Wouldn’t it be great if your computer actually spat out money like an ATM?
In some ways, it can — not literally, like the illustration above — but it is possible via your website to make an income without seeing a client, that occurs 24 hours a day & 365 days a year.
Now let’s make a few assumptions: You have done all the right things; Passed your hypnosis course, joined a Hypnotherapy Association, created a website with your credentials, advertised, maybe joined a few online directories and waited for the clients to call. And waited, and waited. As outlined on the page about making money with hypnosis, it’s not always so straight forward.
Briefly, let’s first look at your website. Do you know:
- How many people visit your website each month?
- How many people visit your website and either call to make an appointment or don’t make contact with you?
- Visit your website and leave for another destination?
- Point 1: Is particularly important if you are advertising to get traffic to your website to attract clients to make appointments. The number of visitors can be covered with CPanel statistics, Google webmaster tools or Clicky Analytics.
- Point 2: Do you keep a record of the numbers that visit and the number of calls or email, and then how many convert into paying customers.
- Point 3: What if you could harness those visitors and when they depart, earn an income from them, even without seeing them as a client?
If you are using a free website, as outlined on the free online resources page, these statistics may not be available to you
As well as working directly with clients, have you ever considered recording and selling your own MP3s or CDs from your website?
It sounds straight forward enough, but its is actually a lot of work. You need to use a recording studio to avoid background noises, and good quality recording gear. These days the recording gear is very good, but hiring a studio is not cheap. Then you need to edit it all together. If you want to add music, this can be extremely tricky with copyright and royalty issues. And then it can be quite costly setting it all up if you’re going to do MP3 downloads. If you’re recording CDs they need to look professional and then there is the cost of packaging and posting. And then there’s the hassle of returns or packages lost in the post (or downloads that don’t download). It’s a lot of work if you’re selling a CD for $20.
Why not take a different approach. Work with people who have already done the hard work for you. Instead of selling from your site, you simply refer people to their site and you earn a commission for the referral!
Make money from your departing website visitors.
It’s called Referral or Affiliate or Marketing. A simple definition is that you refer people to another website and should they purchase from that site, you earn a commission.
- You put links on your website to track your referrals
- People purchase via your special affiliate link
- You get paid a commission for the sale
Let’s get something clear about what Affiliate Marketing is NOT.
It is NOT Multi Level Marketing (MLM). It is NOT Network Marketing. You do NOT have to purchase; detergents, skin-care, make-up, jewelry, vitamins, health products, or any other product you do not want. You do NOT have to sign up for a monthly order. You do NOT construct a list of friends, family and acquaintances and you do NOT confront them and attempt to get them to sign up to the system.
Affiliate Marketing is unobtrusive and passive
Sounds simple right? Well yes… and no. Like everything in life it is not as simple as it sounds. Some things to ponder:
- Is it a company or an individual you are dealing with?
- You want to work with a company rather than an individual. Individuals can simply up and go. Many years ago, I worked with a person who simply disappeared online. Unfortunately he had been in a car accident and had been in a coma for three months. He had no one to run his business and consequently it failed and I didn’t get paid.
- Does the Company have people who assist you?
- It is important to have dedicated affiliate manager, who will assist you with a range of issues
- Does the Company keep detailed records of the referrals & purchases?
- It is important that they track every referral and purchase, you need to know exactly what’s working or not. Don’t rely on, “we ask the client who referred them.”
- Does the Company pay a decent commission?
- A few percent is fine if it an expensive product. But then, how many would you sell? As an example, Amazon pays around 3-4%
- Will the Company actually pay you?
- There are companies who don’t — they may simply say “lots of visits, but no sales this month.”
- What is the “Conversion Rate”?
- The conversion rate is a percentage of how many people sent, buy the product. The higher the better.
- The conversion rate will depend on how targeted the traffic is.
- A conversion rate of 4 sales : 100 referrals. 4% is considered a benchmark standard, but will vary from industry to industry
- If you are not getting any commission from sales, find another company.
- What is “Targeted Traffic”?
- This is the key to success. In this example, someone has visited your site for hypnosis, thereby and referral on should be related to hypnosis. That referral is “targeted”.
- What is the refund policy of the Company?
- It is really important for the Company to have an easy to use transparent refund policy. The last thing you need is people coming back to you with complaints!
- What is the “Refund Rate?”
- The lower the better. A low refund rate is critical to your income potential. Sending lots of people to a website is of no use if the refund rate is high. It then stands to reason the product is of poor quality if the customer is not happy with the product.
- Does the Company have a variety of products?
- A variety of products means a lot more opportunity for a customer to find what they are looking for, including possible upsells.
- What is an “Upsell”?
- The classic upsell is McDonalds, “Would you like fries with that?” (Curiously, this hasn’t been used by McDonald’s for decades, even though people keep quoting it.) The staff now ask, “Would you like to upsize your meal?” (to a larger fries and drink).
- What is the long term potential, or do you continue to get paid for additional purchases?
- Do you get paid a commission for every sale? It is of no use to you if the first purchase is inexpensive, but you do not get paid for any further sales. You want to get paid a commission for every sale.
- If you refer people what is the duration that you will continue to get paid after the referral?
- If there is a limited time ‘cookie’ you might only get paid only for purchases made in the first 24 hours — such as with Amazon. The longer period the better; 3 months is a minimum. 12 months is good. Lifetime is best!
- Ideally the company has a special offer that the referral signs up for with an email address. The company sends offers by email. Should the referral purchase anything, you get paid. It’s ‘lifetime’.
Comment: If you are sending targeted traffic to a website, it is not converting into sales and you are not getting paid commissions – it’s not your fault! People don’t like the product! Find another company!
Example: We recently let a company go who work on the, “We ask the client who referred them” principle. They said 25 that had been sent and while one person signed up for their ‘special offer” they didn’t continue with them. “We” obviously had different statistics, the software on the website showed that there had been 118 unique clicks on the referring link. Against my better judgement I took them on even though they didn’t fulfill three of the important categories:
- No link Tracking
- Poor Commission
- No Ongoing commission
We have since removed their ad from the site.
So what does this all mean? How does it all work?
The primary goal of your website: People visit your site and makes an appointment.
Then the website has fulfilled it’s primary function of delivering you a client.
After the session, DO make sure you get the client to give you a testimonial for your website, and you also get them to promote your business with word of mouth referrals. Remember the 20:80 rule!
The secondary goal of your website: Make you a passive income.
As mentioned, you could look to sell your own product from your website — but it is a lot of work. Why not simply promote other people’s products and earn a commission. By carefully placing affiliate links on your website, people follow those links and make a purchase. You earn a commission.
Example. Let’s you have a page called quit smoking with hypnosis, at the end of the page you have two links.
- “Call to Action” to contact you.
- to find out more about the procedure
- make an appointment. Do you have a special offer as outlined on the Starting a Hypnotherapy Practice page?
- Suggestion to try a Quit Smoking MP3 download with a referral link to the affiliate site.
Something like this: (The demo links don’t work)
- First, promote yourself! Make the phone number obvious so they can pull out their phone and call or a mobile to text. Or if they prefer, they can contact you via email.
- Second, promote your affiliate link. They are on your page for Quit Smoking and they see a link for an Quit Smoking MP3 download, do you think they might they be tempted to take a look? It is a natural progression as it is at the end of the page. You might also make the link open in a new page so they don’t leave your site.
- If they check out the link, they are now your referral, and should they purchase you will receive a commission!
- Here’s the example
If you’d like to find out more about Quitting Smoking with Hypnosis, or would like to make an appointment for a free initial consultation, call 5555-5555 or get in touch with the email from the Contact Page
Would you like to experience Quit Smoking Hypnosis in the privacy of your own home?
Try this hypnosis download – Quit Smoking MP3
- TIP: Make sure the links are obvious and cannot be mistaken or missed. Blue, underlined and bold. Now is not the time to go “arty”. And test them to make sure they link properly!
- TIP: Always have a call to action at the end of every page. It is vital you lead your visitors to where you want them to go, such as make an appointment. While they may choose a different path by clicking a link elsewhere on your site, if you don’t give them a call to action they will definitely go somewhere else.
- TIP: Have your phone number and contact details visible from every page. The last thing you want is a visitor leaving because the contact details were hidden away on a page they could not find!
How Much Can you Earn?
There are no promises. You might not receive a cent. Do read the earnings disclaimer
However, should your referral make a purchase, you will earn is 33% of any purchases made through your referral link. The basic MP3 download is $14.95. That is a commission $5.23. Four of those is the equivalent to posting off your CD, but with no hassle and no ongoing work.
But there are many other, more expensive programs as well. Remember, once they have visited the site, you will get paid for any purchase they make, now or in the future. Once a customer discovers how good and reasonably priced the downloads are, they tend to think of other things they would like help with and come back to look for more downloads.
OK, so what are the downsides of an Affiliate Program?
First of all, you may not be accepted. Every affiliate is checked out before being accepted. If you are a hypnotist you’re 90% there, but still, you might want to see if you qualify.
Other than that issue, there are actually very few downsides. Probably the greatest fear the website owner has is that they will lose out on customers.
Yes, it is possible… but very, very, unlikely. When a person visits your website, they are investigating using hypnosis for an issue, but they are not yet committed to calling you for an appointment. Most visitors come and go with very few actually making contact. Where do they go? You can use stats to track them, but rather than them just disappearing, use the fact that they are a targeted visitor and direct them to somewhere where it is possible you might get an affiliate commission.
It is a definite that if they just go anywhere else you will not receive a commission
Quotes from Affiliates
“Commissions are generous…” – James Manktelow
” It seems the wide range of therapeutic solutions provide customers with exactly what they are looking for – at a very affordable price – and so often several programs are purchased at once ! …a considerable success for my site…” – Peter Shepherd
“I have never had a more successful affiliate association. Thank you, also, for your incredibly fast commission payouts. ” – Elizabeth Stafford
“I wish the other services I offer were this popular!” – Ian Brockwell
“…by far one of the best run programs…” – L. Rogers
This program was joined in 2006. They tick all the boxes of the questions raised above.
- They have paid out every month on the first day of the following month.
- Get paid a commission of 35% of every sale to a customer referred by you.
- There are discounts for multiple purchases – encouraging higher value sales and a larger revenue!
- Recurring commission: you get 35% of the renewal fee every month for members
- NB Commissions are paid over US$25 (US) monthly via PayPal, or by bank transfer.
- Cookies last 365 days so you get paid even when your visitor doesn’t buy on the first visit. The cookie is renewed every time your customer comes back to the site, and backed up by sessions and account storage.
- Powerful affiliate software gives you instant detailed stats so you can maximize your conversion rate. Stats available include:
- downloads, CDs & programs sold
- click through rates by page
- conversion rates by product
- unique clicks vs. repeat clicks
- total commission
- commission per visit
- commission ratio
- click throughs
- conversion by ad code
I would highly recommend you find out more watch the short video and read the information on the affiliate information page
And if you would like more information or assistance get in contact.