AP 0693: If I Want to Link to Other Web Shops, Do I Need to Work with Those Sites?

AskPat 693 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: What up everybody? Pat Flynn here and welcome to Episode 693 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me today. As always, I'm here to help you by answering your online business questions five days a week.

We have a great question today from somebody who didn't leave their name, didn't leave their email address so I'm sorry I can't send you a t-shirt. But if you listen to this and it's your question and we can match your voice and do all that great stuff we can figure it out and we can get you a t-shirt. And I don't know, maybe you just didn't want to get your name read and that's okay. So here's today's question from anonymous.

Anonymous: Hi, I have a question for you. I'm about to start a website where I can link people to other web shops to buy interior design, interior stuff. And I want to know if I can…Do I have to involve the web shop for a program download or how does it works?

Pat Flynn: Hey what's up anonymous. This is actually a pretty cool question. There's a number of different ways to do this. You could do it in a way similar to what I do. I do a lot of affiliate marketing so I'll link to another site and I join their referral program, or affiliate program, or partnership program; those are all essentially the same thing. And that gives me a special link to their website, or a specific product on their website and if somebody clicks on that link on my site and makes a purchase I get a cut of that sale. And that works out really well.

I've actually made quite a bit of money through affiliate marketing and I think it's a severely underused strategy in the online world. And I've done a number of different episodes about affiliate marketing and how to do that properly. But the number one tip I can give is: if you're gonna do affiliate marketing, treat that product as if it were your own. You know, you may be referencing other people's products or other companies and that's great. But the more you can do reviews about those products, show videos of those products, and actually become apart of it's story the better. So keep that in mind.

Now there's other sites that, you know you reminded me of a site for example called Houzz.com. I used this site quite a bit when I was looking for stuff to put in my new home a few years back. Houzz is a great site, I would highly recommend you all check it out, super helpful. Obviously a very, very large website that has connected to a number of different companies.

And what this site does, it's actually like a search engine for people looking for stuff to put in their homes, or examples of setups for homes. Interior, exterior, décor, and all that sort of stuff. The cool thing about it is I can search, and I can search for nightstands or coffee tables and it'll show me all these different kinds. And I can favorite them, I can like them, I can share them but each of them is also for sale on different company's websites that have been able to post and link up with an account on Houzz.

Now that's all done in a very technical way and it can be very, very intimidating if you were to look at a site like that and be like, “Whoa, I have to compete with this?” Well, what I would recommend is you get very specialized at first and try to pick a sub-niche within that space that you're getting into and try to connect with companies specifically about that particular item. And they don't have to necessarily sign up for your website and enter information into a database.

I mean, you can connect with them and work out specific offers in many different kinds of ways. Like I said earlier, affiliate marketing could work, you could be given a special discount code that can then be put into their websites after clicking through to be able to keep track. There's a number of different ways to do it. But the more that…The one thing I would recommend though, and just kind of make sure you do, is that you make this useful for your audience; the people who are looking and searching for these things. That's the best thing about Houzz is I go there knowing that I'm looking for stuff that I need and I'm searching through it like a search engine.

And you can do the same thing with your site, even in that sub-niche. You can show people specifically things that they are looking for. And the more useful you can be, the more likely they are to click through. And the other thing I would say, is look at other sites, like Houzz that are in your space, whatever space it's gonna be. And see if you can find ways that their working with their companies too. And those are actually great companies to start with, in terms of reaching out to. And you can say, “Hey, I know that you're here and you're hooked up on these websites. I have a website dedicated to this kind of product. I'd love to feature your products there too. Could we work out a similar deal?” And you can go from there.

So Anonymous, thank you so much for your question. And I hope I get to hear from you at some point in the future cause you deserve a shirt. Because, everybody whose question gets featured here on the show gets a t-shirt. And so, we'll just keep this one in the bank until later. But until next episode thank you so much for listening in. I appreciate it and please keep asking your questions.

And here's a quote to finish off the day by Arianna Huffington. She says, and I truly love this quote, she says, “Fearlessness is not the absence of fear, it's the mastery of fear.” It's about getting up one more time when we fall down. If you always get up one more time, you're always gonna keep going. That last part was me. Anyway, thanks guys. Appreciate you and I look forward to serving you in the next episode of AskPat. Bye.