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How to become a successful affiliate marketer with Mathieu Jang
- There’s definitely a different game when you are not only actively driving paid traffic, but actually doing it profitably. It’s like having this magic vending machine.
- There are so many metrics to watch, but no matter what you’re doing, if you just watch those two things, what’s the cost to acquire a customer, how much is the customer worth?
- A lot of people don’t realize how much goes into the research and development of creating products and finding out if there’s actually demand and if it actually works in all of the testings that go involved.
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SHARE THIS POST: HOW TO BECOME A SUCCESSFUL AFFILIATE MARKETER
HOW TO BECOME A SUCCESSFUL AFFILIATE MARKETER
As an affiliate marketer there are so many metrics to watch, but no matter what watch two things: what’s the cost to acquire a customer, and how much is the customer worth?
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Doug: Well, welcome back. This is another episode of Real Marketing Real Fast. Today, we’re going to be talking to a guest who’s been the driving force in helping to generate over a hundred million dollars in sales. Mathieu Jang, he’s often referred to professionally, as a sought after marketing strategist and consultant. However, Mathieu had barely graduated from high school, dropped out of college his first year, and was working in a butcher shop making a meager $9 an hour. He was broke, miserable, unable to pay rent and bills, and lived on a steady diet of ramen noodles.
Doug: It was at this point that he had reached out, trying to figure out what could he do to improve himself and make himself better, but he had no special skills or education to get him a well-paying job. Mathieu wanted to find some kind of business, but he didn’t know what it was going to be. He got into Google and he searched on how to make money online. Due to the results, he took many hits, got scammed several times, lost money on numerous things, taking online surveys, data entry, affiliate marketing, and became sick of failure.
Doug: Mathieu began to wonder if there was ever a legitimate way to make money online. Things began to change when he stumbled across a Facebook video from Kameron George, a very successful digital marketing strategist. Mathieu had finally found a mentor that had achieved what he wanted to achieve and he has started his own business, online Affiliate Institute. It’s one of the world’s foremost affiliate marketing education platforms. He has helped hundreds of entrepreneurs learn to build, optimize, and scale their business.
Doug: Many of his students now have their own online successful businesses that are doing six to eight figures and enjoying a life of true freedom. Beyond his well-established skills and experience, Jang’s passion for helping others is shaking up the mainstream education system and it’s abundantly clear in everything he does. I’d like you to join me in welcoming Mathieu Jang to the Real Marketing Real Fast podcast today. Hey, Mathieu, super excited to have you on the show today. Welcome to the Real Marketing Real Fast podcast.
Mathieu Jang: Awesome, and thanks for having me, dude.
Doug: I’m super stoked because I’ve got a huge interest in affiliate marketing. I know this is your deep, deep expertise. Just so our listeners get an idea, deep expertise in the sense that you help people make six, seven and eight figures as an affiliate, not an extra $50 a month by putting a link in your blog post.
Mathieu Jang: Yeah. There’s definitely a different game when you are not only actively driving paid traffic, but actually doing it profitably. What’s really cool about that is once you nail that down, it’s like having this magic vending machine? What’d I tell you, Doug? If you go to this machine and every time you put a dollar in, $3 came out, how many times are you going to put a dollar in?
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HOW TO BECOME A SUCCESSFUL AFFILIATE MARKETER
As an affiliate marketer there are so many metrics to watch, but no matter what watch two things: what’s the cost to acquire a customer, and how much is the customer worth?
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Doug: Yeah. That’s like my kids when they were young and they thought that the ATM machine, just every time you put the card in, money came out. They had no idea that we had to work to get the money in there, but yeah, we’d do that pretty often.
Mathieu Jang: Yeah, right? You’d sit there all day long. I remember when I first had that conversation because when I first got into the business at all, I tried numerous different ways to try and make money online and tried all different types of businesses from … I tried to affiliate marketing at a very low level, like what you’re talking about, putting in links on blogs. I tried paid surveys. I tried to email submits. I tried the network … I tried a whole bunch of different things. The one thing I got to work was a paid email submit. I would get 80 cents for every email and name I got submitted and after six months I made $80. I was trying-
Doug: That’s bare fills up your Starbucks card.
Mathieu Jang: I was like, “Man, maybe there’s just these mythical creatures that extract money from the internet and I’m just not one of them.” I was frustrated, man. I was trying to do a lot of this stuff on my own and I was just running around like a hamster on a wheel trying to figure stuff out and it got to that point where I’m like, “Hey, you know what, maybe this isn’t for me.” I ended up going back to work in a butcher shop making $9 an hour and I ended up stumbling across a video of one of my good friends now, but at the time he was 19 years old.
Mathieu Jang: He was traveling out of the world, making $20 grand a month, living in Thailand. I was like, “Dude, what is this guy doing? He’s around my age. He’s doing what I want to do. He’s making the money I want to make. He’s living the life I want to live. Maybe instead of me trying to go and do all this crap on my own, maybe I should try and learn from him.” At this point in time, I’m trying to do everything for free or the least amount of money possible. Paid advertising is not something that I would even take into consideration at this time.
Mathieu Jang: What he brought up to me was the magic vending machine analogy, and he was like, “Dude,” he’s like, “how are you going to get anyone to buy your stuff? You think you’re going to post a link on a blog and someone’s going to find it. How is that scalable? How can you scale that up without taking months and months and months, and even then it’s not predictably scalable? What if you could predictably engineer your income? What if you knew how to make every single dollar that you spent on advertising bring you two, three, four, $5 back? If every dollar you put in gave you $5 back, well you spend $2,000 and you make 10 grand right there.”
Doug: Sure, no brainer.
Mathieu Jang: Now I’m like, “Oh, I’ve been looking at this the wholly wrong way. I’ve been trying to … The paid advert, that’s how I get the customers then if I can do that profitably if I can learn that.” I really started focusing on that part.
Doug: Well, it’s funny, because I hear so many people talk about free, so that “We’ll do social media. It’s free. I’m going to build my email list because it’s free. I’m going to email my list because it’s free.” You listen to the big marketers like the Frank Kerns or whoever you like to follow and they talk about, “Hey, it’s cost me $25 to get somebody to get my free copy of my book, but that’s going to turn into $10,000 for me so I can do that all day long.”
Mathieu Jang: Absolutely man. Through Dakota, that … He opened me up to this reality that paid to advertise can be one of the greatest investments. Actually one … I don’t know if you’ve read the book Sell Like Crazy by Sabri Suby, but he put in a really great chapter in there where he talks about the greatest investment in your business that you can ever have. He starts bringing up people like Warren Buffett, Carl Icahn, George Soros, people that if they get 30% on their money are absolutely killing it. That means every dollar gets $1.30 back, which at a billion-dollar scale is a huge amount of money.
Mathieu Jang: What he was explaining is that when you can get paid to advertise down, they got campaigns where every dollar makes 10, every dollar makes 15. There is not an investment on the planet that can get you anywhere close to returns like that. That’s why like before, you ever look at a message, that’s where you should be focusing on, no matter if you’re running an affiliate marketing business or you’re running any type of business at all. If you can nail down a process that can allow you to spend advertising profitably, that unlocks the most profitable investment that you could possibly have.
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SHARE THIS POST: HOW TO BECOME A SUCCESSFUL AFFILIATE MARKETER
HOW TO BECOME A SUCCESSFUL AFFILIATE MARKETER
As an affiliate marketer there are so many metrics to watch, but no matter what watch two things: what’s the cost to acquire a customer, and how much is the customer worth?
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Mathieu Jang: As I started going through this, one of my mentors … Through Dakota, I met my mentor, Kameron George. He was the first mentor that really taught me everything. He’s now a partner with me on Affiliate Institute, one of the smartest guys I know and he’s our acting CEO. He is one of the smartest marketing geniuses I know. Probably when we get to the point of who you should have on the podcast next, that’s probably the guy that I would recommend. He really nailed down for me in the beginning was, there’s a lot of things you can watch, especially in paid advertising. There are all these metrics.
Mathieu Jang: There’s all these video metrics. There are click metrics so you can look at your CPMs, your CTRs, your this, you are that. All that really matters is, what is the cost to acquire my customer, my CPA, and how much is that customer worth? Everyone’s like, “Oh, I need to get the cheapest leads. If I get the cheapest leads, I’ll make the most money.” I don’t care if my leads are $2. I’ll pay $50 a lead if every four leads convert into a $99 buyer. If my CPA is $200, like what we’re looking at right now with our process. For example, if we look at our process right now with one of the offers that we’re promoting for our education platform, our front-end product is $99 a month.
Mathieu Jang: We’ll go add to webinar registration to $99 a month sign-up, and then we put them through a consultative sales approach, which is really a fancy way of saying that you sell like a doctor. Imagine if you went to a doctor, and the doctor just came up to you, and he just started poking you everywhere. “Does this hurt? Does that hurt? Does this hurt?” That’s how a lot of people sell.
Doug: Absolutely.
Mathieu Jang: They’re just poking you, trying to find something, where instead if you take a consultative approach or you sell like an actual doctor, what do they do when you go in? Do they just poke you? No. They ask you, “What’s going on? What’s the problem? What are you looking for here? What’s the issue that you got?” So now I can find out how I can best serve them. If they come to me, it’s a different conversation. In ours, in the make money online land space, there are really two different types of people that come in. There are the people that are not in a financial position that they want to be in and they have a lot more time.
Mathieu Jang: There are the other people that are working professionals that actually make quite a bit of money. They’re probably into the six-figure range already, but they’re working 80 plus hours a week and they have no time to spend with their family. That’s a different conversation where if I don’t take a consultative approach, I don’t know how to speak to them properly, because I need to know that. I need to know about them. I need to know what they’re really looking for and I need to know the pain points that they have. I need to know what type of plan to be able to engineer specifically to them.
Mathieu Jang: Now, the same kind of thing in fitness. I need to know, is that person overweight and they’re looking to lose weight or is that person skinny and trying to build muscle? Where are they on that spectrum? The consultative sales approach is just an application based survey, really, where you’re just trying to get enough information about them to find out what’s their problem, what are they dealing with, what are they really looking for, what is their budget that they’re working with, what are their goals? All of that information, and then you can present them with the perfect solution for them specifically.
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SHARE THIS POST: HOW TO BECOME A SUCCESSFUL AFFILIATE MARKETER
HOW TO BECOME A SUCCESSFUL AFFILIATE MARKETER
As an affiliate marketer there are so many metrics to watch, but no matter what watch two things: what’s the cost to acquire a customer, and how much is the customer worth?
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Mathieu Jang: We’ve done this over and over and over and over and over again in multiple campaigns, like all of the … The total income between all of those has been over a hundred million and it does really, really well, especially when you’re selling a high ticket. The way that I’m going to explain this is just what we do, and that’s selling high ticket products. When we talk about affiliate marketing and when we teach new students, the reason why we go high ticket is it allows them to have a little bit more of a buffer. If I’m spending money on advertising and I can make a thousand, two, $3,000, I can afford to spend quite a bit more and make a little bit more mistakes to acquire that customer.
Mathieu Jang: If I have to acquire a buyer … If my product’s $20 and that’s all I got, I got to acquire that customer at $10 or less, which is extremely difficult.
Doug: Let’s press pause for a sec. You’re recommending to the people that you help to build an affiliate business, that they sell high ticket items, so there’s more margin. As you said, you can’t sell a $20 item and get a $10 commission, because it’ll cost you more than that to get the customer.
Mathieu Jang: Yes, because our main methodologies are all based on paid traffic. In order to run paid traffic, we need to search the world for them, because it can get quite expensive, and if you don’t know what you’re doing, it can be quite easy to burn money. We need to search the world and give them as much of a buffer as possible, but also give them as much of income potential as possible. When you have the ability to … Going back to our example on a consultative sales approach at the back end of that, we ended up selling our 12-week accelerator. That’s about $10,000.
Mathieu Jang: Our average customer ends up being worth around two to $3,000, depending on the traffic source. When we look at the traffic source, if I can acquire a customer for, and we don’t, but even $500, if it’s … Look at this. We’re the $99 a month buyer. Most people would be like, “I got to acquire that customer for under $99. We’re willing to pay two to $300.” Heck, I would pay $500. Why? Why would I do that? The only reason I’m able to do that is that I know my numbers. I know my customer lifetime value is over $2,000. I’ll pay 500 for 2,000 all day long. That’s every dollar makes me four.
Mathieu Jang: The only reason I’m able to do that and I’m able to be confident in that is because I know the cost to acquire my customer and I know the value of that customer and how much they’re worth. There’s a lot. The reason why I say that, there’s so many metrics to watch, but no matter what you’re doing, if you just watch those two things, what’s the cost to acquire, how much is the customer worth? It’s really simple to get that. Cost to acquire, take your total ad spend divided by how many customers you have. The customer lifetime value, take your total revenue divided by how many customers you have.
Mathieu Jang: As soon as you can start to get that in there, then now you’re making decisions based on data. Once you get that down, it gets really, really fun. Now you can strategically engineer your income. You want to make 10 grand a month and every dollar makes you four, spend $2,500 on advertising.
Doug: At what point do you have to hold your client’s hand? I get the math. I talk about LTV, a lifetime. Lifetime value, so the customer’s worth. In Kern’s, example there were $10,000 a year. So how much can I spend to get them? You’re coaching people to this process, so they get somebody into a funnel. That’s a $99 upfront. Is there a point where they hit the panic button? They’re going, “Okay, I just spent a hundred dollars to get somebody into a $99 affiliate offer. How long before we get the real money?”
Mathieu Jang: This is where we have to set the right expectations in the beginning. When I first started doing this, I thought everyone was like me. For me-
Doug: I’ve been there. It doesn’t work.
Mathieu Jang: When I first got started, it took me six months and $2,000 in ad spend to make a $25 sale. That, to most people, is ludicrous. To most people, they’re like, “Why would you do that?” I go to all of my friends and I am so excited. I’m like, “I got a sale.” They’re like, “How much did you spend?” I’m like, “Well, I spent $2,000 on ads and I spent thousands of dollars on the education.” They’re like, “So, you lost thousands of dollars and you’re excited right now?” I’m like, “No, you don’t get it. I had someone purchase a product from me that has never met me before in my life. I have no idea who they are. They saw an ad, they bought.”
Mathieu Jang: That to me proves that this works. That means if I can do that once, I can do that once a day. If I can do that once a day, I can do it twice a day, I can do it five times a day, I can do it 10 times a day. All I need to know is it works. Now I’m hooked. Then it took me about another year and a half to get to the point of making about a $10,000 a month income. About two years of not really making much money at all, just money on both my education and advertising to then eventually get money there.
Mathieu Jang: I thought when I first got … At that point, I had my first $10,000 a month and I’m wondering why no one’s able to duplicate what I’m doing and I help one person make $25. So, I’m like, “Okay, there’s something up here. I don’t feel good if I’m not able to help customers get results here. I need to figure something out.” What we figured out and what we looked at it was, “If we tell everyone that they have to build everything and do everything, the learning curve is too long. If we can’t get them a result right away, they drop off.”
Mathieu Jang: In the beginning, we were teaching them, “Here’s how to run ads. Here’s how to shoot your ads. Here’s how to look at the ads to add. Here’s how to build your own funnel. Here’s how you build your capture page. Here’s how you write the copy for it. Here’s how you split test to copy to make sure that you know what converts. Here’s how to split test to design, so you know what converts. Now, you’ve captured the leads. Here’s how you mail the leads. This is how you test subject lines and body copy to know what makes people open and what makes people click. Now you’re sending them to a sales page.” It keeps going.
Doug: It’s a ton of it. It’s a year’s worth of education if they’re sharp.
Mathieu Jang: Yeah. Ton, so no one was getting it. Then we’re like, “Okay, we got to go back. The issue here is the learning curve. It’s not that the information isn’t right. It’s that the learning curve and the time it takes for people to get it is too long. We need to figure out a way to get them some quick wins fast.” What we started to realize is that “What we need to do here is, if we can … Wait, we know how to build funnels. We know how to build capture pages and split test something to get to the point where they’re getting to at least 30 to sometimes even 70% conversion rate on the capture page and then moving them over to a webinar.”
Mathieu Jang: “We know how to do the webinars. We know how to sell. We know how to get on the back end and close people. What if we were to give them basically all of that, and we just taught them how to run ads in the beginning and they use the funnel that we have?” We just basically focused on content and ads and we showed them the stuff that we were running with. As soon as we started taking that approach, and we took a lot of the heavy lifting off of their plate from the beginning, now all of a sudden people started getting quick wins.
Mathieu Jang: Now all of a sudden, people didn’t have to focus on a million things at once. They just had to really focus on Facebook ads and get them down. Then once they got that down and started making a bit of money, “Sure, now let’s teach you how to manage an email list. Now let’s teach you how to build your own front-end capture page and maybe a high-value content offer that you can be exchanged for their name and email before you pass them to the webinars.” Now instead of having them have to do everything all at once, we have them focused on one thing at a time.
Mathieu Jang: Now, even still with that being said, that’s still … It sounds easy when you say, “You just have to do Facebook ads.” I’m sure you know it can get quite difficult to do that. It is still setting the realistic expectation of no matter what you do, no matter what business you do … I’m yet to find a business on the planet without it being some sort of gimmick or scheme that you’re going to make a decent amount of money and without a couple of years being put into really learn whatever skillset it is that you’re looking to do.
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SHARE THIS POST: HOW TO BECOME A SUCCESSFUL AFFILIATE MARKETER
HOW TO BECOME A SUCCESSFUL AFFILIATE MARKETER
As an affiliate marketer there are so many metrics to watch, but no matter what watch two things: what’s the cost to acquire a customer, and how much is the customer worth?
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Mathieu Jang: For example, in here, without learning the skillsets of paid traffic, email copy, copywriting in general, sales. There’s a lot of different skills that you’re going to need to learn that once you do learn unlocks the income potential. You can do a lot of amazing things with, but you can’t just come out and do nothing or come out and have no skills and not put in the work to make money. Now, it’s really about setting the right expectations in the beginning. In the beginning, I thought everyone was like me and was like, “Just grind it out and learn this stuff.”
Mathieu Jang: It would take so long and they would just out. Basically now, I really sell people on how hard it is and how it’s going to take time. Basically one of the things that Kameron would say to me in the beginning and how I preface this with everyone that I work with now, what if it took you three years? What if it took you four years? What if it took you four years and all you did was spend money? That was it. You just spent money on education. You spent money on advertising. You spent money, you spent money, you spent money, you made $0, but at the end of that four years, you had the ability to write your own paycheck for life, would it be worth it?
Doug: It sounds like investing in a college education. The difference is that you’re going to write a paycheck for life that you’re not going have to show up every day.
Mathieu Jang: Exactly. The one that I use four years more often just for that, because four-year education, man, most people, they go into that four-year education. They get out, they get the same damn job they would’ve got. They didn’t go to school and now they’ve got a student loan that they can’t even claim bankruptcy to get out of, which is … One of the biggest reasons I do what I do is to disrupt the education platform. I think that eventually, it’ll get to the point that no one will go to business school when they start to really realize that every single one of your business professors, besides a very, very, very small majority, but the far majority of your business teachers have never run a business in their entire life.
Doug: That’s my philosophy. When people say, “Well, who should ask for advice?” I say, “I never ask anyone for advice who hasn’t done what you’re going to do or is willing to pay the price that you’re willing to pay.” I’ve been involved in government projects and I’ve said, “You guys can’t be on the committee, the small business committee.” They said, “Why?” I said, “Have you ever made payroll on your credit card?” They went, “No.” I said, “Then you can’t relate. You just go back and ask for more money and they give it to you. As a small business, we don’t have that luxury.”
Mathieu Jang: You’re bootstrapping. It’s all on you. That’s one thing that I really go hard on to. I’m like, “I made the mistake. I went to business school and I went for a couple of months. I found out my teacher made $45,000 a year and never once in their life ran a business. I was like, ‘Why am I spending money to be here then?'” It was crazy, but then-
Doug: Walk us through what this looks like for somebody who wants to get started because a lot of our listeners have businesses or work in a marketing department. To me, this sounds like an ideal opportunity to set up a side hustle, use the skills and techniques, not only to set up an affiliate business, but all these skills you’re going to teach them are transferable into their existing business.
Mathieu Jang: Yes. See, I’m glad you brought that up because this is what I really hone in for people to get to think. Not everyone wants to be an affiliate marketer for the rest of their life, but if we’re really honest here, the only way to create true freedom is some level of entrepreneurship. Otherwise, you’re trading your time for money and whether you make $10,000 an hour, you’re still capped. You’re always going to be trading a ton of your money, so you have to do some sort of entrepreneurship. Now, with that being said, the greatest skillset that you should be learning if you’re going to do any level of entrepreneurship is sales and marketing, and especially at this point in time, digital sales and marketing.
Mathieu Jang: What’s great about what we do here is that we teach people how to do it with affiliate marketing because what it does is it teach you the skill set of digital sales and marketing without having the variable of having to do the market data and research to find out if the people even want your product, if there’s even the demand for your product, or to even create the product in the first place. A lot of people don’t realize how much goes into the research and development of creating products and finding out if there’s actually demand and if it actually works in all of the testings that go involved.
Mathieu Jang: The amount of variables that opens up is insane. Each variable takes more and more and more and more time. In the beginning, what we want to do is we want to eliminate as many of those variables as possible. When we do affiliate marketing, the entire creating a product and research and development, and all that stuff is done. It’s already proven to convert and it already is done. Your customer support and all that stuff, all that’s done. All you have to focus on is digital sales and marketing. Then just like you said, once you learn those skills, guess how many businesses on this planet could benefit from better digital sales and marketing?
Doug: All of them.
Mathieu Jang: Everyone. All of them. No one … A lot more people now know how to do it, but the far majority of businesses have no idea what they’re doing when it comes to paid advertising. You could literally go to any city that you guys live in right now, knock on 10 business’s doors, and I would probably bet that eight of those 10 have no clue what they’re doing.
Doug: Well, and at the end of the day, you’re going to have proven results. If you’re going to go maybe a rent yourself out to do Facebook advertising, you’ve got all the experience, like you said, of running ads, testing copy, testing headlines, testing video and conversions, so you’ve got real-life experience. At the end of it, you haven’t just learned a skill. You’ve actually made some money learning the skill and you’ve got some proof and some evidence that what you’re talking about works.
Mathieu Jang: Absolutely, and that’s huge. People want to see results too. Especially if you’re going to go the agency route and going to go to businesses and be able to provide that as a service, they definitely want to see stuff. Especially when a lot of them are skeptical still about the internet, which to me seems crazy. I thought that we would be passed that by now, but you walk down the street and you find out … Well, now you don’t walk down the street, but before you had to walk down the streets and find out that yeah-
Doug: What’s interesting is I’ve tried this approach with clients before and sometimes it’s worked and sometimes it hasn’t worked. I said, “I want to have some skin in the game, so you know I want to do a JV with you. You need some marketing help. I’ll come in, I’ll do all this stuff. You pay for this, I’ll pay for that, and then we’ll split revenue.” With a private business, it’s really tough sometimes to attract and get the sales number as opposed to affiliates where you’ve got everything locked in with the appropriate software for tracking and marketing that you know you’re going to get paid and you know exactly how much. You’re not reliant on your client to report.
Mathieu Jang: Yeah. The tracking needs to be done. Man, especially with what we have now too, with tracking, it’s so cool we have the ability to do now. I don’t know if you use anything like Wicked Reports or anything like that, but the data that you get now where you can see every single customer. Everything they’ve ever touched, everything they’ve ever watched, how long they’ve watched it, how long they’ve stayed on pages, everywhere they went, what was the one that actually made them make the buying decision, everything, you can see all of it. Then you can also track all the sales and everything there too of where you’re to like you’re talking about.
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SHARE THIS POST: HOW TO BECOME A SUCCESSFUL AFFILIATE MARKETER
HOW TO BECOME A SUCCESSFUL AFFILIATE MARKETER
As an affiliate marketer there are so many metrics to watch, but no matter what watch two things: what’s the cost to acquire a customer, and how much is the customer worth?
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Mathieu Jang: The traditional companies, sometimes they’re still on paper. Most of them are now at least doing some sort of CRM or some sort of online merchandising and stuff like that, but yeah, there’s-
Doug: Talk to me about the product. For people that are listening, you say affiliate marketing high ticket items. Give us two or three examples of a high ticket product. You don’t have to give us the brand or the details, but at least give us an idea, so you can get a picture in your head what this could look like.
Mathieu Jang: In the beginning, I more so started with info products, so a lot of what we do now still is info products. Some of these high tech products could be courses and curriculum, whether that be just specifically on Facebook ads, whether that be a more of a holistic approach and it covers paid advertising, copywriting, funnel building, sales. It could be info courses that get up there. It could be masterminded that gets up there. There are some masterminds that you can put together 15, 20 grand that people will happily pay for if there’s the value there. Info products and events can be ones.
Mathieu Jang: When we go to say physical products, there was one that we did … the one campaign we did over a hundred million in sales for was an alkalized water device. Basically medical-grade alkalized water device that produced hydrogen-rich water that they were about $5,000 each. We would sell those. There is-
Doug: I’m just wondering if the advice that you give people is, “Hey, if you’ve got a sector that you’re interested in, if you’ve got an interest in internet marketing, maybe look for info products. If you had an interest in health and wellness, maybe look at stuff that’s in health and wellness that you’re interested in.” I don’t know [crosstalk 00:26:50].
Mathieu Jang: With that, we don’t. We don’t tell them that. We don’t tell people to go … A lot of the times, people are interested in … In the beginning, no one cares what you think. No one cares what you like. No one gives a shit. No one cares. We need to get over that right away. No one cares what we like. No one gives a shit where we like. No one cares. In the beginning, when we’re teaching people, we don’t let them go run around and try and pick things that they think look cool, especially if we’re going to give the guarantee that we give. We give a 90-day …
Mathieu Jang: We basically, for our 12-week accelerator, if they complete it, once they complete it, if they execute 90 days of our daily method of operations means they’re just documenting that they’re doing work for 90 days straight. Actually, doing the things that we recommend they do, and they do not make $10,000, we will actually come with … One of our people on our team will work with them on the campaign until they do. Now, the only reason we’re able to make that claim is that that has to be done with offers that we recommend that we know convert based on data. Not you going out and figuring out, “Hey, I think this shake seems pretty cool, and if you buy 10,000 of them, it’s a high ticket item.”
Doug: That’s a good point. Let’s not gloss over that. You’re saying, “Hey, you might have an affinity or an attraction to a certain sector, but you don’t care what you’re …” What you’re proposing and advising people is quite simply, “We’re going to recommend offers that we know convert.”
Mathieu Jang: Yeah, because in the beginning late, once you learn the skills, go find whatever you want, do whatever you want. But in the beginning, again, let’s eliminate as many of the variables as possible so that we can give you the best possible chance of creating success with stuff that we know works. Once you get that down and once you make some money and you know how to drive traffic, you know how to convert that traffic into sales, now take those skills and go maybe find something that is more of a passion project for you or something that you like to do. You can now take those newly found skills that you have and you can put those towards there.
Mathieu Jang: Don’t start with the thing that you think is amazing cause you love it. Start with the thing that gets you the skills and makes you money. Then once you have the skills and you have the money, then take the time to go to your passion project, because that’s what you want to do.
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HOW TO BECOME A SUCCESSFUL AFFILIATE MARKETER
As an affiliate marketer there are so many metrics to watch, but no matter what watch two things: what’s the cost to acquire a customer, and how much is the customer worth?
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Doug: That totally makes sense. Different types of questions. Because you guys, your team has built up a successful blueprint for people to follow, do you get pitched by people who have successful products? They know, “Hey if I talk to Mathieu and his team, I know they can move a boatload of …” Fill in the blank.
Mathieu Jang: Yes. We’re just starting to because we just recently pivoted to more of a high ticket marketplace where we added more high ticket products and stuff like that. We’re just now starting to get more people that are coming and doing that. We’re very, very, very strict with what we let in. Really when it comes down to it, it’s just we need data. We need data.
Doug: No, I get that. I’m assuming you’re going to look … I’ve had people say, “Hey, let’s do a JV.” It’s like, “Well, have you tested all your funnels in your creative?” “No. I don’t want her to test it for you.”
Mathieu Jang: We’re not your guinea pigs.
Doug: That’s right.
Mathieu Jang: You got to come to me with proven data. Show me your ad metrics show, and not, “Oh, I spent a hundred dollars and generated two sales.” I want to see thousands of dollars in ad spend profitably spent over and over and over and over. Again, it needs to be proven there. It’s not even me. Kameron is the one that will vet all those offers out, and he will rip them all apart. If there’s anything that doesn’t make sense or there’s anything that … If anyone will fudge about a number of lies about a number or anything at all, even if it is profitable, it’s a no.
Mathieu Jang: We’re very, very, very, very strict on one … It’s not even two. If you have a high converting offer, but you’re … We have to be in alignment with these types of people too because when we think about this, we’re almost creating a marriage with every offer that led into our marketplace. Just the same way as an actual partnership, it’s basically like a marriage. We’re not just going to … You could be making a billion dollars, but if you’re a dickhead and you treat people like shit, there’s no way that we are going to associate with you.
Mathieu Jang: Your product has to be genuinely interested in serving people in whatever vertical that might be. You have to back it up with proof that that’s actually what you’re doing, and then you have to back it up with proof that it’s actually profitable. If it can meet all of those criteria, then we’re more than happy to look at something like that.
Doug: Different types of questions and this might be a depends. What has typically been your experience in terms of timing? So, from the time somebody comes into a sales funnel of some sort and makes some form of commitment until you see them exit out by buying that high ticket item.
Mathieu Jang: From someone that sees an ad to purchasing with our funnel right now, our accelerator, something like that?
Doug: Yup.
Mathieu Jang: Inside of 30 days, it’s shorter than that.
Doug: I know it depends. We’re not holding you to this. It’s just … You’re saying 30 days-ish, because I’m trying to think through, “Okay, I see the Facebook ad, I click. I go through the process of I’m either in or retargeting, remarketing, whatever the process is that move me along until I sign up, get the first piece. Then at the end of the goal is to take the high ticket offer, so the affiliates are about a month-ish to see that.”
Mathieu Jang: I would say that to be conservative on the higher end. There’s a lot of people. We have quite a few of that within a week, they’re seeing the ad going in. The process where you register for the webinar and that doesn’t play to later that day or the next day. Once they purchase there, it takes a couple of days to go through the information. People that are really quick that go through it all can be about a week. I’d take a little bit more time because you know at a $10,000 price point, most of them are doing financing. That’s another thing too. If you’re selling a high ticket, get a good financing solution.
Mathieu Jang: It will dramatically increase your sales and give your customers an affordable way to be able to take part in your products and services. Probably 50% or more of all of our sales come from the financing of people that would not have been able to get our products otherwise.
Doug: Now, what about ad copy? I know my wife and I started a health and wellness blog and I know that just, for example, one of the affiliates offers that we have is with Nike. There’s a whole bunch of rules around things we can and can’t do, like using their logo, using their brand name. How is that different in the situation that you’re bringing to the table?
Mathieu Jang: There are some similar guidelines like that where they have to be careful. The thing is that, especially with affiliates, unless you think that … Every one of them, out of every group of affiliates, there’s always going to be people that just go out and go rogue and say whatever they want to say and do whatever they want to do. If you allow them to use your branding and a lot of stuff, that can put your brand at risk.
Doug: Yup, totally agree. That makes sense.
Mathieu Jang: We have to be very careful with how we do that because it’s just … To think that everyone’s going to listen is just naive. They don’t. They’re not. There’s going to be a lot of people that don’t listen, and so you have to make stricter rules for everyone, because of those small percentage of people that just don’t listen and do whatever they want.
Doug: Yeah. If you watch the news at this time, it’s like telling people in California stay off the beach, but apparently, they’re not paying attention.
Mathieu Jang: Oh man, go hang out on the beach. Go hang out on the beach. That’s fine.
Doug: Yeah, it’s cool. Don’t worry about it. You’ll be fine. There are similar rules. It makes sense to protect the branding and your integrity, but I just know lots of time there’s a long list of “Hey, you can’t use these keywords. You can’t use these phrases.” I didn’t know if what you were doing was any different. Obviously, you want to make sure the brand is protected, because if I’m an affiliate, what I don’t want is some rogue marketer blowing up the brand because that’s going to affect my income as well. I want everyone to play nice and play by the rules.
Mathieu Jang: Absolutely. We don’t get too strict as far as keywords and stuff like that go. They’re pretty free range to go nuts on that. It’s more so about the branding and then in the make money online space, it’s also FTC compliance. That’s a huge, huge, huge, huge issue. I don’t know, in a year or two, they’ve been cracking down really, really, really, really hard. We ended up bringing on a couple of FTC compliance attorneys and people to help us out with every facet of everything to make sure that we’re up and up on everything.
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As an affiliate marketer there are so many metrics to watch, but no matter what watch two things: what’s the cost to acquire a customer, and how much is the customer worth?
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Doug: That’s great news too, to work with you guys, to know that as a marketer, I’m not going to be at risk. Because we know the comeback saying that, “Well, I didn’t know,” doesn’t work really well if you’re not compliant. They go like, “You should know.”
Mathieu Jang: You have to know. It is your business to know. The thing is, it doesn’t … That means working with us, you know that what we do is compliant. However, if you take that and go spin it your own way and say things that are uncompliant, that’s on you. We have to enforce a lot of that. Like we have had to remove affiliates from our program because they did not follow compliance. It’s unfortunate, but we can’t put our company at risk because you’re not willing to follow the rules. They’re not very hard. They’re quite easy and simple to follow, but you need to follow them.
Mathieu Jang: There is like FTC compliance that’s … It’s not even our rules, but we have to enforce that. There are things like that, especially when it comes to income claims, I can say I’ve done a hundred million-plus in sales. I can say that perfectly fine. I can not, however, say that I can help you do that. Unless I can prove that 100% of my clients got that result, I cannot say that I can get you that result. We’ve got to be very careful when it comes to stuff like that. That’s where in copy wise that we are a bit strict when it comes to the FTC rules and stuff. We will shut down people’s affiliate accounts.
Mathieu Jang: We will give them warnings, obviously, beforehand, but if they continue, we will shut down their accounts. We have to, to protect us. Besides that stuff that’s going to put us in jail, we’re pretty lenient.
Doug: I’ve got a big, do not go to jail thing. That’s a business rule of ours.
Mathieu Jang: It’s [inaudible 00:37:05].
Doug: [crosstalk 00:37:06] the family life.
Mathieu Jang: Yeah, it’s really hard. It’s not like we’re being unreasonable is all I’m meaning. It’s really, follows the rules and laws and regulations and then keep our brand intact. Other than that, get nuts on the keywords. Do whatever you want to do there. There’s no real competition. We let that free flow. We don’t say, “Hey, you can’t use these search terms or these keywords or these whatever.”
Doug: If you want to build a longterm business that makes sense to build it, obviously follow the rules. So, you’ll build this asset that will continue, like you said, this ATM machine that will just keep spitting out money every day.
Mathieu Jang: Absolutely, man. Yes, you can skirt those rules and make a lot more money. I know a lot of people that turn a blind eye to a lot of that stuff and they have extremely profitable … This is the thing is it’s more profitable to skirt some of those lines. Do you know what I mean? I get why somebody will do it, but-
Doug: Until there’s a knock on your door and they’re asking to take your computer and all your files, and then that’s not so cool anymore.
Mathieu Jang: This is what I mean. Yes, it’s profitable in the short term, but I don’t know about … I want to be building something that I can have for my life that I can potentially pass down to my kids when we get to that point. I don’t want to worry about not having a business next year. I will much rather make a little bit less money now to make sure that I can run that profitably for the longterm than to try and play around with, especially the FTC. Don’t mess with those guys. They don’t lose.
Doug: No. I’ve done lots of work on the public side too for lead gen. You’re dealing with FINRA and the SEC, and they’re all the same. There are three-letter words. You don’t mess with those guys.
Mathieu Jang: No, not at all.
Doug: What are you most excited about in the next six to 12 months?
Mathieu Jang: With everything going on, it’s a little crazy. I’ll say, what I’m the most excited about over the next bit … I really think the exponential growth of technology is something that really fascinates me and knows where a lot of these things are going that I don’t even think we can comprehend where we’re going to be in the next couple of years here when you look at artificial intelligence when you look at virtual and augmented reality and you look at what that’s going to do. Have you seen the movie, Ready Player One?
Doug: I have not, nope.
Mathieu Jang: It gives you a sneak peek into the future of what it could potentially be, but if we look at it right now … We got to look at this. If we look at right now with VR, if we could make VR and it’s almost there, indistinguishable from real life, which when they get to 8K, the only thing off from that will be the sense of touch. Which was some sort of suits and an omnidirectional treadmill, they’ll be able to do that quite frequently? I don’t think people realize how close we are to this. Once this happens … You look at the majority of people, the majority of people are not happy with their lives. They don’t like the lives that they’re living.
Mathieu Jang: If they can choose at any point in time during their day to go into any world of their choosing and be anything that they want to be and do anything that they want to do, eventually they’re just going to live there. They’re not going to come off. When they live, businesses are going to live there. It’s going to change the way that we do business. It’s going to change the way products are sold. It’s going to change the way stores are operated. It’s going to change everything and it’s going to be really fast. I don’t think people get how fast this stuff is coming.
Doug: Well, look how fast the world learn how to use Zoom.
Mathieu Jang: Yeah.
Doug: I know that you’re talking about something that’s a little bit more difficult, but a lot of people Zoom was a big challenge and they said, “I’ll never be online.” Guess what? They’re online.
Mathieu Jang: They go from 10 million to what? 200 million customers.
Doug: There you go.
Mathieu Jang: In one sense, that’s kind of scary. In another sense, I think that’s pretty damn cool that you now … Think about what that does for advertising and for marketing and for business. Because right now, the only reason we use Facebook and the only reason we use YouTube, and the only reason we use Google in any of these other platforms because that’s where people are placing their attention. If at any point in time people choose to place their attention somewhere else, we will have to change where we put our marketing efforts.
Doug: Totally makes sense.
Mathieu Jang: [crosstalk 00:41:22] where people place their attention now in this virtual reality world and the far majority of their time, effort, and energy is being spent there, then that’s going to shift the way we do business in a really crazy way.
Doug: That’s going to keep me awake tonight.
Mathieu Jang: I think that’s pretty cool. [crosstalk 00:41:37].
Doug: I do. I think that’s really cool. I’ve got some friends that are working in that space and it’s very cool.
Mathieu Jang: Yeah. Watch Ready Player One. It’s a great movie. I love it. It’s really cool. Not to say that it’s going to get exactly like that, but the technology is going there. It is going there. It’s already close, and so it’s just going to be really cool to see there. I’m really excited about that for the future and what that might do to business. I’m really excited about cryptocurrencies and blockchain. Blockchain technology is something that really fascinates me, and I think the same reason that we moved from gold to paper money is going to be the same reason that we move from paper money to cryptocurrency.
Mathieu Jang: When you look at gold, we switched from gold to paper money, because it was cheaper, faster, and simpler, and it was just easier to do. But we look at it now with Fiat money, like for Doug, if I want to go and send you a million dollars right now, I’ve got to go to my bank. I got to wait there for a couple of hours and then I got to sign all these papers and then it’s going to send to you and they’re going to charge me 50 to $100 and you’re not going to get it for about a week.
Doug: Yeah, and they’re going to charge me at my end.
Mathieu Jang: They’re going to charge you at your end too, whereas if I had … Even Bitcoin, that’s one of the slowest ones. It’s not even fast, but it’s fast compared to Fiat. Even if it was Bitcoin, I could send you a billion dollars. It would cost me the price of a cup of coffee and you would get it in 30 minutes to an hour. The exchange of money, not even at a customer level, but just think about business level, people that are moving hundreds of millions, even hundreds of thousands of dollars that can now just instantly be moving that around everywhere.
Doug: Hence the resistance from the bank when they get to hold your money for a week before they [inaudible 00:43:16]. We won’t have that conversation. Let’s ask you a couple more questions and keep moving. What’s the bad advice that you hear other people giving in terms of affiliate marketing? You’re out at a cocktail party, you’re up enjoying [inaudible 00:43:31], having a glass of wine, and you’re overhearing a conversation. What’s the conversation that just makes you want to go slap somebody?
Mathieu Jang: I’m in a pretty good circle of affiliates, so I hear the pretty good conversation-
Doug: I mean aside from hanging around with your peers and the guys who are doing right. In my space, for example, I do third party email list rental, so I partner with publishers. The stuff that makes me want to slap people is they go, “Spam is illegal.” It’s like, “I’ve worked for The Wall Street Journal and a bunch of other companies. It’s not illegal. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Mathieu Jang: On that sense, yeah. A lot of people think that it’s illegal or some sort of scam. That makes me just feel like, “Oh my God.” It’s like, is selling anything a scam? Any business that sells a product to make money, that’s a scam? That drives me nuts. Probably more along those lines. That one really would make me just … yeah.
Doug: I’ll give you a couple of easier questions. Who’s one guest I absolutely have to have my podcast? I think you already alluded to this earlier.
Mathieu Jang: If I’m just going to pick the one, a hundred percent, I would definitely pick Kameron George. I would not have been able to do anything that I do to now. I wouldn’t have anywhere near the marketing knowledge that I have to now. I wouldn’t have anywhere near the personal development knowledge and wisdom that I have now if it wasn’t for this guy. Not only for me. He’s transformed the lives of thousands of people and he’s just one of the smartest marketing minds I know. I would definitely recommend.
Doug: Super cool. If you would make an introduction, I’d really appreciate that.
Mathieu Jang: Yeah, a hundred percent.
Doug: What’s the best place for people to reach you, learn more about what you guys are doing, the opportunity?
Mathieu Jang: Definitely check me out on Instagram. So, Mathieu Jang on Instagram at M-AT-H-I-E-U J-A-N-G on Instagram.
Doug: I see your page there. You help followers build real businesses.
Mathieu Jang: Yeah.
Doug: We’ve got some common connections there. Hey, I appreciate your taking the time, Mathieu. It’s great to talk to a fellow Canadian, somebody that’s just a few hours from me as well, which is very rare. For whatever reason, I like to talk to people on the other side of the planet in different time zones. So, it’s great to talk to somebody that lives in the same area.
Mathieu Jang: Yeah, that’s awesome man. Thank you for having me on, man. I appreciate you.
Doug: Thanks a lot. Hey listeners, I hope you got some value here. I’ve got a page of notes. I love what Mathieu is talking about. I think the reason I love what he’s talking about is there are lots of people pitching courses to learn how to do advertising, but he’s showing you not only how to advertise, but how to monetize that advertising. You not only get the knowledge, but you get the instant money that comes with it. I just super appreciate him taking time sharing with you. Make sure you check out the show notes.
Doug: I’ll make sure there’s a link to Mathieu’s Instagram account and its company website as well. We appreciate you guys for listening and we thank you for tuning in. I look forward to serving you in our next episode.
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HOW TO BECOME A SUCCESSFUL AFFILIATE MARKETER
As an affiliate marketer there are so many metrics to watch, but no matter what watch two things: what’s the cost to acquire a customer, and how much is the customer worth?
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Get in touch with Mathieu:
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Find out more about Mathieu:
Links to other related podcasts and or blog posts:
HOW TO BENEFIT FROM THE NEW WORLD OF AFFILIATE MARKETING
HOW TO ADVERTISE TO GENERATE HIGH-QUALITY LEADS
