Affiliate Marketing Strategies - Carolina Millan - FHR #250

Why Dave Decided to talk to Carolina Millan:

Carolina Millan is an Entrepreneur, Speaker, Investor and Digital Marketing Consultant from Chile. She started online in 2008, but it wasn't until 2012 that she had her major breakthrough online with affiliate marketing. After years of trying program after program she cracked the code to making money online and now travels around the World, living life, working with clients, creating online training programs and hosting workshops. She's the host of the podcast- Beyond The Hustle. She's also the founder of Social Ads Agency and Al Cuadrado Marketing & Branding, where she and her team provide Digital Marketing and Social Media Management & Growth services. She is a member of the prestigious 2-Comma Club.

Tips and Tricks for You and Your Business:

• Affiliate Marketing: The Do's and Dont's (5:27)
• Free Strategies (10:12)
• Pay Traffic Sources (13:42)
• Carolina's Podcast Branding (16:50)
• Coaching Strategies and Importance (22:22)

Quotable Moments:

"It's really simple to set yourself apart by being yourself, creating some valuable content, and then recommending something."

"There are always ways to add more value and be able to monetize the leads, but again, always figure out how to add value first before asking for the sell."

Other Tidbits:

Carolina helps people discover the true value in their brands by tailoring it to their desire. She discusses strategies on coaching, building and running funnels, facebooks ads, email marketing and much more. Carolina speaks about her journey to reaching the 2-comma club and reflects on what she has accomplished up to this point in her career.

Links: FunnelHackerRadio.com FunnelHackerRadio.com/freetrial FunnelHackerRadio.com/dreamcar

---Transcript---

Speaker 1: 00:00 Welcome to funnel hacker radio podcast, where we go behind the scenes and uncover the tactics and strategies top entrepreneurs are using to make more sales, dominate their markets, and how you can get those same results. Here's your host, Dave Woodward. Everybody. Welcome back to funnel hacker radio. This is going to be a lot of fun today. Uh, I've been trying to get

Speaker 2: 00:22 this woman on my show up for ever and she's so busy. You've got so much stuff going on. So you guys are in for a massive tree. I want to introduce you guys driving to Milan. Malcolm.

Speaker 3: 00:31 Hey Dave. Thank you for having me.

Speaker 2: 00:33 So we have something in common now and that is, I don't know if you know, uh, my oldest son, Chandler just got married and he married a Chilean.

Speaker 3: 00:40 I had no idea. Congratulations. Great.

Speaker 2: 00:44 It was a great choice. Super excited. And so a Francisca Benevidez. I'm going to have to learn Spanish now. Are you ever coming to killer? Then? You know what, we'll have to talk more about that later, but the answer is going to be obviously yes, at some point for sure. I just don't know when she's talked a ton about it. She lived down in Santiago and a couple of other places and again, it's place. It's becoming much more near and dear to my heart all of the time and we've talked about expanding click funnels into the Latin Marta anyways, and again. It's a ton of fun. We're excited about that. There's such a huge opportunity, huge opportunity for the whole digital marketing space. Again, it's, I know you've done a ton in that market. You're a huge affiliate marketer. You've done tons of two comma club winner with click funnels and just such an honor to have you on the show. So thank you so much for taking the time.

Speaker 3: 01:33 Thank you dave.

Speaker 2: 01:34 So want to find out, first of all, tell people a little bit about your background. I know you've, uh, you've done a lot. You've got a podcast right now. You're on podcast is beyond the hustle.com. You've interviewed some huge people, Gary Vee, and I know grant cardone you've been bugging the crap out of me to get Russell on the show. I know that we will, but uh, it's one of those things where, again, I'm just so I'm happy to see your success, but I don't know if I want other people to know what you've done, so if you don't mind just take a few minutes and kind of introduce yourself to our audience.

Speaker 3: 02:07 Yes, for sure. So, well, as you said, I'm from Chile and I have been doing digital marketing for the past 10 years or so when I was at my first job, my first and last job. I'm very glad for that and I was really fresh out of university. I was really, I was ready to become another brick in the wall, you know, get a job, a work until I get old and retire and Blah, Blah Blah when really out of the blue it was a colleague at work that approached me about a multilevel marketing thing and I had never heard about it. I was like, hmm, what is this thing? Oh yeah, it's like herbalife, but it's different. Okay, sure. Um, and so that was really my first approach at doing something for myself like my entire life. While I was at at university, I never ever tried to do anything related to entrepreneurship. I was too shy. I am. I hated speaking on stage or in front of people. Like really? I was really different and so I'm really grateful for that experience even though I didn't do well at all with that business.

Speaker 2: 03:22 That's important for people to understand and know that you know what that's okay. And most important is it's that effort. It's what you learned about yourself. I love network marketing because it's probably one of the first entrees and a lot of people have into their own business. So I think it's great.

Speaker 3: 03:36 Exactly. Like I think it's the easiest way to get a taste of what it's like to be independent. And so I'm super grateful for the experience. I learned a lot. I learned what not to do, especially because, because really where the girl who started me into this, she had no idea what she was doing. She was making lists of friends and family and stuff like that. Um, and luckily I went on Google and that's how I discovered a bunch of gurus that I still follow today, uh, who were talking about how to do network marketing the right way and they were talking about attraction marketing and all of this brand new concepts for me. And I dive deeper into it. I got on social media, I started building my personal brand, my first blog in 2009. I'm in Spanish at the time. I wasn't getting into the English market yet even though I always loved the language.

Speaker 3: 04:25 And, and slowly I started making a name for myself locally here in Chile. I started getting interviewed by newspapers. Hey, so you're doing this twitter saying what is it, how do you do it? How do you have so many followers? So like, well, I just add value. I just, you know, I just post things that I find interesting and I share them with people and they reshare them and they follow me and stuff. Um, and that's how I started. And then a couple of years later I was able to quit my job because I had a few clients, I wasn't even trying to get clients, but a few people saw me doing social media and doing it well and they asked me for help. So I said, sure, I can help you with your twitter with your facebook. And that's how I started really. And, um, I'm, I'm really glad for that because that opened a lot of other doors for me. Um, I discovered a lot of things that I didn't know were possible to do online. Right. For me, the Internet was for entertainment research.

Speaker 2: 05:22 Well, I want to dive in and talk about one of the things I saw on your blog that you spoke at affiliate summit west.

Speaker 3: 05:29 Um, yeah. In, in Las Vegas in January. Now I'm speaking in, in New York in July. Yes.

Speaker 2: 05:34 So for those people who aren't familiar with affiliate summit is a huge event. Uh, they have an east coast or the West Coast, New York and Vegas once a, basically a spring or a January event and typically October in the summertime. And the cool thing about is they typically only bring on people who are big affiliates who can help other people become affiliates. So the people who are listening to understand marketing, clickfunnels has their own affiliate program where you actually, we pay you to basically promote click funnels, similar to how other Amazon, anyone else basically pay people who basically byproducts or things through them and every product or every company will have a lot of different affiliate type of marketing. You've done an amazing job at affiliate marketing and so if you don't mind, how does a person from Chile all of a sudden get the stage in one of the biggest stages for affiliate marketing in and then not only does an amazing job in January, but gets invited back to speak at the New York one. So tell people about your experience to feel like marketing. What are the things that you've done? One of the things that work and affiliate marketing and obviously telling people those things. Yeah,

Speaker 3: 06:37 absolutely. Yeah. So well, my first approach at affiliate marketing, I again like with with network marketing, I didn't know what I was doing. I was just grabbing links, posting them around, um, but then it was what I said before about the whole concept of attraction marketing. That's what's made the difference for me building a personal brand where instead of spamming people with affiliate links, right? Oh, hey, buy this software because it's so great, you know, uh, or buy this ebook or whatever. Instead of doing that and trying to get people to buy right away, you first add value to them. You either write a blog post about it, you make a video about it, you tell people about it, you add value, teach them something, and then you can recommend whether it's something that you made yourself, your own course, your own program or an affiliate marketing platform such as with click funnels has, which by the way recently I made my first 10,000 in commissions with click funnels without even trying that much. So I'm like, okay, I gotta take this more seriously.

Speaker 2: 07:37 You really do because I want when I want to promote and basically have you pay for one of your cars. So that'd be good.

Speaker 3: 07:42 I want see it. Trust me, I have a plan I haven't thought so. That's really, and for me with affiliate marketing, I have to promote something that I've tried myself first because you can go on a ton of websites such as clickbank, Jv, zoo, and the bunch of others. You can find whatever you want and get an affiliate link and then posted around the Internet and get a commission, but it's so much more powerful and it really sets you apart when you have tried the software that Ebook, the program, um, and then you can speak from experience and genuinely recommended to people because people are looking for that. People are looking for people they can trust. Uh, there's just so much going on on the Internet that it's really simple to set yourself apart by being yourself, creating some valuable content and then recommending something. And of course, paid traffic place of really important role there. For me, I've made a lot of sales and affiliate marketing organically through youtube and other avenues. But when you, when you mix that with paid traffic, that's when you get a really, really good combination.

Speaker 2: 08:50 Oh, I love it. So tell people I want to, if you don't mind, give people just a few ideas of what they can do for free if they don't have a budget and then later we'll talk about as far as patriotic, but if you don't have a budget. So first of all, I can't thank you enough for clarifying. One of the things that drives huge pet peeve of mine when it comes to affiliate marketing and that is I see a lot of people who think that they're just going to go find out whatever the best converting product is and that's what they're going to try to promote. There's, I think in today's world, authenticity and transparency is so critical and if you can say that, listen, I'm using this, I know it and it's funny. I've, of the 62 cars that we've given away, not one of those people has been an affiliate who doesn't have. It, doesn't use click funnels and I think that it kind of goes to if you want real success, you have to own use and, and really consume the product that you're promoting. So I appreciate your clarifying that.

Speaker 3: 09:38 Yeah, definitely because it's a huge misconception. People are always looking at what's the best offer, you know, what's the best offer to promote, what pays the most money that's not, that's not where your focus should be. It should be in, first of all, is it valuable because there could be a bunch of things paying really good money, but they're not good, they're not valued and, and then if you're not even using it, it's just not sustainable for you to promote something you don't believe in. Right. It's just for me, it has to be, you have to be authentic no matter what. Like that's very important for me.

Speaker 2: 10:12 I appreciate that. So what are some of the free strategies that affiliate could use?

Speaker 3: 10:16 Yeah, so for me, what has worked really well has been youtube. I mentioned, I mentioned it casually, I've been doing youtube videos on my first videos are not worth mentioning but been on, you'd have in a youth center the same way. It's like looking at an old photo album. So I, I've been on youtube since it started, like since before Google bought it, so 2005. Um, and I, I got on youtube just to watch, you know, music videos and stuff like that, but I started uploading my own videos around 2010 and those are the embarrassing videos that are still there. Uh, and mostly what I deal with youtube is I follow a lot of Gary v's advice, right? I do, I document a lot of what I do and I've been doing a Vlog. Um, and I upload a lot of videos where I teach something, so if I learned something new or implement something new and it works for me, I have a little whiteboard and then I go and I teach people stuff.

Speaker 3: 11:20 People love videos where they can learn something where they feel they're getting value from you in, in a, in a classroom type of way, like literally with a, with a whiteboard or a blackboard. And they love that. They also, people love tutorials as well. I know when I started my podcast it was, there were so many things I had to learn that were brand new for me. So I, I did it. And then I went ahead and I met a podcast tutorial and I, Hey, this is how you start your podcast, right? Little things like that that you can do for free and that establish you as an expert in your field. So I have videos like that, tutorials, I have videos also. I do have a lot of lifestyle videos where I'm traveling and I'm sharing with people nice places where I go so that they see them walking the talk, right?

Speaker 3: 12:08 Hey. So I talk about lifestyle and having a better designing your life, having a better life. I'm out there doing that, right? I'm investing in experiences and I'm investing in seminars, you know, uh, so all of those things, I document them, I make videos about them and then I upload them. And that's, that's probably the best free way that you can use today that you can leverage today to get traffic. So affiliate link in that to actually make money. So the cool thing about youtube is that now you can put links in the videos with this feature called Youtube cards. So you can actually talk about something and have a link pop up in the corner of the video, like, hey, check, check out this program or click here to learn more or something, uh, that works really well to generate leads. And, and then of course you have the description of the video and then if you have, you know, in the description, you can put a clickable link as well to whatever it is you're talking about in the video.

Speaker 3: 13:05 I just have a call to action in the video and tell people, hey, the lincolns isn't the description. Um, if you know how to edit video, you can also just put the video, the link in the video so people see it and then they can type it on their browser. Uh, there's so many ways to get your affiliate link in there. Um, and the more, the more content you upload, the more consistent you are a, if you post your youtube video also in instagram and facebook and you blog about it on your website, et Cetera, you give it more distribution and then you have more options with more people seeing it. And finding it of course. So that's something that has worked for me really well.

Speaker 2: 13:43 I think that's awesome. So Youtube has been probably one of the biggest things for you that you made mention of as far as if a person wants to go out and take those videos and they either use the videos or other assets to do paid traffic. What are some of the paid traffic sources of your funding that work real well from an affiliate standpoint?

Speaker 3: 14:00 [inaudible] for me it has been mostly facebook advertising and Instagram, right? A lot of my ads, we put them on both platforms because you can do that directly from facebook. And, and what I do many times is I create shorter versions of the youtube video to go on a facebook ad, um, because people's attention span on facebook is lower than youtube because people go on youtube to watch videos on facebook. People do multiple things, so they're not willing to spend every. Depends on the video, but on average they're not going to watch more than two, three minutes. And that's already pushing it a bit. So I either cut parts of videos and just put a section of it and then I invite people hate watch the full video on youtube if I want to send them to my youtube channel that I, that's what I would do with a paid ad or if I'm inviting them, let's say a Webinar, I'm hosting a Webinar for something, I will create a video especially for that, especially for facebook, for facebook ad me introducing myself really briefly keep it under 90 seconds and just invite people to a special training where I'm going to be talking about this, this and this.

Speaker 3: 15:10 Get the link register now. So I do that a lot for you too. Sorry for facebook advertising where I create videos especially for that. And I think the same video would also work on youtube if you wanted to do paid ads on Youtube, which I haven't done a whole lot of yet. Um, but the, the logic is pretty much the same. You know, you have a quick video invite people to something and have the call to action. Get them on the funnel, click the link and register. And there you can have either an affiliate opportunity that you're promoting or Webinar or a free Ebook, a free report, a video series. I mean there's just so many options, so many things you can do. So.

Speaker 2: 15:48 So I'm paid stuff. You're always taking them typically to a landing page where you're capturing their information for follow up later.

Speaker 3: 15:53 Exactly. And I either I do a lot of funnels where after they opt in I immediately have something to offer them right away. So if they opted in for something for free, hey check your email, your ebooks going to be there soon, but you know, stay with me for a few minutes because I have something else to share with you. And then I sell them something else or also in the followup sequence, invite them later to a webinar or something. So there's, there are always ways to add more value and be able to monetize the leads. But again, always figured out how to add value first before

Speaker 2: 16:29 asking for the sale. That's been one thing that I've seen a lot of people have a lot of success with these days is actually putting on the thank you page, an offer a certain. Basically you're congratulating you. I know it's going to be in your email, all that stuff, but by the way, almost their thank you page almost becomes like an Oto page.

Speaker 3: 16:47 That's exactly what I do and it works really well if you establish that trust and that rapport with people.

Speaker 2: 16:53 That's fantastic. Well, I'm curious, you obviously do a lot right now with your pot, with your podcast, beyond the hustle. Are you using that to what? What's your purpose behind using the podcast are using that to sell affiliate products? Are you using it for your own products? What's the purpose behind that podcast

Speaker 3: 17:07 for now? Like when I first started the the purpose lists too for branding really to to have presence in that platform because I had never had a podcast and I. I've been seeing how so many people are getting into it and I thought, okay, it's time that I get there and so for me it was a matter of branding myself even more. I'm not really selling anything there yet as I don't have like enough of a big audience yet to be able to sell anything I've. Maybe I could, but I wanted like the first few episodes to be just about the value and the few calls to action that I have. There are, Hey, follow me on instagram or hey, if you enjoyed it, leave me a five star review. A little things like that for now. But eventually of course I would love to go down the road as you know, with John Lee Dumas has been able to achieve with this podcast.

Speaker 3: 18:01 Right. People like that where, where he's making a very good income every month from it and he's very transparent about it. Um, but, but yeah, at first is for me to and also to connect my audience with the people that I've been able to meet because I feel super grateful that I've, that I've been able to meet Russell on first name basis and Gary Vee on a first name basis, John Lee Dumas as well, like, um, and so I feel very blessed about that and being able to, to connect with my audience with them and ask them questions that questions that sometimes might be different than what, than what most people ask. And I always asked my subscribers and my followers, hey, do you have a question for this person? And I, I always ask questions from other people with my own questions, but I have sometimes a couple. Um, but, but yeah, it was, it was for me it was, it was looking for another way to add value and eventually being able to monetize it. That will be awesome. But for now it's, my main focus is getting, getting more subscribers, adding more value in getting more listeners and, and see what happens. Well, one of the things people always want to know is what in the world did you do to get to the two Comma Club status?

Speaker 3: 19:10 Well, I did. Um, I did a combination of things because when I apply, who was, I think the rules were, I think the rules changed after that we started validating a much, much worse. Yeah, I think you guys got a little more strict with them, but when I applied it was not just one funnel necessarily. I had like two or three funnels and they all together. They did a little over a million dollars. So it was my coaching funnel, uh, was my event funnel and then it was affiliate marketing. So putting all those things together was a little over a million. I remember I sent all the screenshots and everything. Um, and that's how I did it, but it took me a little while. I mean, I was, when I started using click funnels seriously at the beginning of 2015, I had an account in 2014 that I was playing around with. Um, but I, I remember when I, the first time I met Russell was on a cruise. We were both on, uh, on, on the marketers cruise. Yeah. It was really funny because, uh, I have no idea he was going to be there. And I remember I was, I was looking. Is that Russell brand's? Oh my God, it's Russell Brunson. I have to go say hello.

Speaker 3: 20:23 And um, and then, uh, and then he invited me to promote dotcom secrets. Like he gave me a flyer, hey, I've wrote a book and this is not, you know, nobody knows about it yet, but you know, here's a flyer for it so you can sign up as affiliate. I was so excited. We even did a video, a little video on the cruise ship together to promote DOTCOM secrets. Yeah, that's how I also made it on that leaderboard. Congratulations. Yeah. So, um, that's how I started really using click funnels where I met Russell there and I loved it. I've been using it ever since. And like I said, mostly it's been thanks to my coaching programs, my affiliate marketing promotions and yeah, that's how I got into the club and, and really it's been because I've always implemented what I learn in my own thing before I teach it, that I've been able to get some, some really good coaching clients and I've been able to put together some, some small events because a lot of people skip that step. They learned something and they want to teach it right away. I'm like, wait, you got to try it first, see if it works. And then you can teach. So yeah.

Speaker 2: 21:33 Local in Chile or are they international? Where do you do most of your events?

Speaker 3: 21:37 I've never done an event in chiller though. Surprisingly I've done, I've done a couple events in the US and one in London, in Europe, but I've, like you were saying earlier, there's so much potential in this market and I spent a lot of years doing content only in English because I thought there's no money in South America, nobody's going to buy this. And then at the beginning of last year I decided to branch out again. All right, let's do some stuff in Spanish. And whoa. I was blown away. Like there is so much demand and honestly not enough good offers.

Speaker 2: 22:18 I think that's really critical. So tell me, as we kind of get close to wrapping things up here, I wanted to find out on your coaching program, what is it that you're actually coaching people?

Speaker 3: 22:27 Well, I, I coach people on, on several things, but mainly I'm building funnels. I help people build their funnel. Like I like doing things with people as opposed to for them. Like I really want people to learn how to build their funnels. So I teach them that. I teach them how to run facebook ads. I teach them how to be good on video. So, you know, sometimes I have people who fly in all the way to Chile to work with me and I get my video team and we do branding videos for them, stuff like that. Um, I also work with people on, for example, our email marketing, their copywriting sales letters, uh, and, and when people are a little bit more, um, you know, at a stage where they still don't even know what they want to sell. Then I helped him with, you know, discovering what is it that they want to sell.

Speaker 3: 23:15 Do you want to do affiliate marketing or do you want to do your own thing? Like let's, let's see what your personal brand would look like. What is your message, right? So starting a little bit from the, from the basics, what's your mindset, the right mindset that you need in order to do this? Um, and then with people who are more advanced and we go straight to, okay, let's build a new funnel and you have this offer, let's build a new offer, the Ebook, the, okay, what's your event funnel going to look like, your webinar. I help people build a Webinar. Slides learned much from Russell in that regard. So those are some of the things that I hope people do.

Speaker 2: 23:50 So tell me, how do you get people into your coaching funnel then?

Speaker 3: 23:55 It's built on click funnels. I have, I have a website called work with Carolina that common and when people go there they can see some testimonials and stuff and learn a little more, a little more about it. And then I have my application form there and everything. That's how they get in. I don't usually advertise it because, you know, I let people come in through different ways and then they either click on it because they find that on my main website or they find that at the footer of my emails because I don't like, I like being selective as well with the people that I work with. So really if they did the effort to find my coaching funnel, they really want, they really want to work with me then. But yeah, it's um, it's, it's something where if you want to advertise your coaching, I think it's much better to start with something of a lower ticket. Like start with an, with an online course like that. Those are the things where I do my ads and then when people come in from my marketing courses or affiliate marketing things or they enjoy my membership, then those people are highly qualified to do one on one coaching because that's something where you know, it's bigger investment, so you want to work with people who are serious and who you know already want to follow you and learn from you. So

Speaker 2: 25:16 I love it. I think one of the things that you have mentioned there, which I know you've done an extremely great job of is you typically have in a lot of you email followup sequences and bother your pages. There's always other products or services they can buy through you. I think it's a great way of just having that always out there to for who knows how many times they're going to click on it, but all of a sudden it's like, you know what I do. I want to work with Carolina and boom, there's the click. So the fact that you have that in all your email sequences is a really cool thing. So congratulations on utilizing that tactic.

Speaker 3: 25:45 Yeah, yeah. I always have on all of my emails, there's always a ps, whatever it is, there's always my sign out, my signature. Then there's my work with catalina that come with the bottom up without any call to action, but there is a ps, the ps, I always have a call to action. It could be, Hey, follow me on instagram, subscribe to my youtube channel. I opened up two new spots in my one on one mentoring program. Apply here. I always have something, but because I try to make sure that in the actual email, even if I'm promoting something else, uh, that I add some value that I tell a story, that I share something so that then people are happy to get to the PS and click on whatever it is that I, that I have there. And I think that's a really good strategy. And I got that mostly from Frank Kern. He always has a ps.

Speaker 2: 26:37 Well, if people want to reach out to you and get ahold of you, what's the best way to do that?

Speaker 3: 26:41 Uh, probably the best is I'm on social media really on twitter or instagram. It's at Catalina, Megan. Megan is m I l l a n just like, you know the dog whisperer. Spelled the same. It's the same last name. You know, people have people in the US, they always call me Carolina Milan. But uh, the, the, the double l is, it sounds like that. So instagram and, and also from my website, 39 midland.net or work with, um, I always, I was trying to respond to people and just, you know, I love talking to people, engaging with people who have seen me somewhere. It's always, it's always a great. Well, thanks so much. It was great having you on the show. I wish you all the best. And again, I look forward to one of these days actually brightened up in your neck of the woods down in Chile. That will be amazing. Please let me know in advance because I'd love to and we can show you guys around. Love it. Thanks so much. Thank you for having me.

Speaker 4: 27:44 Hey everybody, thank you so much for taking the time to listen to the podcast. If you don't mind, could you please share this with others? Rate and review this podcast on Itunes, it means the world to me. We're trying to get to as a million downloads here in the next few months and just crush through over 650,000 and I just want to get the next few $100,000 so we can get to a million downloads and see really what I can do to help improve and and get this out to more people at the same time. If there's a topic, there's something you'd like me to share or someone you'd like me to interview, by all means, just reach out to me on facebook. You can pm me and I'm more than happy to take any of your feedback as well as the people you'd like me to interview more than happy to reach out and have that conversation with you. So again, go to Itunes, rate and review this, share this podcast with others and let me know how else I can improve this or what I can do to make this better for you guys. Thanks.