This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
So we recently had a story, was it a first $1,000 story or throwback Thursday update, I forget, from someone who is an Audible affiliate. They are earning commissions, affiliate commissions from referring new customers to Audible, people listening to audio books. And they were making a good amount of money. I think it was several thousand dollars a month. So today we've got an aspiring Audible affiliate on the line, somebody who's like, "Hey, I like this business model, can you say more about it?
How can I replicate that success? What strategies should I use to promote Audible effectively?" So this applies beyond Audible. It's to affiliate marketing in general. So affiliate marketing can be a great way to generate some passive income, but it often takes more than just signing up for a program and kind of waiting for the commissions to roll in. So let's see if we can delve into it a bit more.
In this episode, we will explore the key techniques and best practices for promoting a program like Audible or another one as an affiliate. How do you drive more signups? How do you maximize your earnings potential? This listener says they need to jumpstart their commissions. Let's see what we can do.
I like it. Stay tuned, quick shout out to our sponsor and then the detailed question and my answer. [Music]
Hey, Chris. I recently heard the story of the Audible affiliate who's earning several thousand dollars a month in commissions. Guy got me thinking, could I do the same?
And I signed up for the Audible affiliate program, but so far I've only made two referrals. I'm pretty sure one was to my girlfriend. I'm wondering if there are any specific strategies or techniques you should be using to promote Audible more effectively and drive more signups. How can I turn this into a profitable side hustle? And what am I missing?
[Music]
All right, it's great to hear you are interested in turning your love of audio books into this side hustle. And congratulations on getting the referral to your girlfriend. Hey, we all start somewhere. I think this is like a common thing. When anybody signs up for an affiliate program, they're like, hey, who's my partner or my friend or my brother or sister that I can get to sign up and then I'll make 20 bucks and that just feels great.
So let's start there. But then of course you need more traffic and that's really what, that's the number one problem we need to solve here. We need people coming to click your links, whether it's on your website, your blog, your social media, email, however you were sharing these links, how can you reach more of that audience? So identify the types of people who are most likely to be interested in audio books and Audible subscriptions. And I would encourage you to think about a specific niche market, a specific like, is it romance readers?
Is it tech people? Is it busy professionals? Is it people who read personal development or business books? And we could even get much more specific than that, but that's a good start. And then instead of simply sharing your affiliate link, whatever the format you're using or platform, as I said, it could be a blog or something else, you're gonna have to create some content that showcases the benefits of Audible and audio books.
It could be book reviews, listening tips, comparisons. That's basically what people do when they're trying to build this kind of model. So you have to think, what is the content I can create for that intended audience? How can I then reach more people? And it just becomes a numbers game after a certain point.
It's like, how do you get the people there? If you get the right people there and they click the links, you're gonna make more referrals. Then you will make more money. And with a lot of these affiliate programs, they have tiers and if you refer X number of people in a month and you go to a higher tier, you might make five or $10 more per referral. So it is kind of a rich get richer kind of thing.
You wanna be in the group of people who is successful. Definitely takes time, it takes attention. The world changes a lot. The affiliate world changes sometimes quarterly, sometimes more frequently than that. So you wanna pay attention and see what other people are doing.
But it definitely is something that can be successful for a lot of people as we have seen here on the podcast. So I'm wishing you well. Listener is always wishing you every success as well. Let me know if I can help in some way. Much more is coming up throughout the year.
A new episode every day, always completely free. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School. [Music]
From the Onward Project.
