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Today, I'm going to show you one of the best ways to generate more leads and sales for your online course or digital product business without running more paid traffic or SEO or anything like that. In fact, this is one of those things that flies way under the radar. People have never even considered it, but it's one of the most effective things you can do. And I actually think that most online course or digital product businesses should be doing this, if they're not already. The reason I like this so much is because it allows you to add multiple different sources of leads, aka email subscribers for your business without any additional cost. And on top of that, it actually adds new revenue streams to your business as well. So not only are you bringing in more leads without relying on ads, Google, or anything like that, and those leads then turn into sales for your business, but you're also bringing in new revenue sources that aren't sales of your own course or your own digital products. That sounds pretty good, right?
Before we dive into the detail of what it is and how to actually do it, we need to understand the problem that you're trying to solve here. The main reason most people go straight to Facebook ads is because they want more leads. And they've heard that Facebook ads is a great way to bring new leads or email subscribers into your business. And it is. But it's not the only way. And once you understand that the problem you're trying to solve is simply getting more leads, if you step back a bit, you realize there are actually lots of different ways to do this. And that's important to mention now because lots of people are starting to really struggle with Facebook ads. They don't work as well as they used to for a lot of people. And so they are looking to diversify their traffic sources. And that's probably actually a good thing because most strong businesses, in fact, I'll say every strong business, actually has multiple sources of leads coming in. They're not reliant on just Facebook ads or just YouTube ads or just SEO. They've got lots of different things bringing email subscribers into their business every single day. And if one of those sources fails, then the whole business is still okay because they've got all these other sources. So again, it's another reason why what I'm about to show you is such an effective method.
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So here's how this works. Let's say you have a course that teaches parents how to improve their baby's sleep. In this case, we can assume that the market for this would be new parents with children from zero to twelve months old. So you're bringing in leads right now, putting through a sales funnel, and some of those people will buy, but most of them won't. And that's either, because they don't need your course right now. They don't have a problem that needs your solution, or because some of those leads don't actually fit the demographic. They might have a baby that's nine months old or twelve months old, so they don't quite fit the demographic that you're targeting. Meanwhile, let's say somebody else has a course on how to promote healthy newborn development. In this case, their market would be the same, zero to twelve months old. But it's a completely different problem and a different solution. You're solving the sleep solution, and this other person has a course that helps with healthy development, and they have the same problem as you. They're bringing in new leads. It might be through social media, it might be through SEO, it might be through YouTube or something else. But they're bringing those leads into their business. They're going through a sales funnel. Some are buying, but most don't. And then for this creator as well, once the baby hits twelve months, then the product that they're offering is no longer relevant to those email subscribers. And so they kind of just go silent and they've got nothing else to offer them. So as you can see, both of these businesses are working really hard to bring new leads into their business, but they're only able to convert a small number of those leads, which is totally normal. And then so many of those leads are wasted, either because they didn't need that solution that they offered, or time goes by and they no longer fit the target demographic. But as I've already alluded to, there are other businesses out there who serve that same audience with a different product or service offering. So they're not competitors, or there are people who serve them at different stages of their life or different stages of their business, depending on what you're actually offering. So can you guess where this is going?
There's a huge opportunity for these two businesses, in the example, to partner up with each other and cross promote. All right, so let's talk about exactly how this works. Now, we'll use the exact same example. So let's take the business who has the course on baby sleep? Well, they're bringing in leads and they go through a sales funnel. And when people do or don't buy, I'm assuming, or you should be continuing to send them regular emails, usually on a weekly basis that just share valuable content, valuable information that helps them. Now all you need to do is after a set period of time, maybe a few weeks, maybe a month, is add in a few emails that share some information on healthy baby development. So those emails might share a few tips and then they might say something like, hey, if you want even more information on this, my friend X is one of the leading experts in healthy newborn development. She's actually got a free resource on that that you can get. Click here to go and get a copy of that. And that link would send them to the newborn development expert's website and they could opt in to their freebie get their free lead magnet. Once they enter their name and email and opt in, they would then go into that person's sales sequence and hopefully buy their course. So the business with the course on baby sleep has now just sent one of their leads over to the business with the course on newborn development. But here's the best part. If that lead then goes and buys the course on newborn development, you actually get a revenue share from the other course creator once that person buys. And usually that share is 50-50. So let's say that lead purchases a course for $100. Well, that course creator keeps $50 and you get $50 as well. So now those leads that previously wouldn't have generated any revenue for your business are now bringing in affiliate revenue from another business for you day in, day out. So now the sleep business has added a new lead source because you're sending them leads every single day. And you've added a new revenue source because you're now generating affiliate income from that other business as well. Pretty good, right? And of course, because you've got similar audiences, that business with the newborn development course could also do the exact same thing in reverse for you. So now they would be sending you leads and you have a new lead source and they have a new revenue source because you would be sending them affiliate income. Pretty good, right? There's literally no downside to this and all upside for both parties. Now, if you're thinking 50-50 sounds like it's a lot, think about it like this. If you run Facebook ads and you spent $1,000 and you generated $2,000 in sales from that ad spend, you think that was pretty good, right? You've spent 1000, you've got 2000, you've doubled your initial investment. Well, the math is exactly the same here. Your cost to acquire that customer is half the revenue you actually generated. But unlike Facebook ads, you don't have the risk. With Facebook ads, you spend the $1,000 upfront and you hope that you'll generate $1,000 or more in sales to cover the ad cost and give you some profit. Where with this set up, you only have to pay the 50% affiliate commission if the lead that that person sends you actually turns into a sale. So you only incur the expense if you actually generate the revenue. It's guaranteed profit margin on those sales.
Now the other thing to cover is the tech and how all this works and how you keep it all organized. Because you're probably thinking this is going to get super messy trying to work out who sent what leads where and how much you owe other people and all that. But don't worry, it's actually much simpler than it sounds. Before we get into all of that, let's just talk about another quick example. So in the example that I mentioned, we talked about two different businesses with similar audiences. They both targeted parents with babies aged from zero to twelve months. But both of those businesses experience another problem, which is after twelve months, then they've got all these leads that they can no longer serve. So in that case, the answer is find a business that actually serves parents from the twelve month period onward. So what both of these course businesses could do is find somebody that sells a course that serves parents with twelve month plus children. Let's say they find somebody with a course on how to teach kids to talk. Well, their ideal audience might be twelve months to three years old. Well, then they could then do a deal with that business to send them leads that are now outside of the age range for them to sell to. So now they can start generating affiliate revenue from the business that serves customers after they are no longer in the demographic that that business actually serves. The same thing works for pretty much any business, any industry. You're probably thinking, yeah, that's a specific case where they serve specific demographics and age ranges. But the same would apply to, let's say, a business like mine where I have a course that teaches Facebook ads. Well, I would just have to think about what other courses would people who are interested in learning about Facebook ads also want to learn about. But it works for all different kinds of B to C as well as B to B market. Let's use my business as an example. I have a course that teaches online course creators and digital product owners how to run Facebook ads. Well, all I would need to do is think about what do those people also want to learn about if Facebook ads are something they're interested in? Well, they might want to learn how to improve their SEO. So I could partner with somebody who has a course on SEO, or because they're running Facebook ads, something that's really relevant to them is going to be how to optimize their sales funnel and improve their conversion rates. So somebody with a course on conversion rate optimization could be an ideal partner that I could also send leads to. And then if we think about what happens after people evolve to the next stage in their business, well, if people master Facebook ads, then it would make sense that they want to branch out and go into something like YouTube ads, so I could partner with somebody who has a course on YouTube advertising and send leads to them as well.
All right, so how do you keep track of this whole thing? Basically all you need is affiliate software. Most of the big checkout software that's out there, like Sam Cart or Thrive Cart, all have affiliate marketing functionality built in. And basically what that means is you set up your partner as an affiliate inside of your checkout software or your affiliate software, and then that enables you to generate a unique link for them that sends them to your freebie or your lead magnet. You give them that link. Then when they promote that link out to their email list and their subscribers, when anybody clicks that link, it's actually tracked as coming from that person. Then you can log into your affiliate software and see exactly how many leads they've sent, how many sales have come from those leads, and how much you owe them. They can actually log in as well and see the same information so they know how many people they're sending your way and how much money they can expect coming from you as an affiliate commissioner.
So if you love this idea and you want to start implementing it, here are the next steps. First, think about what other types of courses or digital products would make sense for you to promote to your audience. Then do your research and see what suitable courses or digital products are out there in the market already. You need to make sure that they have the infrastructure in place so that this is just kind of a plug and play set up for both of you. And they don't have to build a whole sales funnel when they don't already have one, because that just gets messy and it's really difficult compared to if they have a sales funnel. You have a sales funnel, you just promote each other's and it's an easy win.
The next thing you want to do is, if you don't already know these people, of course, go to the people you know first. If you have great connections in your industry and with people with similar types of businesses, then go to them first. But if you don't know them, you need to start to establish a relationship. So follow them on social media, start to comment on their posts and engage with them. Join their email list and reply to their emails and start conversations with them. You just want to establish a relationship where you're not going straight in as a random stranger on the Internet going, hey, yo, partner with me, buy my thing, whatever. You just don't want to go into a situation where you're a random stranger, cold emailing saying, hey, let's be partners, because we've all seen those emails in our inbox. And if you're like me, the delete button gets hit pretty quick and they get ignored. Where if I know the name, if I recognize the person, I'm much more likely to read that, engage with it, and actually consider what they're offering. And then once you have established some rapport and your email out and you start to engage in that conversation around maybe partnering, offer to send them leads first. You just say to them, hey, look, I would love to promote your freebie to my email list. Do you have an affiliate link I can use? And then take that affiliate link, do some promotion, generate some leads and sales for them, and then ask if they do the same for you. It's much easier to start with, hey, can I do this for you? And send you some free leads and get you some additional sales and revenue into your business. Of course, in exchange for some affiliate commission than to say, hey, can you send me some leads as well? Much easier if you do it first and then say, hey, do you want to do the same? We could do an exchange deal which would also generate affiliate revenue for you. So you want to show them that you can actually add value to them first. This is how you should do everything in business, basically, is try to add value first before you ask for anything.
