Are you an affiliate marketer looking to take your business to the next level by starting your own brand? The idea of going from promoting other companies' products to selling your own can seem a bit challenging.
But the process isn't as complicated as it may seem. With the right plan, partners, and strategies, you can successfully make the transition from affiliate to brand owner. This will allow you to tap into higher profit margins.
In this article, we'll give you some actionable tips to help you navigate this exciting next chapter of your entrepreneurial journey. We'll cover everything from picking the right product to optimizing your offer - the essential steps to launching and growing your own direct-to-consumer brand.
We'll also share some tips and insights from Iman Benraoui, a former affiliate manager at Clickbank and Digistore and Head of Business development at SHIPOffers, a supplement fulfillment company that provides an easy "plug and play" solution for affiliates looking to launch their own custom supplement brand.
The affiliate marketing ecosystem
Before we get into the specifics of launching your own brand as an affiliate, it's important to understand the key players in the affiliate marketing ecosystem:
- The Advertiser (Brand Owner): Creates the product and pays affiliates a commission for generating sales.
- The Affiliate: Promotes the advertiser's products through various traffic sources and earns a commission on each sale.
- The Product: The item being sold, which needs to provide value to the end customer.
As Iman illustrated, these 3 components are equally essential and interdependent. The "blue ocean" of profitability lies in the intersection of a strong product, effective promotion by affiliates, and a well-managed brand.
The 5-Step blueprint for launching your brand
Iman provided a straightforward 5-step blueprint that demystifies the process of transitioning from affiliate to brand owner:
- Choose a product and find a manufacturer
- Create the label, design, landing page, and funnels
- Test your offer thoroughly before launch
- Set up necessary integrations (e.g. Shopify, affiliate network, payment processing)
- Launch and sell your product
While each step involves its own set of tasks and decisions, this blueprint will provide a clear roadmap to keep you on track.
Let's explore each step in more detail.
Step 1: Choose a product and find a manufacturer
Choosing the right product is crucial to the success of your brand. Iman recommends leveraging the expertise of established companies like SHIP offers, which provide a wide range of "plug and play" products in popular niches such as supplements, CBD, and skincare.
The benefits of starting with a proven product include:
- Low risk and high reward: You only pay for the product as you sell it, without needing to invest in large inventory upfront.
- Flexibility to pivot: If a product doesn't convert well, you can easily switch to another item in the catalog.
- Ability to create product bundles: Combine complementary products into attractive upsell and downsell offers to boost order value.
When selecting a product, consider your target demographic and the types of items that resonate with them. For example:
- Women: Hormone support, hair/skin/nails, collagen, thyroid support
- Men/Adult: ED, testosterone, virility, NO2/HGH
- General health: Weight loss, skincare, greens powder, bloating relief
- Gaming: Vision support, sleep aids (for late night sessions)
Step 2: Create your brand assets
Once you've chosen your product, it's time to build out your brand assets, including:
- Product label design
- Landing page and funnel
- Ad copy and creative
This is where many affiliates get stuck, as these tasks fall outside their primary skillset. Iman strongly advises against trying to do everything yourself. Your time is best spent focusing on your strengths - driving traffic and optimizing campaigns.
Instead, partner with expert designers, copywriters, and funnel builders who can bring your brand vision to life. Many of these specialists were present at Affiliate World and are eager to support your brand's success.
Step 3: Test, test, test
Before you go live and start driving serious traffic, it's critical to thoroughly test your offer and funnel. This includes:
- Ensuring the checkout process is smooth
- Verifying tracking and attribution
- Optimizing page load speeds
- Split testing ad angles, landing pages, and upsell flows
Allocate a small test budget to validate your funnel and gather data. This will give you the confidence to scale and allow you to make data-driven optimizations pre-launch.
Step 4: Integrate with your tech stack
To take your brand live, you'll need to integrate with various technologies and platforms, such as:
- Shopify or other e-commerce solutions
- Affiliate networks or tracking platforms
- Payment processors
- Email and SMS marketing tools
- Customer service and product fulfilment providers
While this may sound complex, partnering with the right solution providers will simplify the process. Many of these companies specialize in supporting direct-to-consumer brands and offer robust integrations.
Step 5: Launch and scale
With your product selected, brand assets created, funnel tested, and integrations in place, it's time to launch your brand to the world. As an affiliate, you have a huge advantage - an existing stream of traffic that you can direct to your new offer.
Start by allocating a portion of your current traffic to your own brand. Monitor performance closely and optimize as needed. As you gain traction and prove the offer's scalability, you can begin expanding to new traffic sources and recruiting other affiliates to promote your product.
The 5 Ps of a successful brand launch
In addition to the 5-step blueprint, Iman shared "The 5 Ps" - key factors that contribute to a brand's success:
- Product: A high-quality, in-demand product that solves a real problem or meets a burning desire for your target market.
- Promotion: Use your skills as an affiliate to drive high-converting traffic to your offer. Start with your proven traffic sources and expand strategically.
- Partners: Collaborating with expert service providers to fill gaps in your skill set and free up your time to focus on growth. Key areas to outsource include design, development, copywriting, customer service, and fulfillment.
- Pitch: Create compelling ad angles, landing pages, and email campaigns that resonate with your audience and convey your brand's unique value proposition. Continuously split test to optimize performance.
- Profit: Monetizing your brand effectively through a well-structured funnel with high-converting upsells, downsells, and recurring offers. Reinvest profits into growing your business.
By focusing on these core elements, you'll lay a strong foundation for your brand and position yourself for long-term success.
Optimizing your offer for maximum conversions
Launching your brand is just the beginning. To achieve sustainable growth, you must continually optimize your offer based on data and customer feedback. Some key areas to test and refine include:
- Pricing and subscription models
- Video sales letter (VSL) vs text sales letter (TSL)
- Upsell and downsell flows
- Direct response vs e-commerce style positioning
- Ad hooks and angles
Treat your brand as a constant work in progress, always striving to provide more value to your customers and better serve their needs.
Building customer loyalty
One of the most powerful insights shared by Iman's affiliate partners was the importance of exceptional customer service in driving long-term success. While affiliates can often focus solely on the front-end sale, brand owners must nurture strong customer relationships post-purchase.
Some ways to wow your customers and encourage repeat business include:
- Providing fast, friendly, and helpful customer support across multiple channels
- Offering generous return and refund policies
- Sending personalized thank-you notes or small gifts with orders
- Creating engaging unboxing experiences
- Sharing customer testimonials and success stories
- Delivering timely order updates and tracking information
By treating your customers as valued partners in your brand's success, you'll foster a loyal following that will support your business for years to come.
Insights from Iman Benraoui
Iman Benraoui, former affiliate manager at Clickbank and Digistore and Head of Business Development at SHIPOffers
Q: Can you give an overview of your background and journey in the affiliate marketing industry?
I've been in affiliate marketing for 5 years. I started as an account manager on the advertiser side at ClickBank, then moved to the affiliate side as an affiliate manager at Digistore. For the past 2.5 years, I've been at SHIP Offers as a Senior Business Development and Partner Manager. So half my time in the industry has been at SHIP Offers. My role involves managing new business and partnerships with other companies we work with.
Q: Can you explain what SHIP Offers is and how the company supports affiliates in launching their own supplement brands?
SHIP Offers is a turnkey supplement fulfillment company that's been in business for over 23 years. We provide a easy "plug and play" solution for affiliates looking to launch their own custom supplement brand.
The process is simple - you select products from our extensive catalog of in-stock supplement formulas, including capsules, powders, gummies, liquids, and more. We handle all the manufacturing, labeling, packaging and fulfillment.
You don't need to purchase any inventory upfront. Simply drive traffic to your custom offer page and we take care of the rest - from payment processing to product shipping to customer support. You only pay for what you sell.
This allows you to start your own supplement brand with virtually no risk or upfront investment. You can quickly test products to see what converts for your audience.
We can also help with custom product formulations if you have a unique product idea. Our in-house product development team can assist in creating your own proprietary formula.
In addition, we provide comprehensive launch support - from product descriptions and ad copy to designing product labels, landing pages and marketing funnels.
So in a nutshell, SHIP Offers makes it turnkey for affiliates to launch a professional, high-quality supplement brand without the usual barriers to entry, like large capital requirements, warehouse space, and logistics headaches. We handle the back-end so you can focus on marketing and driving sales.
Many of our affiliate clients have gone on to build 7 and 8-figure brands by leveraging our fulfillment services and industry expertise. It's a low-risk, high-reward model for entrepreneurial affiliates looking to level up to brand ownership.
Q: What are the advantages of launching a brand, for example a nutritional supplement brand with a company like SHIPOffers?
Launching a supplement brand with SHIP Offers is low risk and high reward. You don't need to prepay for inventory or buy large quantities upfront without knowing if the product will sell. You only pay for what you sell.
If a product doesn't convert well, you can easily pivot to a different product by just changing the label and sales pages. You're not locked into one supplement.
SHIP Offers also makes it easy to create product bundles and add upsells/downsells into your funnel for better customer results and higher average order values. But there's no inventory risk.
Q: Once you pick a product, how do you promote the new brand and drive sales?
This part is easy for affiliates because you already have traffic. You simply take your existing traffic, whether it's from Facebook, native ads, email, etc. and direct it to your own offer instead of someone else's.
Send customers to your landing page, put them through an optimized sales funnel, and cash in. The promotion piece is not new for affiliates.
Q: What are some examples of products that sell well to different demographics and traffic sources?
For the women's demographic, products like hormone support, hair/skin/nail supplements, thyroid support and collagen do well. Women want to look and feel good.
Adult traffic is huge for men's products right now - things like ED, testosterone, vitality, NO and HGH. You can sell one product on the front end and upsell complementary ones to boost results.
For general health products that appeal to a wide audience, weight loss is always popular. Skincare, greens powders for bloating, and collagen for anti-aging also have mass appeal.
Even in the gaming vertical, you can sell supplements for eye strain from long screen time or sleep support for gamers up all night.
Q: Why is it critical to partner with other companies to handle different aspects of running an offer instead of trying to do it all yourself?
As an affiliate, you need to focus on your strengths, which is driving traffic and media buying. Don't try to also become an expert in web design, customer service, email management, etc.
You will not succeed trying to do everything yourself. Partner with companies whose business model is to provide those specialized services. They've been doing it for years.
Some key partners to consider are:
- Customer support and live sales
- Affiliate networks/platforms for tracking and paying affiliates on your offer
- Email and SMS list management
- Abandoned cart recovery services
- Funnel design and landing page development
- Media buying agencies
Stay in your lane and delegate the rest to the experts. It will make your life much easier.
Q: After launching an offer, what are some ways to optimize it to make it more appealing for affiliates to promote?
Your offer needs continuous optimization and development, just like self-improvement, to make it attractive to affiliates.
Some key things to test are:
- Video sales letter (VSL) vs text sales letter (TSL)
- Different upsell/ downsell flows and price points
- Long-form direct response vs ecommerce style (aggressive vs softer sell)
- Various hooks and ad copy
Split-test these elements to dial in an offer that converts well. Affiliates are looking for high-performing, well-optimized offers to promote. If you put in the effort, you can have a very successful and lucrative offer. We've seen people make 7-9 figures in their first 6-12 months by implementing these strategies.
Q: What advice do other successful affiliates who transitioned to brand owners have for those looking to make the leap?
I spoke with some of our affiliate-turned-brand-owner clients and they emphasized not underestimating the importance of customer service for long-term success. As an affiliate you only care about the front-end sale, but as the product owner you have to handle fulfillment, customer inquiries, refunds, etc.
Don't skimp on important partnerships for things like customer support, fulfillment tracking, testimonial videos, etc. Make the customer experience top-notch so people become repeat buyers.
Also don't expect overnight success as a brand owner. Keep running your affiliate business until your offers gain traction. Don't abandon what's currently making you money to start from zero. You can still be an affiliate on the side even when your brand takes off.
The transition involves a learning curve, but if you follow the blueprint, focus on your strengths, and partner with experts in the areas you lack experience, you can absolutely build a highly profitable brand while maintaining control over the entire process. The potential upside is tremendous.
Managing the transition: From an affiliate to a brand owner
As you start your brand-building journey, Iman offers one final piece of advice: Don’t abandon your affiliate business too soon. Launching a successful brand takes time, and it's important to maintain a stable income stream during the transition. Continue running your affiliate campaigns in the background as you develop your brand. This will provide financial security and allow you to reinvest profits into your new business. As your brand gains traction and proves its scalability, you can gradually shift more focus and resources towards it.
Remember, building a profitable brand is a marathon, not a sprint. Stay patient, persistent, and committed to serving your customers, and success will follow.
Conclusion
Transitioning from affiliate to brand owner can be an exciting and rewarding path for affiliates who are ready to take their business to the next level. By following Iman's 5-step blueprint and focusing on the 5 Ps of product, promotion, partners, pitch, and profit, you can successfully navigate this journey and build a thriving direct-to-consumer brand.
The key is to leverage your existing skills and assets as an affiliate while surrounding yourself with expert partners who can support your growth. Stay customer-centric, data-driven, and open to continuous optimization, and you'll be well on your way to joining the ranks of top e-commerce brands.
The affiliate marketing community is filled with generous entrepreneurs who have taken this path and seen tremendous success.
Reach out to them in affiliate marlering forums and chatgroups and they will always give you more tips and advice like Iman has done as well as connect you with the resources you need to succeed.
