, if you're an affiliate--"super" or otherwise--would you promote something like this? If not, why? And what could I change to get you to?

To List Owners: I plan to get the initial influx of members via some JVs with list owners. Would the $12/mo. and single payment OTO set up be enough to get you to promote it to your list? I realize list owners get a lot of requests for such things so I'd be willing to go the extra mile and offer you a permanent promotional email within my autoresponder sequence and promotion of one of your products as a recommended resource within one of the membership lessons itself. I'd also give you a free report (about 10 to 15 pages) that promotes the membership site which will be branded with your affiliate link. You can do whatever you'd like with this report--give it to your list, sell it, use it as a bonus. Whatever. Would this get you to promote the membership site to your list? If not, why? And what could I change to get you to?

Thanks in advance.
#affiliates #list #owners #question
  • Profile picture of the author dat9er
    I'm leaning towards thinking $12/Month just isn't enough. Are you sure you can't just charge more for you're membership in general? There are plenty of $99/month, 3 month programs. In fact I rarely see cheaper ones (cheaper membership sites are usually of the endless, rather than the 3 month varieties).

    Maybe the OTOS are enough to make it up, but maybe not. It would be great if you had stats on the percent of people who take the upsells before shopping this to affiliates.
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    • Profile picture of the author Exire
      Thanks for the reply!

      You're probably right. Since it is a limited membership I assume that people would be willing to pay more per month since they know how long they'll be paying anyway. Plus, it's easier to get 100 people to pay you $100/mo. than it is to get 1,000 people to pay you $10/mo. (or so I've heard). I guess I'm still partially stuck in the traditional membership mentality where charging $99/mo. for an indefinite period would be asking a lot where asking $99/mo. for just three months isn't quite as bad.

      And yes. Conversion statistics would need to be gathered prior to attempting to get the prized affiliates. It wasn't really something I was thinking about until you mentioned it though.

      I appreciate your answer. I believe I'll reconsider the pricing structure and evaluate the competition to see just how high I can go with the pricing.

      Thanks again, dat9er.


      If anyone else wants to chime in also, feel free to do so. I want as many opinions as I can get.
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  • Profile picture of the author Will Edwards
    For me, the commission does not matter as much as the quality of the product and its relevance to my target audience. But to try to answer you question, the commission looks fine to me.

    Will
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    • Profile picture of the author Exire
      Thanks, Will.

      I was working this hypothetical situation under the assumption that, of course, the membership would be of interest to the affiliates in question. I know some people will promote just about anything to anyone to try to make a buck but that wasn't the kind of affiliate I had in mind for the question. You were actually the type of person I was thinking of when I asked the question. Someone who would only promote it given that it was relevant to their audience and of quality.

      I assume that if $12/mo. is good enough for you that a larger one would be even better? As dat9er mentioned, most such sites are in the $99/mo. range so giving a much larger cut to the affiliates wouldn't be out of the question.

      Anyway, I appreciate your answer. Thanks again.
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      • Profile picture of the author JohnMcCabe
        Originally Posted by Will Edwards View Post

        For me, the commission does not matter as much as the quality of the product and its relevance to my target audience. But to try to answer you question, the commission looks fine to me.

        Will
        Given Will's stipulations about quality and fit, your offer looks fair to me, too.
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    • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
      Banned
      From my perspective, you're selling an $87 product (of which there are many on Clickbank) and offering a 50% commission on it, that happens to be divded into 3 instalments. The potential downside is that a few may cancel before paying all 3 instalments. As against this, there's the (bigger?) potential upside of possible 75% commissions on some upsells? The financial aspect of it looks absolutely fine, in principle, to me.

      My interest as an affiliate would depend on the sales page, product quality, relevance to my traffic, and all the normal, more important stuff rightly commented on by the gentlemen above.

      I don't know how you're going to operate the two different commission rates, though. Within one Clickbank account, you can offer only one commission-rate. I'm just saying ...
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      • Profile picture of the author Exire
        Originally Posted by Alexa Smith View Post

        From my perspective, you're selling an $87 product (of which there are many on Clickbank) and offering a 50% commission on it, that happens to be divded into 3 instalments. The potential downside is that a few may cancel before paying all 3 instalments. As against this, there's the (bigger?) potential upside of possible 75% commissions on some upsells? The financial aspect of it looks absolutely fine, in principle, to me.

        My interest as an affiliate would depend on the sales page, product quality, relevance to my traffic, and all the normal, more important stuff rightly commented on by the gentlemen above.
        Thanks for your comments. It helps to assure me I'm at least on the right path. Nothing's set in stone yet, but at least I know that it would be of interest to affiliates.

        I don't know how you're going to operate the two different commission rates, though. Within one Clickbank account, you can offer only one commission-rate. I'm just saying ...
        Good point. Like I said, this is in the preliminary stages.

        I've never actually sold anything through Clickbank before, though I did browse through their FAQs. This little problem just didn't occur to me until you mentioned it. It doesn't have to be two different commission rates. Everything can be a 50/50 split or some other ratio. I was just playing with some numbers to get some feedback.

        Thanks again for replying.
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      • Profile picture of the author deertrail
        Originally Posted by Alexa Smith View Post


        I don't know how you're going to operate the two different commission rates, though. Within one Clickbank account, you can offer only one commission-rate. I'm just saying ...
        Yes that's true for standard products, but you can set different commission rates for recurring billing products, so in this case he should be able tweak payouts the way he wants to.

        -Bryan
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