How I Won the NAMS Affiliate Contest

During the weekend of August 20-22 I won the NAMS affiliate contest in Atlanta. In addition to the money I earned for recommending 69 people to the MyNAMS membership site, event founder David Perdew awarded me a Toshiba laptop computer. Because I had already won another laptop computer and an iPad 2 earlier that weekend, I chose to take five hundred dollars in cash instead. As of today I have now made 100 sales, and David just announced another contest for the month of September.

If you were at the event you know that I took the microphone on Sunday and described exactly what I did in order to win the contest. If you’re a member of the MyNAMS membership site the PDF of my detailed marketing plan is available to you as a download.

The first thing I did was to make the decision to promote this membership site. This starting point is often overlooked, but it is the most important decision you will ever make when you are an affiliate marketer. I allow myself less than 30 seconds to decide whether the program is right for my people, based on a few things:

• Have I or will I be willing to spend money on
  this myself?
• Will it benefit all of us in what we are working
  to accomplish?
• Is the timing right, based on other promotions
  we are currently involved in?

Once I make that decision, I jump in wholeheartedly, whether there is a contest or not.

First, I hand-crafted some business cards. This meant that I printed my name and affiliate link on a piece of notebook paper. I cut up my ‘cards’ into little strips so I ended up with about 20 of them. During that first day, Friday, I gave them out to the people who had come to the event through my link, as well as to those I knew or had met that day. I asked them to please join the member’s site through my link, and told them I would be offering a bonus to those who did. Bonuses are an important part of the affiliate marketing process.

I was away from home during this weekend promotion, so I had to use what I had in order to start making sales. My computer that I use to make videos was at home, so I went over to Cinch.fm and recorded a short audio instead of a video. Then I sent out the first email to let my list know what was happening.

My next stop was on Facebook. I had already posted a few pictures about where I was and what I was doing at the event, so it made sense for me to tell everyone about the new member’s site. This is an important part of all this; let your community know where you are and what you’re doing as your story unfolds. Storytelling is an integral part of the process of building a business.

I decided to set a goal for myself as to how many people I could get to join this group over the weekend. I decided that 55 was perfect, because we had roughly 55 hours to promote. That meant that I wanted 20 people to sign up before I went to sleep on Friday night. This is because people are always more excited when they are getting in on something from the very beginning.

As it turned out, the excitement grew over the weekend. I offered a bonus to those signing up – one full month in my membership program – and that made a huge difference.

Throughout the weekend I sent a total of three emails to my list, spent some time on Facebook and Twitter, and kept a positive attitude about what I was doing. As the event progressed I was even more glad I had made the decision to recommend this to the people who trust me to guide them as they build their online business. I hope you’ll trust me as well and come aboard for NAMS. Be sure to use the coupon code MYNAMS85 when you sign up.