We all use various websites, documents and tools for our business.
Here’s a document you probably don’t have in your files, but should, because it can earn you money and builds partnerships regularly.
In the normal course of operating a business, especially an online business, you form partnerships and relationships with different companies and people, whether you know it or not.
How many times have you recommended a website or service to someone for a particular use? Probably weekly if you’re interacting with your audience.
There you go, whether either party knows it, you’ve created a link, a relationship.
I’m not promoting spam filled nonsense affiliating, but when you use certain products to run your business, and you find them extremely valuable, it’s natural to share them, and you should. If you win another company a sale, I’m willing to bet they are glad to pay you for it. Heck, we’re willing to pay $100 for a referral.
If you’re familiar with the wildly popular AppSumo by Noah Kagan, this is basically their entire business model, and there’s no reason you can’t adopt it on a small scale for your own business.
So ask yourself, are you leaving money on the floor by not looking into the affiliate platforms and income opportunities of products and services you love, defend, and recommend? You can stop that by doing this.
- Create a spreadsheet
- List out the services you use regularly
- Look up their affiliate programs, get affiliated
- Add their links to this document.
It’s called hoplink document or affiliate hoplink document
It may take a couple hours to initially setup, but once you have it, it will look something like the image below, and copying and pasting income producing links into blog posts, emails, instant messages, and everywhere else on the web becomes easy and top of mind, and creates you income opportunities.
An added bonus is that it groups together the tools and people you use to operate, which from a business management perspective is useful.
NOTE: I’ll reiterate, to keep your intention and posts clean of that salesman garbage tone, you have to come from a place of doing it to win the products and people you love business, NOT from wanting to earn more money. The second you wake up and go “oh, I’ll post about X cause they have a good commission”, you’ve killed it.
The more popular your content becomes, the more you’re likely to make.
The links are called hoplinks, because they first trigger a cookie that alerts the company if a sale happens that it should be attributed to you, and then “hops” to another location, most often, a salespage of some sort.
Important: People generally like to know when they are being sold, so be up front about it if you’re overtly recommending a product via affiliate link.
Tip: Create a short link using the URL shorting service bit.ly for long affiliate links so it’s easier to share, add this short link to the spreadsheet.
Super Tip: Reverse the idea and partner up with complimentary websites in your niche and offer their audience discounts with a coupon code or special offer landing pages so they have compelling reasons to send you traffic.
Ideas for Hoplinks
- Your website host [if you like them]
- Amazon products you buy for business use
- Your service providers
- The digital products you use daily and weekly
What do you think? Do you already have one of these documents? Will you make one?
