How A Blog Theme Made Over $90,000 In Its First Month – With Josh Mullineaux
on May 8, 2009 - 7:05 AM PSTOne of the biggest challenges for online businesses is getting users to pull out their credit cards and actually pay for something. When I heard that Josh Mullineaux launched a digital product that brought in over $90,000 its first month, I asked him to teach how he did it so you can copy his methods.
His product is a Affiliate Theme, a WordPress theme that makes it very easy for affiliates to create quick web sites that generate revenue.
The video excerpt:
About Josh Mullineaux:
Josh is the co-founder and Director of Marketing of Unique Blog Designs. His company recently launched Affiliate Theme.
Excerpts of how Josh’s company made $90,000:
They used their email list
We have about 7,000 people on our email list. Not a huge list, but it’s very, very targeted. Those are people who are coming to our web site and are interested, specifically in things that we have to say. The conversion that we have on that list is so high compared to marketing with other people.
They partnered up
We got free promotion from affiliate networks. We know a lot of people who started affiliate companies, and we asked them, “What are your people looking for? What are the problems in actually getting new affiliates to start making money?”
And they’re like, “making effective web sites.”
We basically made the product for their people, people who are technically savvy, but can’t build a web site.
They courted top affiliates
We basically co-developed the theme with them. And we set a launch date with them. Then we gave them a really high affiliate commission. A lot of our affiliates brought in a considerable amount of money, they were able to make a lot of money themselves.
They turned customers into sellers
As a customer, you get 50% of the revenue we earn from any person who purchases the affiliate theme through you. You not only use the theme, but you can also market the theme itself. If you like it you can market it to your friends and whoever else is reading your site and get 50%.
The full program includes:
- How to build a profitable blog.
- How Affiliate Theme became profitable.
- Why email is still so powerful.
[This interview was suggested by Neil Patel.]
Suggestions for your comments:
- Is email still the biggest driver in your company?
- How would you use Josh’s technique’s in your company?
- What did I miss in this summary or the full program?
- I struggled a bit with the audio. Is it clear enough?
The full program
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May 8th, 2009 at 12:14 pm
Honestly can't say that the changes in the audio mattered too much to me. I usually listen while I'm working and as long as it's audible, I ignore the rest.
Very cool – especially when you figure that if you can convince 4 other people to buy it from you that it'll be free. That's probably one of the best motivators to drive adoption that he glossed over. By giving people the power to use it, and have it get updated but also essentially allow it to be free if they get enough other people to buy it from them is genius.
It's MLM without the MLM and it's real.
I'll have to look and see if it would work with my site but if so, I just might make my purchase this weekend.
May 8th, 2009 at 4:01 pm
Another great interview Andrew! No problem with audio, your part was a bit lower than Josh's but I was still able to hear it without problems.
You talked about monetizing your blog in one of the former videos… why not include an affiliate link to the Affiliate Theme in the article here? Perfect opportunity.
May 8th, 2009 at 5:24 pm
Thanks.
If you do get the theme, please let people here know what you think.
May 8th, 2009 at 5:27 pm
Thanks Marko!
Running an affiliate link doesn't help me get closer to my mission. I need
to keep improving the quality of my programs and then bring a bigger
audience for them. Affiliate revenue doesn't help me get there.
May 9th, 2009 at 2:28 pm
Great interview. I learned a lot about affiliate. I love how you, Andrew, really get the interviewee to clarify in the simplest possible terms, what they are saying for those that maybe aren't 100% familiar with the key topics. It really helps, please keep doing that!
I would be curious to know how affiliates are using his product. Their success stories, or not. What in the climate of affiliate marketing made this so useful right now and will this product be generating revenue in a year from now?
Too many questions? :)
May 11th, 2009 at 8:50 am
LOVING the new design! Speaking to UBD seems very timely. Love it.
re. your design: Like the big name draw interviews at the top (even though I prefer the more tactical interviews). Like the uservoice feedback permanent fixture. Love it that your email list capture is more prominent. Like the clean right col and digg/retweeting.. Am sure people will stay longer and repeat visit more. It FEELS goood dude. Nice.
May 11th, 2009 at 12:09 pm
Thanks Jim.
1. I need to keep reminding myself to clarify terms. Because of the delay
with Skype, it's hard to interject and add an explanation, but I need to
keep doing it.
2. I'll ask Josh for some success stories. It'll be good to see examples of
how people are using his theme. Let's see what he says.
May 11th, 2009 at 12:09 pm
Thanks. It's still not finished, so feedback like this is helpful Paolo.
Adarsh is incredible. He was working on this till 3:40 this morning.
May 17th, 2009 at 12:32 am
Good show overall. As suggestions for podcasts “Mott, link it up!”. Gary Vee is good at including links talked about in his shows on the page so it isn't hard to find the sites or specific pages that were brought up in the talk.
Keep the great working coming Andrew.
May 17th, 2009 at 6:51 pm
I don't have a Mott yet.
Thanks. Love your domain, BTW.
June 11th, 2009 at 6:22 pm
I replay this interview several times.. it really inspired me. I'm curious on how Josh persuade top bloggers (in initial stage of their business) to let them design their blog theme? There must be some kind of connection in order to gain top bloggers trust..
June 12th, 2009 at 9:38 am
Another great interview! I'm glad Josh brought up the point about blogs being “squished” by certain browsers. This problem is HUGE. I was looking at all the sites on my laptop and also on my desktop and got very different results. Even John Chow's site dropped the entire left column on my laptop. Whilst somepeople might say (and they'd probably be right) that I should just adjust my browser width/resolution, if you're marketing outside the tech community you need to make it very easy for people. If this is just a matter of a bit of code I don't understand why it's still happening on the professional sites. Could Josh comment on whether “Affiliate Theme” fixes this issue?
Also, should people take different approaches with written blogs vs. video blogs? Or does the form of content not really make any difference?
One suggestion, could you include links to all the sites mentioned in the discussion below the video somewhere so when your audience is listening / watching they can click on the links and pull up the sites. I didn't have an issue when you spelt out the links but couldn't find “zac johnson” until I saw him on the Affiliate Theme site.
Great interview… Keep up the excellent work!
June 12th, 2009 at 4:38 pm
Another great interview! I'm glad Josh brought up the point about blogs being “squished” by certain browsers. This problem is HUGE. I was looking at all the sites on my laptop and also on my desktop and got very different results. Even John Chow's site dropped the entire left column on my laptop. Whilst somepeople might say (and they'd probably be right) that I should just adjust my browser width/resolution, if you're marketing outside the tech community you need to make it very easy for people. If this is just a matter of a bit of code I don't understand why it's still happening on the professional sites. Could Josh comment on whether “Affiliate Theme” fixes this issue?
Also, should people take different approaches with written blogs vs. video blogs? Or does the form of content not really make any difference?
One suggestion, could you include links to all the sites mentioned in the discussion below the video somewhere so when your audience is listening / watching they can click on the links and pull up the sites. I didn't have an issue when you spelt out the links but couldn't find “zac johnson” until I saw him on the Affiliate Theme site.
Great interview… Keep up the excellent work!