Posted in Internet Marketing Strategy	September 19, 2005

Learn how one information marketer used a two-step program to sell a three-day, $3000 seminar through his affiliate marketing network.

Executive Summary

• An affiliate marketing network can be a major source of new customers
• Members of an affiliate marketing network often shy away from high priced offers that will only be sold via a sales letter landing page and order flow
• Your affiliate marketing network is best used as a lead generation program that will work best when the price point is relatively low

I've heard many experienced direct marketers say that "You just can't use the Internet to sell expensive information products." While there may be some bit of truth to this thought, an Internet-based affiliate marketing network program is the foundation of a highly successful, highend seminar marketing program for one large vertically integrated special-interest publisher.

Opportunity: The top level of the Mequoda Media Pyramid for the publisher in question is their three-day, $3,000 seminar program series. The lower levels of the pyramid start with a Mequoda Internet Hub and 400,000 circulation, thrice-weekly email newsletter. Even with this powerful list, they still believed they needed to go further to meet their goal of 100 paid seats for their newest educational program. Hence, they decided to open promotion of the seminar to a select subset of their affiliate marketing network—with a twist.

Many of their top members of their affiliate marketing network openly expressed reservations about using their precious inventory to try and sell a $3,000 program via a traditional long copy, sales letter landing page.

The Twist: To deal with this objection (and make the program more effective for their own 400,000 name list), they went for a two-step sell. Members of their affiliate marketing network would agree to promote a 45-minute executive level audio briefing that would reveal an overview of their innovative wealth-building program. The 45-minute audio seminar was promoted by members of their affiliate marketing network via email to a long sales letter landing page for a cost of $20 per registrant. Members of the affiliate marketing network would get 100 percent of the $20 audio seminar fee, plus $1,000 for each person who signed up for the $3,000 program.

Results: 2,200 people paid to attend the 45-minute audio seminar. The $3,000 seminar was sold out in three days with a wait list of 40 people standing by for a seat. The publisher did not reveal to me how many of the 100 seats he sold and how many were sold by members of his affiliate marketing network. If the balance was 50/50, he paid out $94,000 in commissions on sales of $344,000 to his affiliate marketing network.

Bonus: Using his 40 wait listed responders, 2,100 remaining audio seminar buyers and an offer to allow the first 100 to come again or send a friend, he repeated the program two months later to a second sold-out house.

Lesson: While it may not be possible to sell high priced goods directly using only your affiliate marketing network, a sales letter landing page and a credit card order flow, those two elements combined with an audio conference or other forms of telemarketing can be used as the foundation of a low cost, multi-step marketing program.

Other Resources

• Affiliate Network Marketing or Networking Arbitrage
• Affiliate Marketing Network Resource Directory
• Marketing and Promoting Your Own Seminars and Workshops by Fred Gleeck

Note: As always, the details of the case have been modified to protect the identity of the publisher and the program.