Kelly McCausey: How to Seek Affiliates with Beachpreneurs

Are you in need of a creative boost?

Beachpreneurs is an all-female beach retreat to help smart female entrepreneurs get a clear direction on where to go next with their business. To go, the female entrepreneur must have an open mind, and either an existing online business they are ready to improve, a sizable platform and an audience, or a dream that they plan on making a reality.

With fewer than 15 women in attendance, the retreat experience relies on small group interaction and a lot of personal bonding and relationship building. You will have several hours each day to yourself to process ideas, walk the beach, and get some fresh air.

Their guests will reside at The Dolphin House, a beautiful 5,450 sq ft beach house on Pensacola Beach. With a beautiful beach, a private pool, and lots of space to relax and enjoy one another – it’s the perfect venue to relax and gain some perspective!

Beachpreneurs Co-Founder Kelly McCausey is a well-respected blogger, podcaster, and business coach to online entrepreneurs. Kelly has 14 years under her belt in online business.  She has been helping other successful marketers realize their dreams since 2004. She has made it her mission to pull every ounce of excellence out of her clients.

Learn more about how Beachpreneurs can help improve your creative flow by listening to this episode of The Thoughtful Entrepreneur above and don’t forget to subscribe on  Apple Podcasts – Stitcher – Spotify –Google Play –Castbox – TuneIn – RSS.

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0:00
Welcome to the thoughtful entrepreneur Show. I'm Josh Elledge, founder and CEO of up my influence.com. We turn entrepreneurs into media celebrities, grow their authority, and help them build partnerships with top influencers. We believe that every person has a unique message that can positively impact the world. stick around to the end of the show, where I'll reveal how you can be our next guest on one of the fastest growing daily inspiration podcasts on the planet in 15 to 20 minutes. Let's go. All right, Kelly McCausey, you are the co founder of Beachpreneurs and the owner of love people and make money. Thank you so much for joining us.

0:44
Hey, thanks for having me.

0:46
And so you have created a community created community some time ago. And would you say that that community is primarily female business owners? Is that right?

0:55
It is. I grow. I don't describe myself as Being 100% for females because I do get dudes showing up. They're not young, except at beats printers, they are actually banned.

1:10
Yeah, yeah. We remember that one year with Gerald, they'll never be a repeat of that again. I'm just making stories I don't know. Now one thing that I'm, I'm really impressed with them. Here's we're going to talk about in this conversation two things. Number one is that you've been hosting an event and this year is going to be your sixth annual event. So obviously, when you do an event six years in a row, you've probably learned some things over the years and so first off, I'd like to start by asking you what gave you the audacity to start an event and and so the name of the event is Is it love people make money? No, no, no. What's the name of it?

1:53
exposure and profit,

1:55
exposure and profit and and you have a dedicated website for that as well. Right?

2:00
Yes,

2:02
that's exposure. I'll say its exposure and profit.com. Alright, so, so Kelly, tell me what happens at exposure and profit calm. And again, what gave you the audacity to think that you could start your own event.

2:16
So EP is all about content marketing and community building. It's a single track event with multiple speakers who I've hand picked for their prowess in content creation, promotion, community building, and just thriving in a community atmosphere, online and in person.

2:41
Okay, and why do you do this from a business standpoint?

2:46
Well, you know, I built my business 100% online from the beginning, and I actually really wanted to stay there. I did not want to get out from behind the computer and put myself out there in person. I liked the the kind of private, anonymous nature of the internet. When I was getting started, we didn't even put our pictures online,

3:09
right.

3:11
But I went to an event in 2009, where I met some friends who I'd been in partnership with online for many years. And I was hooked. Just the real world experience of dining with friends and laughing in hotel rooms until late at night. And I saw the impact that it had for me in there were people who pursued me about partnerships who had never shown any interest before that. And I continued to pursue participating in events for many years. Before I decided to have my own image, just a big fan of what it does for me, and what it creates for others.

3:55
And so what do you make money with the event or I mean, is it Is it a good business venture? is a good question. My

4:03
first event, I had heard a horror story about a gal who had signed a hotel contract and then not been able to sell enough tickets and had to cancel the event and it cost her a fortune. So when I decided to have my event, I sat down and I did the math of like, what's the worst that could happen to me? If I didn't fill the hotel rooms I promised to fill. If I didn't sell enough ticket tickets, if it were just me and my speakers sitting around looking at each other wondering what the hell happened? Yeah, I came up with $1 amount. And I proceeded to say that for the next nine months, while I promoted my event like crazy, because I just didn't want the stress of what could happen. And fortunately, I got to the event, and I did have people pay to be there, and the event did pay for itself. But it didn't make money the first two years it didn't make any money. And then two more years, I think you would have made money if I didn't pay some ridiculous stupid tax and mistakes I made. Yeah. And the fifth year it was profitable.

5:20
Wow. Well, good. And you stuck with it. So, so Kelly, the majority of your income you make from selling online courses, and you do consulting or coaching as well. Is that right? Yeah. So one of the ways that that you gain customers, obviously have a big community and that's really helpful. But you have an affiliate program, and can you can you talk about how you got that off the ground and how that has helped you business wise.

5:52
So in 2004, I was partnering with Alice Seba, we started a membership site for work at home moms was called Mom masterminds and it was a paid membership with an affiliate program. But you couldn't be an affiliate if you weren't a member. So members would join the program. And then they would get their affiliate link and invite their friends. And it grew, the membership grew like crazy because of that referral program. Like we didn't have to advertise our members advertised us. So that was my very first experience with selling digital information had an affiliate program attached, so I've never done it any other way. Since then, when I started to sell individual products, there was always an affiliate program. I pay 50% commissions on my digital products 30% on group programs and 10% on coaching. So people are highly motivated to share it with with the people that need it.

6:56
No kidding.

6:57
I'm thrilled to send those Commission's Cuz

7:01
Yeah, exactly. You and I talked before this interview and I said, you know, I'd much rather give money to my friends than Menlo Park. You know, Mark Zuckerberg has got enough money even though he has to pay the billions of dollars and fine. Yeah, no, I again, I like the more and I think that the future is more about personal recommendations anyway, like, we're sick of being sold to buy ads. But, you know, if, you know if I'm following someone, and I trust what they have to say, and like, as we're recording this, like we're doing an affiliate program with one of our clients tomorrow, and I'm thrilled to talk about their product because I have so much personal experience with it. And I want the world to know about it. So I have you know, I've been doing live streaming and all kinds of stuff to promote it because I really, really love the product. And I think people can feel that sincerity and that authenticity and it comes across Much better than, say an ad that's got the the right talking points or something?

8:06
Yeah, I don't, I don't know how to advertise. I don't I don't have a any kind of training or degree in it. But I know how to be in relationship and I know how to solve problems for my market. So you know, I focus on creating something that solves a problem. Yeah. And then let them share it with their friends, and it builds my business.

8:36
Now, what are some tips that you could recommend to someone that has either digital products or they have other services, and they'd like to attract more affiliates to promote their product? How like, What do you reckon? How do you recommend that they succeed at that

8:54
affiliate outreach is, is I hate saying something is hard, but affiliate outreach is hard. You know, you can find somebody who has a blog or a podcast and they cover the topic that you're the you have a solution for, and you can reach out to them and say, I have a solution for you. And I'll pay you to share it with your people. And, and, you know, here's 15 reasons why it's such a great fit, and they will ignore you. Because why should they believe you? Right, which is another reason why I like in person events and podcasting so much because I, my affiliates come find me. You know, they they hear me on a podcast, they see me speak, they come to be cut because they come and say, Oh my gosh, you're the perfect person for my community. I need to be your affiliate. It's always better when you can pull them in versus chase them down. But the number one thing you can do to attract affiliates is have a generous commission. Yeah, lots of affiliate tools, really clear information about when you're going to pay consistency and paying. And that's huge. Because there's, you know, there's some affiliate programs out there that I've considered promoting, but they have a really ungenerous commission structure, like 50 cent on a digital product. I'm like, catch you. I'm not going to go warm up my community, build a body of content around your product for 15% interest when it's 100% Digital, super affiliates are not budging. And offer 50% that's the industry standard in our world. Yeah.

10:45
So if somebody has, let's say they have a $500 price point product, but you know, they're looking at their hard costs and they're like, you know, there's about 300 you know, 200 some dollars in hard costs, because You know, Vol the support we give them and that sort of thing. It would probably be better that they raised their price so that they can pay more out to the affiliate.

11:11
Yeah, I think hard cost is, is a challenging question. And like a win. For me a hard cost is, you know, somebody buys something and I send them this mug. That's a hard cost. Yeah. So I'm not going to pay a 50% Commission on those dollars. Right, exactly. Um, but the, the thing is, is I trust somebody to know what their expenses are. But I'm the digital product delivery, where it's like a it's a PDF download. It's a video I'm going to watch it and audio,

11:47
right. Okay. They don't have any hard costs there. Your hard cream I like to make money but

11:53
dramatically

11:55
to deliver it, you know, if I'm going to send you you know, if I'm going to send you 20 more People to give you 500 bucks, you know, what's that worth to you? Right? And especially here's the thing about digital information, product commissions. And it all It all depends I can come down off of that 50% if there's something recurring in it for me Yeah. Or if you've got a beautiful funnel, where I'm going to earn future Commission's on something else now goes into the mix.

12:29
Interesting, interesting but this time so glad we had this conversation any other best practices in terms of ongoing communication with your affiliates?

12:38
ongoing communication?

12:40
Yeah, have some

12:42
Yeah.

12:45
And I so about 30% of my overall income has been affiliate affiliate Commission's earned from other people's products and that has been true for me since about 2009. I'm so the the affiliate programs that stay in touch with me that let me know what's coming up that provide me with resources that asked me how we can partner they're getting my attention. Were you know the there are affiliate programs that are not very good about that they don't keep. They don't keep us informed they don't let us know what's coming up. I happen to be a fly by the seat of my pants kind of gal. So you can literally come up to me and say, Hey, I got a special next week want to promote it? I might say Yeah. But I have friends who would not know what to do with you because they have a marketing calendar that is filled up for to two months at a time.

13:50
Yeah, right. Right. Communication

13:52
is everything and

13:56
you know, some people need to have an affiliate manager to do that. Having affiliate manager that's highly focused on the relationship in the community. And not not a salesman, affiliate managers, this is my opinion, affiliate managers should not be salesmen because they enjoy affiliates.

14:17
They should just they should know the community. And it's like, make sure so the community if the community are affiliates, then I would imagine then that the affiliate manager should be my job is to you know, when it fits in your calendar, I want to help you earn as much money and serve your audience as best as you possibly can. Yeah, it's kind of what my guess is right?

14:39
Yeah. The my best affiliate the people who who stay in touch with me, they, they're not just letting me know what they're doing. They know what I'm doing. Because in my, in my particular world, there's a lot of, you know, I'm an affiliate for you. You're an affiliate for me. Yeah, I'm So we're just aware of what's happening in the community. We're showing interest in each other. And the sale an affiliate manager who acts like a salesman makes me feel like running the other way. I don't know. Yeah. Communications. When somebody went in a fizzy honestly that you know that you've been podcasting about this lately, you know, let's find something cool that connects to that. That's so helpful and, and, and creative. So just my my wish list.

15:35
Yeah, you actually I'm on your website right now at love people make money, and that you actually have an article called great affiliate relationships are priceless. So you talk about where do you find affiliates have affiliate creatives available, nurturing the relationship, keep in touch, keep it fun, and then you've got a free download associated with that. I think one thing that I didn't ask is where do you find affiliates?

16:05
In my own community, my competitors, meet them, meet them at events. I, when it comes to doing affiliate outreach, I start the relationship first I show interest in them. If they're a good affiliate for me, they're reaching the same community of people, not the same group of people, but a similar community of people. So thing in common, you know, So reach out to develop a relationship paga I'm a have a podcast, so I invite them to be a guest on my podcast,

16:46
right? I might,

16:49
I might buy their product and review it for my people.

16:55
You know, in order to get that flow going

17:00
I suppose if you wanted to if you let's say you had identified somebody that would make a great affiliate partner you could also probably offer to give them the product pro bono as well so they could get some experience with it.

17:13
Yeah. That yes and I as a practice I don't find it to be highly useful in moving their relationship forward.

17:24
What is it what do you mean

17:26
they're busy so for me to come to you and say Hey, Josh, I I think we would be have a great JV going here let me give you my product to review you go Thanks like I needed that added to my Yeah, right. You know, but yet, but yes, be willing to. I'm definitely willing to make that offer you I don't know like, yes. And just be aware that once you feel it feels like an offer to you feels like a demand to them.

17:57
Hmm, interesting. Interesting. So would it what would the better approach be then?

18:07
To show interest in them to show interest in their community to ask them what can I do to be a blessing to you? I think I think our community are very simpatico. How could we JV?

18:17
I love it. I love it. Well Kelly, this has been really great. So Kelly McCausey You are the you're the founder of love people make money and of course you've got your event coming up this fall. What are the dates and what is the website for that event?

18:34
exposure and profit.com it is October 11 12th and 13th

18:41
All right. And is that the beach event that that for female entrepreneurs know that the Atlanta content marketing Atlanta right right. Okay,

18:50
dude, very loud.

18:52
Oh, dudes are allowed at this one. All right.

18:56
If only

18:58
that would be awesome.

19:00
Terrific. Well Kelly, thank you so much for joining us.

19:03
Thanks for having me.

19:05
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