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Doug Bouton
So good, so good, so good. Give big, save big with Rack Friday deals at Nordstrom Rack. For a limited time, take an extra 40% off red tag clearance for everyone on your list. All sales final and restrictions apply. So bring your gift list and your wish list to your nearest Nordstrom rack today. Do you have a funnel?
Russell Brunson
But it's not converting? The problem 99.9% of the time is that your funnel is good, but. But you suck at selling. If you want to learn how to sell so your funnels will actually convert.
Doug Bouton
Then get a ticket to my next.
Russell Brunson
Selling online event by going to sellingonline.com podcast. That's sellingonline.com podcast. What's up, everyone? This is Russell Brunson. Welcome back to the show. Okay, as you guys know, we're on the march down to the Bootstrapped Secrets podcast coming soon. And in the interim, I'm gonna share with you guys some really cool presentations that you'd had to pay a lot of money to hear in the past. And this is gonna be kinda the last time I'd probably do this for a while. And so I'm excited to share some cool sessions with you over the next couple weeks. But right now what I wanna share with you guys is actually from my friend Doug Bouton. Doug's someone who came to our world, I think he took the one funnel away challenge and he learned a bunch of stuff, then became an affiliate and became one of our top affiliates. And then he's done tons and tons of really cool things with us. But at the last event, we did an event when we launched our platform called OfferLab, and he gave a really cool presentation that, you know, I think sometimes you guys hear me talk and I'm like, Russell talking a million miles an hour doing the whole Russell thing. And Doug comes in much more calm and relaxed and like, and his presentations just hit differently. Like they're very, very good. So he's gonna walk you guys through creating an affiliate ecosystem and how to, like, how to turn affiliate marketing into like your full time business and career and things like that. And the stuff he's teaching guys is gonna be really, really powerful for you. So that's kind of game plans. I wanted to introduce you guys to Doug and have him share some stuff for any of you guys who e. If you are an affiliate, you want to be an affiliate, you want to add affiliate income, you want to add that to the side of your business, then stuff you learn from Doug in this presentation I think can change your life. So that said, I'M going to pass it over to Mr. Doug Bouton.
Doug Bouton
This is the Russell Brunson show. I'm so excited to be up here talking about one of the topics I don't get a chance to talk about enough. It's something I do. I don't want to say part time, but it's really, at this point there's a lot of things up front, but it's something that has continued to pay very well years and years later after the fact. So that's kind of cool, right? My goal from one of the early on goals was to build an affiliate income stream that can surpass my monthly expenses. And I live in California, so it's not cheap and I've been able to do it with this model. So who here, Anyone here promote other things besides your own offers and build affiliate streams through that? Yeah, hopefully we've got more hands up by the end of this presentation because I'm telling you, it is one of my favorite income streams. So today we're gonna talk about the affiliate ecosystem. Three ways to leverage affiliate marketing. To drive more traffic, shorten your sales cycles. That's taking a stranger to a customer or client in less time. Everyone wants more of that, I'm sure. And increase sales for your own offers. So of course I have my own offers now, but I'm going to show you some really cool things today that allowed me to leverage tools, resources, people's programs that I love, that I've got a lot of value from to drive more attention into my business and in my offers. So let's see if I could. There we go. So quick question. Who here wants to get more people like you're here at this event because you want to get more people to see your offers and make more sales. That's for everybody, right? That's what we're here for. That's what we're going to cover today. Yeah, Give me a yes, sir if that's you. I love it. So today I'm going to show three simple ways. Number one is going to be increasing your authority, credibility and status which helps you get more attention and more perceived value that people want to invest in your offers to get more visibility on your own offers and how to make more money without doing more work. Sometimes I feel like having my own programs and offers, it could be a lot going in to not only create and promote and market and then operations and sales and then fulfillment. What I love about affiliate is you promote and if it's a great product with great compensation, it pays you for A long, long time. Not just one time. And they fulfill it. So that's one of my favorite parts. And hopefully you guys will be inspired today to start doing that. But most people aren't doing this. So if you raise your hand, you're like, I'm not doing this. I'd imagine it's one of these reasons you don't believe it's possible. You're not sure how to. You think it competes with your current focus. And I get it. Stay focused. That's the mission right now. But. Or maybe it's too much work versus the payoff that you don't know if you're gonna get or not. So I totally understand that. So I got a question for you. If I can show you that it is possible for you, that you can do this with less work involved and use it to supercharge your own offers to get more people under your offers, that question is, can I get your commitment to go all in and do this? Give me a. Oh, yeah. All right, so this works. People ask me all the time. I sell, I work at a. I sell business owners, local business owners. I sell physical products. Can I do this? And absolutely. If you sell anything online, anything on this board here, you sell anything using the Internet, this will enhance everything that you're currently selling as your own offers. So my goal for today is to share behind the scenes of exactly what I'm doing to build a passive income stream that will grow exponentially for decades if you do it the right way, so that you can do the same. So I'm going to show you how I've done this, what I'm doing now. There's something really exciting coming up. You guys know what it is that I'm going all in on? Because I see for the very first time in a long time, probably ever since I've been in this space, this is like my legacy play. Like, I look at this like a retirement, and potentially an early one at that. So we'll talk about that at the end. And the cool thing is this, we're in it before the public knows about it. So some of you guys, again, know what that is. So by the way, if you guys don't know, my name is Doug Bouton, founder of Full Time Freedom. To me, Full Time Freedom isn't like not not working. I feel like as entrepreneurs, we're always going to want to do something for ourselves and our people that we meet, but it's doing the things that light you up most in your business so you can spend more time Doing what you love with the people you love most. And to me, if we're not building that, then what's the purpose? Right? So we're going to talk a little about full time freedom. And to me it's, it's what you see here on the screen. It's getting into rooms like this. I love being invited. I wish I show up to everything whether I'm speaking or not. And it's gotten some attention on what I'm doing. So for me it's staying true to that. If what I'm focused on isn't bringing me more time freedom to do these things, then you know, we got to question it because sometimes, like we'll set our goals to build a business and you'll build whatever you choose to. But is it in alignment to that, that ultimate goal of I'm sure you guys all want that time freedom, financial freedom, but it wasn't always like that. Six years ago, I was far from free. I was working as a restaurant server seven days a week on doubles, missing all the holidays celebr and had a massive student loan debt. It's actually what I'm grateful for now because it got me to start my online business. I'm like working multiple jobs is not working all the time. Like, what can I do? And I heard about this online money thing and I'm like, I'm in. Sign me up. But it took me seven years to get to this point where I actually was ready to clock out of that job. I was dabbling with a lot of things and I'm so grateful for clickfunnels and Russell and the team because I discovered the one funnel Away challenge and went through that three times. And then I was like, you know what, let me just promote this because what I've been trying to do isn't working for seven years. Something's gotta change. And it was something I knew about, I believed in, it was helpful for me. I loved that program, started promoting it and I made my first like real affiliate commissions online without my own offers, without an audience or, you know, I was just starting out and I didn't have much back then. I was actually negative when I quit my job in the bank. But I had five goals. I want to quit my job, pay off my student loan debt, earn a 2 comma club award, get in Russell's inner circle and speak on stage at Funnel Hawking live. And I was determined. And it was either that or go back and wait tables. And I'm like, I'm going up this way. So with what I'm going to show you today, I was able to go and grow my community. I started a community. I was scared to do that. Shout out to Christina. She's amazing at communities and love all the things that she spoke about today, including collabs. We're going to go deep on that. But through Wellness, Share was able to grow to 2,000 members of my community. And my email listed my first 2,000 members in less than two months. It was pretty cool. Within six months, paid off my student loan debt. And then over the years, it took me some more time to do these things, but I was able to accomplish all those goals again through what I'll be sharing today. And when I think about even today's income streams of selling my own offers, my favorite is affiliate. I mean, you can't go wrong. It's just about finding the right things. And today we're going to talk about probably the most right thing that I've found yet. So affiliate is the most freeing of my income streams. And the cool thing is, like, some of you guys didn't raise your hand that you don't promote things that you use and you love. And not only are you doing yourself a disservice, but your people, they want to know what you're using and what's helping them. Whether you're in the wealth industry, health or wellness relationships, there are things that have helped you in those areas and you could share that with them. And if they invest, you make a commission, sometimes reoccurring. So I'm gonna prove to you guys, you guys are already great affiliate marketers, so I guess all the time. But, Doug, won't this take away from what I'm currently focused on? I'm like, it could. It just depends on a few things. But if you do it the way we show you today, it actually will enhance what you're currently doing to get more attention in your offers and sometimes even convert people that weren't wanting to or willing to invest in you. And, well, yeah, I'm excited about that part. Causal. I'll share a quick story with you. But it's like this. I don't know if you guys ever remember Zol. I forget what they're even called, but like the little stock embop. Yeah. Rock em, sock em. I don't know why this image popped my head when I was thinking it's either affiliate or offer creation. I'm like, no, we can win together. I'm sorry. It's quite the opposite. In fact. This could be possibly the Missing piece that gets you next level in your business. Because when you do them together, it's the world's best free traffic source. So it's a collab fist bump. And this is like, this is what I imagine, bringing them together. So you're already a great affiliate and I'll prove it to you. I want you guys to think for like 20 seconds real quick. It's probably even faster than that. When was the last time you made a recommendation to somebody of something you bought or loved and had a great experience? Was it today? Was it yesterday? A restaurant in the area, something that you tried? We all do this all the time. And the next question is, did you get paid for it? Probably not, right? And that is what affiliate marketing is. We're already talking about things that we use and that we love, that we had great experiences with, but we can actually get compensated. So I did this yesterday. I'm like, hey, let's go to dinner. I went there for dinner last night, but it's so good. We're going back. If you guys have been to the Fork yet in Boise, amazing restaurant. I'll probably be back there again because, I don't know. You like something. Keep going for it. I know everyone's going for dinner tonight. Now just tell my venmo dougmountain.com you can send me a commission. But guess what? None of that competes with my business at all when I talk about these things you guys post on social media, maybe in your communities about things that you're excited about. In fact, your audience wants to know about them and they're going to find out from somebody else, and that person might earn a commission when they would have rather gone through your affiliate link. So, yeah, when you're making great recommendations, like some people think, well, if I'm promoting my offers, I can't talk about these things because then they're going to leave me forever. And it's like quite the opposite. I've noticed the people that use the tools and services I recommend not only invest more with me in my offers, but stick with me way longer. It's pretty cool. So, yeah, when you make recommendations of things that you have great experiences with, they're gonna end up trusting you more. And this happened just recently. I was on a call with a new client. I was on a call with all my clients, a group call, and there's a new member, and I'm like, oh, hey, nice to meet you. Tell us about how you came in. Where'd you come from? How'd you find me? Because I usually know about everyone. But she came in so fast I didn't get a chance to even review her onboarding form. And she goes, yeah, I signed up for OfferLab, loved the bonuses that you had, and I am here. I'm like, I don't even know how you found because this is a premium program. So I was like, that's cool. I don't know how she found the link and applied and all that, but I asked, how do you like, find out how long you've been on my list for? She said, I've been on your list for like three years. And I was just like, but you never came into any of my stuff ever. But it took one simple email about a promotion for Offer Lab. Loved the experience of the bonus delivery and was like, hey, if I like this, there must be a lot going on over here. So that's kind of an example of how someone could be in your ecosystem that might not have been ready to invest, but one simple tool or resource thing that you recommended and they like that experience. They might end up joining your programs and they want it. Most times your audience wants to know what you're doing, how you're doing. So make it the recommendation and they're going to find it anyway. Give you an example. Who here has been to Mastermind in Paradise? Ishkaray yeah, Amazing, right? Russell, I think you switched it up. I'm glad it's back there now. But I was there for one of the first ones and I remember I was there with my now wife, but at the time we were just dating and. And we walk by a wedding and I'm like, this is amazing. Like planted the seed. And because Russell's having this event there, he's like, if Russell loves this place, it must be a great venue. So that's an example of how you could inspire your people to utilize the things and resources that you are currently investing in. The downsides. I don't think Russell got a commission for this. So somebody owes Russell a lot of money, but you're already doing this. Think about the things and write them down if you can. What do you use? What do you love? Is there like a need that needs to be solved or probably needs to be solved for your customers? These could be softwares, tools. If you're in the health and wellness space. Maybe it's supplements and these like, I don't even know what you call it that you hold on to it and it tells you your BMI and all that. There's all these kind of things that you probably use that helps you in your health journey, your relationship journey or your business. And people want to know about it. And I'll talk about how to embed these things into your own offers. There's going to be three different ways we go into this. It's going to be, it'll come full circle at the end. What I do is I look for real products because like I told you earlier, seven years, I mean I was promoting like oxygen and a can at one point. Oxygen for energy it was called. I was promoting fidget spinners. I'm trying to do like physical products, you name it. And the reason why I wasn't successful in any of those things was because I wasn't following this acronym that I later like this is I need to find a real product. It is relatable to your audience. Is it in alignment to what they're currently doing? The earning potential? I promote a lot of things that had very poor compensation plans or poor executive teams that would change compensation plans overnight and I lose everything. So how is the earned potential alignment? That's like the brand, the product and also the people. Like when I found one funnel away challenge and started looking into Russell, I'm like, this team is solid. Like Russell's amazing. I was really excited about being a part of something that I knew not only could benefit me, but I could grow in that space. But longevity, that's a big one. Like I said, I've promoted things where it's like here one day, go on the next. And longevity is important, especially with affiliate marketing. I've done a lot of these one off campaigns where I'll, you know, someone see my name on top 10 leaderboard. I get approached like, hey, come promote our challenge we're doing next week. And it's hard for me to say no. Like I like opportunities, especially with big names in the industry where I could get more attention from promoting them. But they're, don't get me wrong, I do well with them and make some good revenue up front. But then after the launch there's nothing. So it's just something to consider. Is there long term potential? When we was at 2.0 launch, I still received commissions. That was like a few years ago. Still earning a lot of commissions. Every October I'm like, yes, October's here. Because that's when the launch was. And every year those renewals come in. So that's what I look for, that longevity in the tools, resources and things like that that have that reoccurring. But the best part, because I'm talking a lot about promoting other people's stuff. And you're like, I just want to run my webinars, sell my programs. I want more traffic, more sales. But affiliate marketing isn't just about you promoting other people's offers to your audience. It's about them promoting your offers. And I'm talking about the people and your people. And that's what gets really exciting. Anybody here have referral programs for your people? Yeah, it's gonna be a lot easier. I'm gonna tell you here in a little bit. But it's right. This is the affiliate ecosystem. So number one, other people's offers sell your offers. That's gonna be pretty cool, right? So if other people could sell your offers, like collaborators, everybody in this room could be a potential collaborator. So other people's offers, offers. So even when I am promoting a big launch, right, somebody in the industry that has my audience, I'm like, I need to get attention. I want to get their attention, I want to get their people's attention. I'm going to make some commissions and some relationships happening from promoting their stuff. But how does that actually end up selling my offers? We're going to dive in deep to that one. But also how do your offers sell other people's products that have benefited you without you having to blast emails, social media posts, and without having to feel distracted from your current focus? And I think this is like one of the most powerful things. Actually just logged in to make these slides like yesterday. I'm like, I've made that much from that product. Like I haven't sent an email or promote. Yeah, it's pretty cool. So I'll show you guys that. And number three, this is the exciting part, I think for most people in this room is like your customers, your clients promoting your offers. And if you already have this set up, there's a lot of problems. I've tried to launch an affiliate program. Even as an affiliate marketer, something I do outside of my full time offer creation business, it's been tough trying to launch an affiliate program, a referral program for my people, because there's just a lot of downsides that come along with it and those are all about to be wiped out. So we're gonna, I think you're like number three. So how this actually sells your offers by promoting other people's stuff, we're gonna go into this one first. So other people's offers, you could tap into waves of attention every time I've been invited to promote some kind of big launch, even like starting out ofa One Funnel Away challenge, I was literally no audience. This was before I started my commute, before I quit my job. It was October 2018, quit my job in November, started my community in January 2019. And one of the ways I was able to get all those people in was promoting the One Funnel Away challenge because there was a lot of attention on that offer when it launched. So I'm like, how can I support people in this? How can I go through the experience, share my notes, my takeaways and like, what are the problems it's creating and how can I, like, you know, fill that void or, you know, whatever it was. And for me it was like amazing program, but there's like thousand, two thousand people on live. So I'm like, I could go answer some questions of for people like earlier on, like me and we could like compare notes. So my first community was started as a one following way challenge, collaboration community really. And you guys saw what happened. Within two months, things really took off, but also borrowed credibility. So with One Funnel Away challenge, there was a top 10 contest and I would never have been like, I'm going for that. Because usually they're really quick launches and everyone with an existing audience will send out an email and like, there's no chance to get in the top 10. But with this one, it was six months. I'm like, okay, all these big names, they're going to send out emails, they're going to promote for a few weeks and then they're going to go back to what they're doing. And I'm like, I'm going to promote this every day. And I did for six months and finished at the top of the leaderboard. And with that, got in the room with Russell and his team for the first time and that was just like, this was the coolest thing for me. It's still cool to look back on those moments. But being in that room with the top 10 affiliates and meeting everybody, getting the photos at Russell, that brought me incredibly, some more authority to my audience, some status, you know, and like, that's why I think there's a lot of on tap potential behind backing these big launches. If you have these different people in your industry that you look up to and that maybe you've invested in. Of course the commissions are always cool, but it's not, I don't even think that's the main part of it. But yesterday we talked about increasing your Mac, your maximum allowable cost. This is amazing way to increase that and you can actually allow yourself to spend more to acquire customer by increasing it through affiliates and then turning your non buyers into customers. We talked about that earlier. I had a non buyer on my list. Three years was like, I don't want your stuff, Doug. And then changed their mind with a simple affiliate offer. And now I actually look back. One of the things I have a school community of my own, and it's about helping people with their own creation of their own communities. So obviously, school is an amazing affiliate stream for us. And I noticed that when I look at my client roster, this is crazy. I'm like, almost all of them started by signing up to school with my affiliate link. And I think about the time. I look at the time it took them to go from, like, new group members signing up to school to join. My program collapses. Time. It's unbelievable. And they may even return the favor. Right. I'm up here because Russell saw I'm keeping showing up. I'm always promoting his stuff. So they look out and they give me opportunities like this too. So the people that you do promote, you stay with it. There's a massive opportunity to get in front of audiences and win cool stuff. So some cool things that I've won. I want a car. That's awesome. Shout out to clickfunnels. Thank you, guys. Commissions. But more important, like, the stuff over the years, I think it's this, like, meeting amazing people, getting the rooms of people I never thought I could possibly meet. I got to go to a top 10 meetup with Dan Kennedy with their affiliates. Grant Cardone was a big one. I was like, I don't even know. Like, these guys are affiliated famous over here. I don't know what I'm doing over at Grant's house right now, but these are the cool things I look forward to. Maybe I'm a little competitive because anytime there's a top 10, I'm like, all right, buckle up. Let's go for it. But anyway, now that's other people's offers. So the main thing I want to highlight in that last one, other people's offers. Selling your own offers is that wave of attention when everybody's eyes are on the market and you could get even on a leaderboard or even, like, they have top 100. Sometimes people will see your name and they'll end up googling you or end up in your community or your email list so you don't have to, like, get top 10. But if you go harder than other people or do integration marketing like I do or collaborations, you can absolutely get into those Rooms. Now, this next one is your own offer. So how to get your own offers to silently sell other people's programs and offers. This is really cool. So email list segmentation. I'll show you guys that one a little bit more in depth because yeah, it's pretty neat. Lessons that recommend other people's offers. So these are lessons in your curriculum, like integrating that person's interview, guest expert session, or just saying in the video like, hey, this is how I learned a lot of this stuff. Check it out below. Community recommendations. So if you guys have online communities, one of the coolest ways to not go public. And if you feel like that's going to be distracting or confuse your audience, I don't believe it will. I know, like, most people won't even say see it. But yeah, putting it the pin post in your community, something like that. Bringing in guest experts and doing interview exchanges. Because like I said, like, I love interviewing people and saying, hey, you have something that could benefit my list that I do not teach. Come and share that with them. And then I'll put that inside of my community or, you know, course area with a button below to go to their stuff with their affiliate with their link that they gave me, which is my affiliate link, and then they return the favorite. And this is something I've been pretty poor at. Ask going for the ask, because I actually just like hosting. But I know that if I were to reach out to some of these people and say, hey, like, I want to be interviewed on your show and do this cool thing, want to do another jv, they're much more likely to be like, yeah, let's have been waiting for you to ask me. Like, because if you go first, I think that's like one of the best things you can do. So one of these ones I wanted to go a little bit more in depth on is the email list segmentation. Anybody here have stipulations to work with you? You have an application, you have a requirement. You don't just let anybody and everybody in, right? But people like your content, they like your ads, they see you, they follow you, even if it's not a great fit. And I noticed only about 7% of our audience is actually a fit for our premium program. So in a long time I took advice. One offer, one platform, one message until you hit seven figures. And I didn't look at creating a bunch of other stuff. So I stayed that path. So I had 93% of my audience that I had nothing that I could enroll them into, nothing I could give to them to help them get to where they need to be to join my program. So when I think about our email segmentation, it's going to be kind of small on the screen here. But the first question is, it's a school community called Community Creators Club. If you're joining, I'd imagine you have or want to create a community. So I asked them, hey, do a. You have school community, yes or no? And if they say no, what do you guys think I do? Anybody? Send them my affiliate link and give them all my bonuses to help them get set up on school. Question number two. This is where this is a new thing I did. It's basically segmenting your list into different parts of the journey. So, like, if you have those people at the top, those top, you know, 7% or whatever it is that are fit for your programs, what about the rest? So we ask what one best describes you, and it's, I'm an affiliate marketer or I want to create an affiliate revenue income stream, which I find a lot. Like, over half our community is that. Number two is I'm a creator having my own offers, but I'm starting at zero. The next one is, I'm a creator, but I'm under $100,000. Or I want to get over $100,000 per year. I'm making sales, but I want to make at least six figures a year. And then the last one is they're above $100,000 per year. Now when this happens, they go into our email list, and for the longest time, I just never looked back at it. It was like, they're all getting the same emails. I'm like, huh? They all have different needs, desires, they have pains they want to solve. Like, let's write welcome email sequences individually for all four. So now with the affiliate side, I bring them down that path to invite them to become an affiliate for our programs. But I also email them exciting things that are going on in the affiliate marketing world. And no one publicly on my socials or my list or even my community even know about it, unless if you're on that list. So that's how I'm able to stay focused in my lane on my own offers and programs, but still build a great affiliate revenue source. So how much, like, what percent would you think? Like, think about this. Write down, like, what percent of your audience are you not potentially serving or, you know, helping with these tools and resources that you could earn on? And it could potentially turn them into an ideal client over time. So that's something that's really helped our business over the last year. Integration marketing. This one surprised me. This is crazy. I forgot about it. Actually. Winning webinar is a course that I. It's actually a bonus and it's upselling one of my funnels. And below it, I don't know if you could read right below the video, but it's, hey, I learned a lot of this stuff from Russell and installing online event. And that's my affiliate link to go to his selling online event. And I just looked the other day, I'm like, wow, $24,000 in commissions from just putting an affiliate link below a video in a course. So it's like integration marketing. This is how your offers can sell other people's stuff that can support them. And it's not about, oh, they're gonna go to Russell and now they're gone forever. No, they come back like, yo, that was so good. What else do you have? It's a neat thing. So it's not this like scarcity thing. It's just a big. And it all works really well together. All right. Army of affiliates. Army of affiliates. This is about turning your customers and your clients and even your audience members into your biggest supporters and sending you a ton of traffic. And this is something I've done at a very. I could do better, I'll say that. But the problem is all these platforms I've tried create a whole. I almost have to hire a full time affiliate manager and like tax team to manage it. So it's really why I haven't gone all in on it. But I'm about to. And I'm so, so excited for this because they always ask, hey, Doug, I want to promote, I want to promote this. And I'm like, yeah, you technically can, but I don't push it because it's more work for me. So now army of affiliates. This is kind of cool. I'll give you my plans. And what I've tried in the past that didn't work and why it will work now is add a bonus to your offers. Like, who here gets the no money objection? Probably everybody you guys get. You talk to people that are like, I don't have enough money to invest in your programs now. Bonus is like, hey, well what if you can refer people into our programs and earn and pay for the program and some. And beyond that with our affiliate program. So that's a huge incentive as a fast action bonus. Incentivize customers to sell your offers and they already want to have a great experience. They're probably Already talking to it about to other people give them a good reason to pay out a commission and you can do contests and cool things like that. So why don't we do that? Why don't people do that? Well, the problem, this is what I'm talking about. Collaborations can be like herding cats. Anybody here ever run a summit, you got to get all these speakers and they got to send you their stuff and it's all yeah. So collaborations can be tough. But one off launches, there's no longevity there. And like I said, I've done launches and they go really well and then there's nothing after that. So still good. But I think there's, it could be a better way. Finding the right offers. So looking for the right offers as an affiliate marketer part like on the side thing, I usually look at my clients, I look at my peers in this room. I find out there's a need for my audience. But outside of that there's no real marketplace to go. They have like clickbank and these jvzoo things and I don't know to me, I don't know about you guys, but I look at those things and I'm just like, ah, it just feels man, it feels weird off to me. It's like, yeah. But anyway, what we're going to talk about here in a moment is like clickbank and jvzoo made for everyday creators. It's going to be really cool. So tons of offers that you could find that are in alignment with your space if you're in the make money online wellness relationships, all the things you could find these things to plug in and find good market matches for your people. Tracking and payout. There's a like that's the thing of why I stopped doing affiliate programs for my own business because I have to track everything. I'm getting a million support tickets like hey, did this get paid out? And I'm doing the payouts and even have a team member now I got to pay a full time salary person to come and handle that. Tax forms and they're asking for invoices if they're in other countries, all that stuff. So that's really I think the problems and maybe why some of you haven't gone all in on this model that we're sharing today. But the solution, if these problems could be solved for you, would you go all in on the strategies I shared with you today? Raise of hands. Yeah. Well, the solution is offer lab. So you guys already probably know that if you're in this room. But I'm Telling you, you know something before, like everyday creators do. And that's why it's going to be a really exciting time for us because not only can Read now leverage our products to sell other people's products and their products to sell our products, but we now everyday affiliates that are starting online. I bet you over half this platform will be affiliate marketers looking for great offers to promote. And when you put your offers on there, not only can they find your offers, but they'll buy your offers to check it out to make sure it's good. And then they're gonna promote it if they love it. And that is really the ultimate goal. So now, like for our own affiliates, we can say, hey, yep, here's your link. Sign up to Offer Lab. Here's what you do. Go and grab my funnel. Here's your link. And literally in minutes, they could be promoting. They don't have to create a bridge page. They don't have to do all this other stuff. They could just go after it. So I'm really, really pumped about that. And a lot of cool things like we're thinking about putting together. Like, I've given them my insights and of course, like, I'm not technically employed by them, but I'm like, whatever you guys need, I'm all in. Because I've been wanting something like this for a long time. So why this and how it solves? It's going to be more distribution and visibility on your offers. You guys all said, yeah, I want more eyes on my offers earlier. And that's the case. Like, you're going to have more people on this platform seeing your offers. I have a friend that just put a few courses on there. Already making sales the first day she put her courses on there. So more people seeing your offers. A marketplace of all the best offers. If you're looking to integrate some of their products into what you're doing. And then tracking, and I got to slow down for this one. Tracking support payouts handled by the platform. You don't do any of that. Yeah, if you guys have run affiliate programs, you know, that's like, that's why we don't do that stuff. So affiliates can find, buy, promote your offers. Like I said, this is exciting because even if you're like, I'm not sure if promoting Offer Lab is for me, like, I am definitely in on putting my offers there and get more people to see them. And I'm definitely in to, like, have more affiliates find my offers to promote my stuff. Like, those are cool. But I mean, I'VE done a lot of affiliate marketing campaigns, a lot of launches. And this is like, by far. I can't even. It's not even the same level. $500 commissions, someone starts a free offer lab account. Like, let's say if you guys are in the stream, you're a creator and you want a free account, you could go do that for free and put all your offer on there. But there's an opportunity to earn more potential revenue and get certification to learn how to use the platform better. And that's only $500 one time. Now that's $500 commission, 100% commission, $500. That goes to you for every person. So tap your neighbor like, hey, Are you on OfferLab yet? No, let's check it out. And if they get that account, $500 goes to you. But beyond that, this is what gets really exciting. This is what. Why I meant legacy play, like potential early retirement stuff, is for every creator that I'm bringing on the platform right now. I want to help them get the tools and resources and support and trainings to get their offers listed. Every time someone buys their offers from this, they find it or their referrals are promoting it. I'll make 1.5% on the processing fees for that. That doesn't sound like a lot, but you get a few dozen or a couple hundred. Or my case, I'm going for thousands of people on there doing that, and it pays out for the lifetime that they're on that platform and their products are selling. Like, I'm blown away. But there's an opportunity to also make that and get up to 4%. I'm not gonna get the technicalities of all this because to be honest, that's like Russell and the tech team's deal. But I just know, okay, if I do these things, I can make up to 4% long term. That's super exciting. And now the bonus. Who here wants to actually have or has a referral program? Like, you're like, I definitely want to get people promoting my offers right now. You probably don't want to manage them, you don't want to train them. This is a bonus. And this is really like, something. I've been kind of waiting for something for years now. Like, I'll do whatever you guys want me to do about affiliates. Like, I love training. I love teaching. Like, I told you when I came out here, I don't get to do this enough. I'm so focused on, like, the community side of things for my own programs, but I love affiliate Marketing, it's like my most freeing income source. So of course I want to help other people learning the things that I've figured out over the years. So the question is, what if I could personally train potentially you, but more importantly all of your affiliates who want to promote your offers, Would that be cool if I could train them for you and you don't have to worry about that. So starting next week, I'll be training weekly in the offer Lab community. So when you have customers, you have clients, you're like, hey, our affiliate is ready, your offer's on there. You just give them their link and say, hey, go join this community, join Doug's trainings and I'll show them and share with them all the things I've done over the years to become a top affiliate in many of these categories and support them for you. So that's something I personally am excited about doing and to help them get results and help you earn more revenue. So this is the Launch on the third. It is a few steps. Sign up to OfferLab. Most of you guys I imagine have already, but maybe you didn't understand the like extent of what this can be for you and how there's a lot of things in place to help you with this. So join the community. In the community, there's trainings. If you have a team member and you're like, I'm staying in my lane, put a team member on this, get them to start putting your offers on OfferLab immediately. Grab your affiliate link. How could you start integrating this? Who can you share it with? Even if you don't go all out to make this big campaign, can you have a segment of your list you could send it to? Are there people at events that you're going to, local businesses? Like I said, anyone who sells anything using the Internet could benefit from putting their offers on here and invite others. Invite them and then of course make sure you're adding your offers now beyond the launch. This is like I said, it's not just like this one off launch. This is going to be the first thing that I've seen that grows even more beyond the launch and that's continue to add your own offers. So every time you come up with a new offer, boom, distribution, go put it out there. I've been putting stuff on like Udemy and other places and gets pretty good traction. But instead of like me running ads to courses, they're buying it on the platform. I'm getting paid to generate leads. I look at this as being a similar situation but way better in my opinion. So continue adding your offers over time. Integration, marketing. How can you maybe segment your list and send your affiliates? Like, hey, like, if you're not quite where you need to be to join our programs, here's a link login. Here's how you create your affiliate link, and here's how you promote. Go learn from Doug and promote our stuff. I'm talking about them actually promoting your programs. Continuous feedback and optimization. This is something on the platform that they're hard at work at. And it's cool to see the feedback and the things people are looking for. And as time goes on, we're gonna make this one of the best communities. My goal is make this. I have a school community. I want my school school community be the top on school. And I'm like, you know what? Scratch that, Russell. This is going to be the number one school community on the platform. So it's going to be amazing community there to serve every single week and help people with all these areas. And then the earning potential that will go well beyond the launch. So by the way, who here's already signed up to OfferLab? Yeah. All right. The rest of you guys are not. Hands up. I assume you're on your computers. Going to offerlab.com signing up right now. Okay. All right, guys. It's hard to tell how long, how many slides I have and where this is going to go, but there's a chance to have takeaways and Q and A. And I love that there's time left over for that if you're able to. Usually I go way over. I'm like, chatty chat box. He's coming now. Okay.
Audience Member
So when I actually first saw this in Vegas, I was pretty excited about this because the original concept actually allowed even, like, airlines to partner with even, like, regions to create offer stacks for, like, vacation packages and all that stuff. But I understand that it's changed a little bit or there was a phase of changing where the actual stacking was kind of broken because of stripe. Has that been fixed? Or how have you guys resolved that?
Doug Bouton
Yeah, it's like, I'm so excited about all the things and I get a lot of support questions. And I'm like. To be honest, I don't. I'm not in that side of the things, but I. This is what I do know. Like, I see Sean, he's handling chat support. He's building out everything for the launch. So I know that they are committed to making sure that this is going to be the best possible solution. I've been in There for the last few days, I have a team member that wants to do this. I'm like, I need to learn this, make sure I know what to do. And as far as I've seen, I haven't had any issues of moving my things over. I think one of the things that we didn't talk about it is really a great process. But if you have anything on the integrations that aren't there, just know they're coming. But I was. Jason. I was talking to Jason from earlier. There's some cool ways. I didn't even know that we can connect and deliver our courses from school through webflows and things like that. As far as the payment processing, I'm not 100% sure on that. Yeah. So, yeah.
OfferLab Team Member
So is your question on how you stack? Like, so are you looking to create an offer stack, pull in all the different products from other sellers, and then you create your sales page?
Audience Member
And then that was the original concept.
OfferLab Team Member
So as of right now, it's not working that way. At least the way that I've been working in it. The way it works is somebody has an offer, they have a sales page for that offer. When they then create your funnel, you basically can pull in whichever sales page and then you put it to the next sales page, which is the next offer. So you're not necessarily pulling products into it, you're pulling offers into a sequence, if that makes sense.
Doug Bouton
Awesome. Any takeaways? I love to hear takeaway. If you have questions too, of course. But like I said, I'm definitely absent of the tech side of things. But yeah, feedback is all we're looking for it want to make this the best. So this sounds really cool. Just got a question. So I'll explain my scenario and let me know how this would work. So I have a coach that I work with and that coach has other coaching students. And those students are in the process of creating their own various offers.
Audience Member
Right.
Doug Bouton
So if I were to get an affiliate, my profile on OfferLab, give it to her. Right. And then she shares it with all our little minions. Does that flow upstream to me? Yes. Yep. So the question, I assume is a two tier question, right? Exactly. Yeah. So people get confused by this. It's just pyramid. No, no, it's not. We want to be incentivized as affiliate marketers. If I bring somebody in, I want to be incentivized to help you. In a lot of cases, that's not the case. So what happens is a lot of people fall off because their person or the people that are on the platform weren't helping them. So yeah, like, so let's say in this case I brought you in and you brought that person in. This is where you get the chance to go up to 4% because you get 1.5 and then it's 0.5 for that second. So I would have gotten that extra. That's how I get from 1.5 on all the processing fees from you, but also 0.5 from the work that they're doing. Pretty cool. So of course I want to show you how to get your offers on there. I want to make sure that you have the training and help her get their offers on there. Because the more offers on this platform, that's how it's going to win. Because there's more things that people can go and promote. There's more things that they could add to their funnels. I'm already starting to think about like joint ventures. Like I teach community and conversion events, but what about ads? I don't do any of that stuff. So now I could go into that marketplace and be like, okay, I got my, I got my front end. Let me go put this person's ad course on top of it. So that's. And I don't have to talk to that person. Sometimes you have to like ask for approval with a toggle and they'll approve you or not. Some people don't put that on. Some people do. But now without ever having a conversation and email exchanges and hey, where's your ad swipes and your stuff like that, I could just click add, boom, have my link and go and promote. So I think that's really cool. Yeah. So yeah, talk about people in your industry to clients I'm looking for. One of the things I want to have a fun thing with this launch is looking at my clients and audience and like how can we have a fun contest? Like what can I do to reward them for backing this and getting on the platform? Like number one, who can upload the most offers, who could get the most opt ins for the launch event? And what I'm considering doing is maybe this could be for more than one person. But hey, if you win this contest, I'm going to create my funnel, I'm going to put your offer on top of mine. It has to make sense. Of course, I think there's got to be some alignment and fluidity there, but there's a lot of cool things. And then like people that you've been wanting to do joint ventures with that didn't have a chance to now it's possible, so. Very cool. I don't know if I mentioned this earlier. Reoccurrings on there. Low ticket, high ticket. Really? There's going to be a lot more options available, too.
Russell Brunson
Yeah.
Doug Bouton
Did that answer your question, by the way? I went on a rant there. Okay, cool. Anybody else? Question? Takeaway? All right, I think that's my time then. Thank you guys so much.
Episode 98:
Doug Boughton: The Secret to Building Insanely Profitable Affiliate Marketing Ecosystems
Release Date: December 22, 2025
In this episode, Russell Brunson introduces Doug Boughton—a top affiliate and founder of Full Time Freedom—who shares his proven strategies for building a sustainable and lucrative affiliate marketing business. Doug’s calm, relatable style breaks down how entrepreneurs, creators, and business owners can integrate affiliate marketing into their businesses, grow authority, shorten sales cycles, and build “affiliate ecosystems” that continue to pay out for years. The session also unveils the role of OfferLab—the ClickFunnels marketplace solution aiming to revolutionize affiliate collaborations.
“It took me seven years to get to this point where I actually was ready to clock out of that job. I was dabbling with a lot of things and I'm so grateful for ClickFunnels and Russell...” (09:03)
Definition & Benefits:
Common Barriers:
“If what I'm focused on isn't bringing me more time freedom to do these things, then you know, we got to question it. Because sometimes... you'll build whatever you choose to. But is it in alignment to that ultimate goal of... time freedom, financial freedom?” (13:54)
“Not only are you doing yourself a disservice, but your people, they want to know what you're using and what's helping them.” (15:57)
Ride Waves of Attention:
Real World Example:
“I finished at the top of the leaderboard. And with that, got in the room with Russell… that brought me more authority to my audience...” (25:15)
“$24,000 in commissions from just putting an affiliate link below a video in a course...they come back like, 'Yo, that was so good. What else do you have?'” (33:20)
“If I could personally train potentially you, but more importantly all of your affiliates who want to promote your offers, would that be cool?... I'll be training weekly in the OfferLab community.” (43:48)
On Affiliate Marketing Potential:
“Affiliate is the most freeing of my income streams… Not only are you doing yourself a disservice, but your people, they want to know what you're using and what's helping them.” —Doug Boughton (10:59, 15:57)
On Borrowed Credibility:
“Being in that room with the top 10 affiliates and meeting everybody, getting the photos at Russell, that brought me incredibly, some more authority to my audience, some status...” —Doug Boughton (25:15)
On Integration Marketing:
“$24,000 in commissions from just putting an affiliate link below a video in a course...” —Doug Boughton (33:20)
On OfferLab as Solution:
“More distribution and visibility on your offers… a marketplace of all the best offers. Tracking support payouts handled by the platform. You don't do any of that.” —Doug Boughton (40:43)
On Community and Freedom:
“Full Time Freedom isn't like not not working... it's doing the things that light you up most in your business so you can spend more time doing what you love with the people you love most.” —Doug Boughton (10:30)
Stay subscribed for more out-of-the-box, actionable marketing wisdom from Russell Brunson and industry leaders.