67 – How to Make a Fortune Referring Me and Others: Tom talks Referrals

Episode 067 How to Refer Me and Others for Money. Today’s episode is totally self-serving….just kidding. It’s how to refer me and others for money. It’s kind of a spinoff on affiliate marketing but notice I said “how to refer me”. I want you to refer me so that I can send you big checks. And the reason I want you to refer me is so I make money, you make money, I know that your customers are going to be taken care of because I’ve got a 42 year track record of taking care of customers to a high level. And everybody wins. So, that’s what this episode is about.
Episode 066 Ken Keis he’s a behavioral assessment expert and he totally believes in procrastination. How do you like that? Can you believe that? Check out what he has to say about it in episode 066. But right now I want you to stick with me because I want to send you big checks.
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Main Event
Here’s the first thing and if you can’t write it down it will be in the show notes. There are two handouts available that recap what I’m talking about today. You can get them at:
https://www.ScrewTheCommute.com/affiliateintro
Hey in today’s episode I’m going to tell you the kind of money you can make by referring me and my services and the same techniques can be used to refer others. First I want to remind you that if you like the idea of making money by referring others called affiliate marketing you can also go back and listen to episode 052 which is all about affiliate marketing.
Not only will I be telling you about the commissions I pay, later I’ll also tell you some of the methods you can use …..some don’t even require a website….to refer me and others and get big commissions.
Just to be clear, there are two sides to affiliate marketing. In one way you promote other people’s products and services and they pay you a commission. The other way is that other people promote your products and services and you pay them a commission. We are going to talk about the first way where you promote other people’s stuff (I hope you sell all my stuff by the tons LOL). You don’t have to invest in any tracking software or really invest in anything if you don’t want to. Heck you don’t even have to have a computer, but having one opens up even more possibilities for you to earn money by referring others.
OK. First I’m going to tell you about the kinds of money you can make referring me and so I don’t seem too selfish hahahaha these percentages and rates would be very common in the online industry. Some of the larger amounts I tell you about may not be readily available when dealing with your average company, but you’ll be amazed at some of the large commissions you can make for simple referrals.
One thing I need to warn you about. You must be extremely careful in who your refer and what products you refer. If you refer someone or some product that’s terrible, no one will ever trust you again. By only suggesting quality people, products and services others will trust you and you can refer many things to them over time which means a lot more money for you.
OK. Let’s get going. We’ll start with the lower end digital products. I pay a 50% commission on digital products. Examples would be pdf e-books, online courses, membership sites. Heck we’ll throw in live seats at seminars. Yes, I know they aren’t technically digital but at most seminars it doesn’t cost much of anything to put another seat in a meeting room. Let’s look at some numbers here. My pdf e-books start at $17.00. 50% of that is $8.50. Nothing much to write home about right? Well, I can tell you a lot of those $8.50’s add up, but let’s start climbing the ladder here. $27.00 e-books means you climbed up to a $13.50 commission. Whoa you’re getting rich now hahaha A $47.00 e-book gets you $23.50 and we even have $97.00 e-books and online courses which get you $48.50 each. I have other online courses like Copywriting901.com which retails for $297.00 with your share $148.50 and https://www.BrutalSelfDefense.com which is $497.00 and pays you $248.50. Not too shabby right?
OK. Let’s jump into another category of products. Physical products like CDs, DVD’s and printed books and anything that takes an enormous amount of labor. Now I don’t sell too many CDs anymore so there’s not much to talk about here but anyway the commission is only $5.80 I’ve got a Single DVD that sells for $147 and the commission is $29.40. My Wake ‘em Up Video Pro Speaking System sells for anywhere from $697.00 to $997.00 making the commission $139.40 - $199.40.
Now we can start getting into bigger money. My Internet Marketing mentor program has an entry fee currently up to $7995.00 which makes your commission up to $1599.00. The reason I say “Up to” is because occasionally I do discount….just not very often on that program. I also have a Professional Speaking intensive mentor course with three different levels that go up to $13,800.00 This would pay up to $2760.00 in commissions. Now were talking about some real money don’t you think?
Now this might sound like pie in the sky, but just think about this. Someone wants to be a professional speaker where they can make several thousand dollars per speech and way more than that if they learn to sell at the back of the room. There’s a lot to learn to make this happen so they invest in their education from someone who has been there done that and you can make up to $2760.00 in commissions simply for keeping your eyes peeled for people you think would be good at pro speaking.
Let me throw you a curve ball now before I tell you about referring me for speaking engagement and referring my Internet marketing school. I have a side business selling personal protection dogs. A solidly trained personal and family protection dog starts at $20,000.00. Most people recoil and say that can’t possibly be true. Who would pay $20,000.00 for a dog? Let me explain a why these dogs cost so much. And btw we have them going up to $60,000.00. No we don’t sell many of those, but some people have lots of requirements for the dog. Like being able to comfortably fly on a helicopter, and things like that.
Most we sell are family protection dogs at $20,000.00 First this type of dog has to have a very specific temperament as opposed to a police dog. Family protection dogs frequently have to put up with little kids pulling their ears and fur and they must stay and protect you rather than run after a bad guy. You see police dogs are supposed to run after bad guys and catch them. If your family protection dog did that, the bad guy would probably sue you. Once the bad guy was running away the threat to you is gone and you can’t claim self-defense. Of course, there are other circumstances like if the guy said he was going to get his gun or he’s abducting a child, but for the most part the dog should protect threats against you and not leave you alone.
So, the family protection dog must have the temperament of dealing with kids and other pets, but still must be able to be a professional fighter if needed. This is a rare combination to be ok with kids, but still be able to fight. Plus they must be able to fight but still not be so wild they are out of control. All this combined means only a small percentage of dogs can fit the bill. You also must be sure they are sound physically. You don’t want to put all this expense and training into a dog that becomes lame in a few years because of congenital problems.
Anyway, I could go on and on about these dogs, but from your standpoint you can make a 10% commission for referring someone who purchases one. OK, so that’s personal protection dogs. You can check out the site at https://www.ProtectionDogsElite.com To promote this all you have to do is keep your eye out for individuals or families who are expressing reservations about their safety.
And let me take a little side bar on commissions. On many of my products, I offer a finance option. This means I let the person pay for the product over time. I might add, you will sell a lot more of your products and services if you offer a finance option. When it comes to commissions, you will get your percentage of money that is actually collected. For instance, just to use round numbers, let’s say someone bought an online course for $500.00 and put $100.00 down and agreed to 4 more payments of $100.00. You would get a 50% commission in the first month of $50.00 and 4 more $50.00 commissions over the next 4 months for a total of $250.00. This is very common and fair. Even though you have to wait longer for your commissions, you will make more in the long run when finance options are offered because more people will buy. I’d rather have $250.00 spread out over 5 months than get nothing because the buyer couldn’t afford $500.00 all at once.
Now let’s talk about my school and even bigger money. https://www.IMTCVA.org It’s an asynchronous distance learning school. Asynchronous means you can do your classes any time. You don’t have to log in at a specific time. Distance learning of course, means you can be anywhere in the world where you can get an internet connection and still go to the school.
I started the school because I was tired of all the scammers in the Internet world and I wanted to create something totally legitimate that could be proven legitimate. It took three years to get the license, I had to go through background checks, financial checks and bonding along with a bunch of other hoops. Nobody I know of in the Internet marketing arena has ever gone through such scrutiny.
The school is perfect for several types of people and these are in no particular order:
It’s perfect for an older person, and when I say older, I’m talking anything older than college age. It could be a millennial who is struggling to find work and wants more ability to write their own ticket all the way to a 55 year old or older person who has been displaced in their job or their job has disappeared. Even retirees are great for this to bring in side income.
It’s perfect for high school kids who are considering whether college makes sense for them or not. Their parents should take heed to this too. There is a ton of evidence that colleges and universities are failing most students. I’m not saying they are giving them failing grades, in fact they are inflating the grades to make it look like they are doing a better job. The kids are dumber, but they think they are smarter because of these inflated grading systems. This is not just me talking either. I highly suggest you watch the webinar I have at https://www.ScrewTheCommute.com/webinars or go to https://www.ScrewTheCommute.com and click on “Free Webinars” where there is a load of evidence by educational industry insiders about how colleges are cheating parents and children and getting rich doing it.
We have even had much younger middle school children where the parents want to instill the entrepreneurial spirt at a young age. One 12 year-old wrote three books. How about that?
The school is also great for people with disabilities. Not only can they complete their schoolwork from home, they can legitimately work from home. Many companies are putting out legitimate jobs where the person can work from home because the companies don’t want to pay $100.00 per square foot for leased space for an employee or contractor who could just as easily do the work from home. Hey, if you are supposed to write a blog post, it doesn’t really matter if you are in a cubicle at work or if you are sitting at your kitchen table.
We give discounts to people with verified disabilities and also another group we give discounts to are Military personnel and their spouses. This is another group we like to thank for their service and we recognize some of the things they learned in the service may not readily help them get jobs when they get out of the service. I’m not sure if the job of sonar operator on a submarines is mainstream enough to make it easy to get a job when they get out. Also, military personnel don’t make that much money. Having a second income the spouse could provide could really help them out.
I doubt if there is a person listening to this who doesn’t know at least one person or family in in one of these categories. All you have to do is tell them about the school and send them to me or one of our admissions people. If they sign up, you get a big commission.
The full school tuition is $19,100.00 which is cheap compared to what students are paying nowadays. We pay a 20% commission. That’s $3820.00 I could pay to you instead of giving it to Facebook or Google by buying ads. Even if we discount for the Military or disabled you still make $3056.00 That’s a pretty good chunk of money just for keeping your eyes open for people that might be good candidates for the school.
Hey, maybe you have connections to PTA’s (parent teachers associations) or maybe youth groups at church or homeschooling groups. Just think if you had a constant streams of referrals and I kept sending you checks for $3820.00. What would that mean to you and your family?
OK. So that’s the school.
Now let’s talk about speaking engagements. I’ve given out hundreds of thousands of dollars in commissions for people having me speak and referring me to speak. If you happen to be a promoter of big events I’ve paid as much as $75,000.00 to one promoter for just one event. For the last 17 years or so I’ve been exclusively speaking at places where I can sell at the back of the room. Prior to that I did corporate and association speaking and my fee when I left that world was $20,000.00. I really don’t relish corporate speaking because you have to be too politically correct and why should I want those jobs when I can make $100,000.00 or more at a public speaking event where I’m surrounded by entrepreneurs which is obviously my element.
I would take a corporate or association job and I’ll be glad to pay you a commission on those jobs of between 10 and 20 percent. Twenty percent goes to you if I don’t have to sell the job. I.e. you tell the people they must have me and they immediately book me. If you just send a lead and I have to sell the job, you get 10%. Unless I have to discount for some reason, you still make a nice chunk of change anywhere from $2000.00 to $4000.00.
What I really like are big public events where I can sell at the back of the room. As far as I know I’ve never been outsold at an event in the last 17 years and on many occasions I sold more than all the other speakers put together. And another thing. I get virtually zero returns because I’m not obnoxious in my sales technique, I do not lie to people from the stage or anywhere else and I actually deliver what I promise. You can really make some big commissions if you refer me to one of these events. I must say though I have very strict contract details. I’ve been on stage over 3000 times and I know what works and what doesn’t. Many times the promoters and meeting planners at these events have maybe done a few events. Some maybe 20 or so, but none of them are as experienced as me. And I’m not saying this out of arrogance. It’s just that I’ve done this to high levels of success over many years and made a fortune for me and many promoters and if they just do what I told them we would all make a lot of money and not have any complaints about high pressure sales tactics.
I pay 5% of sales so If I’m in front of 150-200 people qualified people and I must say qualified because I’ve actually spoken at some events and there homeless people in the audience. I’m all for supporting homeless people and inspiring them to improve their situation, but my job is to make money for the promoter and my company and I wouldn’t even feel right taking money from someone who doesn’t even have the basic needs of life. But anyway if I’m in front of qualified people who want to either start a business or improve the one they already have I can’t remember of ever doing less than $100,000.00 in sales. So let’s say that’s the case. Your commission would be $5000.00 for just putting me in touch with the promoter of such an event. If there’s less people than that, it could be a little less, but still a darn good payday and if there’s more people than that it could be substantially more for a super great payday and probably more money than most people have ever made for just making a referral.
How to Promote Affiliate Products and Services
Here are ways you can promote my products and services along with other products and services and again I’ll remind you to listen to Episode 052 for even more information on affiliate marketing.
If you have a website you can do more things but I’ve made lots of money referring things that didn’t even require me to have a website. If you do both website stuff and non-website stuff you can make the most money.
I’ll start with you having a website. Here are some ways to promote affiliate links.
You can put a graphic promoting a product or service on your site with your affiliate link embedded in it.
You can do the same thing with a simple text link. Sometimes you write a blog posting and discuss the benefit of the product or service and put your affiliate link right there in the blog posting. Maybe you make a guest blog posting on someone else’s site or give them an article to post that includes your shortened affiliate link. You might have a video talking about the product with a link in the video or maybe below the video. Some video players let you embed a link right on top of the video.
I should just stop for a second and tell you why I said “shortened” affiliate links. Affiliate links are usually humongous and long so you probably want to use a link shortener service like bit.ly to shorten them before you put them in articles and blog postings.
It’s really not much more complicated than that if you have traffic to your website to make some money promoting affiliate links. Assuming you do and you have been diligent in capturing email addresses you can broadcast an email to your list and include your affiliate link. And this is again when affiliate links are way too long and they might break in an email so you can use the link shortening service like bit.ly to make the links shorter and more manageable.
OK. Let’s say you don’t have a website or maybe you do an you just want to add more revenue streams. I’ve made lots of affiliate commissions by doing a screen capture video about some product or service. In case you don’t know a screen capture video doesn’t involve showing your face. Basically the screen capture video captures anything you can display on your screen and you can narrate over top of it to tell people what is going on, on the screen. I use Camtasia which is kinda the gold standard but there are other cheaper software programs. The people who watch the video get excited about the product or service you’re talking about and then click on your affiliate link to buy it. These videos can go on YouTube or Vimeo or Facebook, twitter, or anywhere you can put videos. When people click on the link and buy, you get paid.
You don’t have to do videos. You could just write things about the affiliate product or service and put in your affiliate link in a social media post. You could put the affiliate link in eBooks you either sell or giveaway.
For several of the things I have you don’t even have to make a video or anything. All you have to do is tell people about my products and services. The speaking engagements won’t involve a link. My school doesn’t require anything but telling me who you referred the school to. The same thing with the protection dogs. Just tell me in advance who you talked to and if they purchase, you get the commission.
So you have lots of ways to promote things. When you sign up for someone’s affiliate program you will get a link that’s unique to you. If someone clicks on that link and buys something, you get a commission. What I want you to know about that link is that it is usually a “general” link maybe taking you to someone’s complete catalog of products. Every good affiliate program will have a way for you to promote a specific product. I can tell you from 25 years of experience selling online you will sell way more by driving people to a specific product than by sending them to a bunch of products. I teach my students, “Specific Sells and General Doesn’t”. The second handout I have for you at https://www.ScrewTheCommute.com/affiliateintro shows you how to do it in my system.
So how do you sign up for affiliate programs?
I have a very standard way you can try out with no obligation at https://www.Antion.com just click “affiliates” in the Navigation links and you will see the sign up form. If you fill it out, you’ll get an email back with your basic affiliate link. Then refer to the handout to customize the link for specific products of mine.
If you want to promote the big ticket items like my school, my speaking engagements and protection dogs, you don’t have to do anything but give me the name of who you referred me to and if they buy, you will get the commission.
So that will be it for this episode and I also encourage you to go back and listen to episode 052 for even more details on affiliate marketing.
And I really hope you put your antenna up and look for people who would be a good fit for my school. I’d love to send you nice big checks on a regular basis.
So get busy, download your handouts at https://www.ScrewTheCommute.com/affiliateintro , sign up at antion.com and send me those customers and I’ll send you the checks.
Remember to join the private Facebook group Check it out at https://www.ScrewTheCommute.com/facebook
Next episode 068 Bryan Caplovitz Owner of speaker match. He puts together emerging speakers and meeting planners. Don’t’ miss that.
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