Ben: Hey everybody! Welcome to Hack That Funnel Radio. Thanks for being here today! We have a special interview with one of the best affiliate marketers in the ClickFunnels community and other communities around. Today’s episode is something really, really cool. We’ve got somebody on who has made $1 million as a ClickFunnels affiliate. Now he’s promoted click funnels, he’s promoted an active campaign, he runs a lot of different products, but he’s made $1 million in that. And so I want to introduce him to you. His name is Spencer Mecham. Ben: Why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself? Why did you even get started in this marketing game? Like a lot of people are in the game and they’d been going for forever and they’re not making any money. What got you started and then what turned you on to affiliate? Spencer: Ah, yes. I have a great email sequence that explains all this. I’ve written down this story so I don’t forget it. It all began in Hawaii. Me and my wife were huge Hawaii fans. We love to go there as often and as long as possible. At one point when I was in college, we moved there for, for probably six months. We actually moved in with her parents because they were living there for six months at the time too. It was like this random, crazy thing. They were like, Hey, we’ve got an extra room. And we were like, ah, it’s amazing. We’ve got two extra bodies that can fit in that room. And so we moved in and the goal was to move in and then I’ll get a job and we’ll kind of go from there and then we’ll move out after a month or something. But it was the hardest thing on planet earth to get a job. I’ve never had an issue getting a job, you know, it was crazy. I’d go in and I’d go to apply it like every, like the lowest, most menial tasks I could possibly find anything and nothing. I couldn’t get one interview the whole time I was there. So it was this crazy hard, for a variety of reasons. And so I can actually remember sitting at home and I’m as bummed as can be. I’m like, I can’t even get a job like working as a grocery bagger, I can’t get it down to anywhere. And that’s why I started searching. That’s when like I started searching everywhere online, how do you make money, not in physical locations. And so the first way I made money on my own was- have you ever heard of Mechanical Turks? No? So Amazon has this little teeny thing where entrepreneurs like us go out and they have like these really menial tasks, like crazy, menial. They’ll say like, Hey, I’ll pay you a penny each time you like go into this data sheet and like, you know, select these things and do this. I’ll give you one penny. Right? And you’ll just do it over and over and over and over again. And by the penny you’re making money. And so I was, I can’t remember all the tasks I was doing, what they were seriously like 10 cent, 30 cent, 50 cent tasks where I like take surveys, things like that. So that’s what I was doing because I had nothing else to do. Everybody else was at school or work. My wife was interning at the local preschool. So just me home alone, sitting on the computer, feeling bad. I said, Hey, at least I’m making money. I did that for three weeks. I’m just like, I’m making like 80 bucks a week doing and I’m working, I’m doing stuff once a week much for like five hours a day on your computer, clicking. I also realized I had zero skills to bring to the table though as well. So anyway, I did that for a while and that kind of brought me into the mindset of, okay, now I’m going to Google. Like, how do I make more than like 7 cents an hour online, you know, and eventually I get into the stock market. That leads me to the stock market for a year and the stock market is the way I’m going to make money. I start losing a bunch of money there. That led me into- okay, the real estate business is for me, you know, real estate is how you make money. Not! I’m still terrible at real estate. And I’m like, we’re trying it for years. The hardest part. And then I didn’t give up but I wasn’t making enough money to live either. So I get a job in an SEO agency and this is where affiliate marketing comes in. This coworker, he shows me one day while we’re doing SEO for clients, you know, and he’s like, hey, check out what I’ve been doing. He’s goes this website. He’s made the reviews, vacuum cleaners- it’s like Kirby and the dust bunny or you know, whatever it is. He’s got this site and he’s like, I made $10,000 last month. And seriously, if you go look at this website, it’s literally the ugliest thing you’ve ever seen. Like nineties, it’s ugly. I don’t know where he even got the designs for this, but… so I’m looking at it like, there’s no way. There’s no way I could do worse than this mess and 10 grand a month. And so that was when I was like, I’m going to do affiliate marketing. I’m going to do better than him! And then kind of the rest is history. So then multiple years of me like trying and failing in the affiliate marketing world happened. And then maybe two and a half years ago, things started to slowly click right at that point, I finally have like marketing skills. I’ve spent years building marketing skills and buying courses and trying things and failing. And I started to see little successes and hone in and focus on those little successes. And now I’m a little more successful. So when I got into affiliate marketing, I was like my first sale that I made online. I spent three grand and I made a year or $297 or $197 you spend three grand to be an affiliate and then I spent three grand on Solo ads. Okay, so you made some money, but I was like, I can not do that again. So that was the pain point now where you are where you are in the affiliate marketing world where you ask, what’s the biggest mistake that you see people trying to do when they start to do affiliate marketing? Are they all trying to throw money at the issue or they all trying to vote wrong? Are they not getting less? What’s the biggest issue that I think they’re not setting up their business and that they need this. You need a system in place before you send traffic to anything and, and not just as an affiliate, right? That’s true for everything. And you need more than just a pitch like, Hey, I’ve got a product, I’m going to throw some traffic towards it. Right. Which is what not only affiliates do, but like most small business owners do the same thing. So I said, I’m selling this and I’m gonna run some ads to it because I’ve got a product, but you need a system, you don’t need a product, you need a system, right? A system of multiple products and a system of multiple channels and avenues of reaching audiences and stuff. And so what I see is most people not setting up a funnel, they’re setting up like single pages. They’re not setting up email automation, they’re not setting up retargeting. They’re starting on the front end and, and sending traffic instead of starting on the back end and saying- okay, I’m going to get a few products, 5 to 10 products I want to promote. And at the same in the non affiliate marketing goal, right? It’s called a “value ladder” and I’m going to get some products and then I’m going to create this some, some version of a funnel where I can capture lead information and then send them on to start selling them. And then I’m going to create an email automation that increases my profits. And once that back end’s in place, then you can go over and say, okay, now I’m going to start throwing as much traffic as possible because I’ve got my system in place and I don’t have to focus on that anymore. I can just focus on traffic and know that like, hey, you know, every bit of traffic that I get, I’ve set up everything to really maximize how much money can be made off that traffic. Now some ads you might have not made much money anyway, but that is the biggest problem. You know, affiliates right now. That makes sense. Cause I built it out and I built a list that I could email once a day and I could do that, but I didn’t have, I have like slightly automated sequence for that launch. I didn’t have anything after that. Like I didn’t know what I was going to do with that. Like I built lists, I’m pretty sure I built like a full list of maybe 10,000 people, which doesn’t sound hugely. This is from my personal visits or my personal is like I just haven’t go that big list I built, I built a big list. But because of like the fact that I don’t email people often like email is dead when it comes into my hands. It’s not the emails that are dead. I suck at email! So I have a thousand people left who kind of listen. That’s so funny cause I that, that now that you’re saying that, it reminded me, that was my first mistake that I made as an affiliate to I, I created a youtube channel that I got lucky in like a couple of videos exploded. I quickly threw in like a random little like thing that pops up, you know, and the youtube video, it’s like, Hey, I’m on this random thing. Then I didn’t have anything in place and I have a list. So that’s still sitting there. The channel is still bringing in traffic. My list is like 2000 people that are sitting in a MailChimp list and they’ve never once received a single email from me because I didn’t have it done ahead of time. And like you said, I’m just, I got too much going on and maybe I’m just too lazy, I don’t know. But to sit there and send them emails every two days or whatever, like I’m just not good at that. Where if I had sat down for like one day and built out a 10 or 15 email sequence that sold them stuff, that’s probably a couple, at least a couple thousand dollars, you know, a months worth of income that could have gone in just by me building that one day sequence. I don’t know. That would’ve been really helpful. And that’s the issue. Like I didn’t, I heard all the things and I had it in my head. But then once you get to that point where like, okay, now I got to start, you don’t, there’s no like, so you have your, your, your course like you built, you built your affiliate business. At what point did you state I need to build my own stuff? Was it like in conjunction with as bonuses? Was it like why, why did you start building your own stuff? My own stuff as in my, like my own list or what do you mean, like my own course or like your own course where you actually started to, yeah. I mean, you start to get this, there’s always in the back of your head is an affiliate. But like what could go wrong here, you know, and isn’t affiliate anything go wrong. Your traffic’s coming from Youtube. Youtube can shut you down if you’re affiliate, you know, you’re number one program is, um, program a or click falls or whatever. They could shut you down or they could sell the company. Or like, there’s a million things that can happen, right? The only thing you really own is that list. And that list is only gonna really respond positively to you if you’ve built that a lot more than just a list, right? If you build out some kind of brand and like they know you and like you’ve, you know, you’ve personalized yourself or your business with these people to where they’re more than a list to you and you’re more than just some guy emailing them every once in a while to them, right? You are a brand that they follow and believe in. So at what point did I decide that? I couldn’t really say like, it’s all been very transitional, you know, the way it is that everybody, like you do this, you see some success and then you kinda just look around like I do like, what’s next? You know? And, and somewhere along the way I was like, well, what’s next is I got to stop relying on other people and try this myself. You know? And so, um, I, you start to see a little success. It really is. Your road just kind of starts to happen, I think as an entrepreneur, right? Like it kind of builds itself one brick at a time in front of you as you’re growing, you know, you see a little success and that kind of opens up some new doors and you just follow it and take the best route as you go. And that’s kind of how it’s been for me. So you literally, you don’t see the whole path, you’re just taking steps and be like, okay, where’s the next door? And you’re just going through all the open doors that open up that are best for you. You’re not like, there’s not some main master plan, just like just take action and it works out. And so I think there always is some kind of master plan in my head, but that’s just never, but then it just changes everything. Weak in my end is always something like, oh, you know, two years from now I’ll be doing this. But like even like 18 months from now, the idea of like being a course creator was never once in my head. I was like, I want to take courses, I want to sell affiliate products, you know, and now here I am like half of what I do is all based around creating courses and selling courses and things like that. And I mean same thing with affiliate marketing, you know I was like I want to be in the stock market. That’s real passive income. And then I find it really marketing starts to work. Like we’ll obviously go all in on a, like you lost three grand in the stock market, you made 10 in affiliate marketing, who cares what you want? Like take that road, you know? Right. Yup. But you had to test all those roads to figure it out and they’re like everyone’s testing all these things. So you’re figuring it out. When was the point where you realized this wasn’t just a fad or easy money? Like this is where you were going to build the foundation. This is where like this is what was going to work and this is how you’re going to set junior family free. Cause like you love the lifestyle, the lifestyle or going back to Hawaii, we’re going to, we’re going to, you know, run an English. So like when did you get to that point where you’re like, we’re at that point, let’s go take a vacation. My big first success, a lot of people might know this, that are listening might not, was the ClickFunnels, uh, dream car. That was like my big first affiliate success. I’d have like a bunch of small ones up until then. But as the background of that, once you get a hundred active ClickFunnels users that have signed up under your link as an affiliate, you get a free car. And so I was at like 20 or 30 when it was like, when it, when it finally dawned on me- oh, I could, this could be real, right? I could actually win this car! Like in the beginning, it’s just kinda like this you’re not really thinking it’s going to happen when you try, but I don’t know. Once you actually start to see success, you think it could happen. And so somewhere around there, I think it’s going to happen. And that’s when I talked to my wife and we actually set up all these plans. I was like, when I hit a hundred, we’re going to go do this. And I think it was Hawaii and I said, when I make my first six contracts, we’re going to go to Europe. And we still haven’t done that yet, but it’s still on the promise. It’s still being planned, I still owe it, so it’s gotta happen. I do think it’s really important to set timelines and goals and things like that, right? Of like, like your goal can’t be all just to make seven figures and retire, right? Like, that can be your long term goal, but, but if that’s like your one goal, then you’re going to fizzle out. So you’ve got to set those little, those little mini goals of like, I’m going to get to 50 and then I’m going to take my family to this place and we’re gonna spend a few days and it’s going to be awesome. You know, and then after that we’ll set up another goal that’s like, it’s close enough that I can see it, you know, and see it coming in the next few months or a year or whatever. So a couple of months ago, I can’t even remember when I went through and I like hacked everything that you’d ever done on all the Facebook, all the, all the pages and all the ads. I think everything was a blast. Ben: The biggest key components that makes up all of this work for you is your ecosystem. It’s you got Facebook going, you got youtube going, you’ve got your emails going, like you have this symbiotic ecosystem that’s going. Is that part of like the back system that you need to build before you start doing things that we have multiple communication channels so people actually want to listen to you? Or is that, does that not as necessary? Spencer: I think not necessarily, like if you’re, if you think you’re going to build your whole eco system in the beginning, then you’re just going to overwhelm yourself and like you’re trying to like trying to put content in your Facebook group, set up a continent youtube channel, and you just can’t fill it on. You fizzle out. Right? Cause especially most, most people at that point are still at a job, right? They don’t have five hours to create content. So, um, I think you’d start with one. Like I very much started with youtube and that’s all I did for awhile. Right. And then once, once you feel comfortable and systemized in one, then you can add another. So I, I was crushing it. Like once I got through I was like, I know youtube really well. I’ve got a system for putting out youtube videos consistently. Then I added a Facebook group. Well there were no email automation, so let, maybe I’ll go back. Yes, you should build your, you know, automation from the beginning. The first thing you should have an email automation. The way I recommend doing it is building a weeks worth of emails and then adding to your automation every couple of days, just throwing in one marina at the end of it. Um, but then yeah, then you’ll add the youtube or whatever it is for you. And then you’ll add like a Facebook group. And the Nice thing about each one you add is it’s actually much easier each time you add something because you’ve already got content and it’s just a matter of figuring out how you’re going to take that content and reapply it. So I’ve got this channel, I put up this 10 minute video or whatever. Well that’s great. Now I can hop into my youtube, my Facebook group and make a post and like five minutes. I’ve already got the whole outline and everything how it’s going to work for me. I just added the blog. We added our blog like six months ago. We started going all into our blog. Well that’s great. That’s so easy, right? We are already making youtube videos that are like searchable and 10 minutes long and are answering questions. Let’s just add a blog post. So I like that system mimic makes sense because I’m one of those. When I take action, I take a massive amount of action. I’m like, okay, we’re going to build a whole ecosystem. I like doing it all like I know we’re going to go in, let’s dive it like there’s no reason to jump into the kid pool and I have to get out of it to get to the big kid. Cool. And so I’m just like, let’s just throw it in. So I’m, so that makes sense. Going step by step and it does get easier. That’s good to know. When we’re at funnel hacking live, people were walking around and wanting to take a picture with you wanting to get a golden nugget from. And it was weird, right? I was walking with you cause like at that point we become friends to some degree and we were just talking, I’ll take it. And so like we were talking and walking and people would stop me and you’d be like, oh my gosh. Like it was still shocking at one point. When did that happen? And do you think you’ll ever really get used to it? Like it’s a weird phenomenon. When did it happen? The first time that had ever happened and the last time then would have, because I’ve only been to one eight. I’m only in that one tiny circle. Ben: Last question is if you had to answer, like if you had this poor starving kid who was like, I need to make money this month, like what is the fastest route to making money that you would suggest? Would it be owning the affiliate product, whether it be creating your YouTube channel? What, like what is the path that you’d be like, oh, just hop on this path and see it ‘til the end. Just push for the next 30 days. Spencer: I love YouTube, but I love YouTube because it’s passive, not fast. Um, it’d be, I would say it’s Facebook. Like when I look at Facebook’s, the way Facebook is built, anybody can make money in 30 days on Facebook, just through their own personal profile. So like whenever people ask me like I need money now and then we kind of cut out most if we cut out affiliate marketing because the things I teach, cause those are all to not make money now they’re to retire in five years. Right. I would say get on Facebook. Choose your niche, go join 20 groups, go make 5,000 friends. Right? So Facebook is built Facebook hands you an audience of 5,000 people just without that, like without you having to do anything except for like click, add, add, add. Right? And like half the people who have no idea who you are still like okay, um… and then they need to know who you are at that point, right? Like so then you can’t just like, but my crap, you know like who is this? I always say like build that out, go out a ton of friends, go join a ton of groups and then go post and then go post crazy like start consistently posting on your own profile and on these groups if made tons of tons of times a day like to where your name comes to their mind every time that subject is brought up. Like socially, if I was trying to sell my affiliate marketing course right that way I would post five posts a day about affiliate marketing, engaging posts on my Facebook page. I would post in these groups. I go respond to people’s questions in these groups. Right? I’d be like very, very active for I guess if you need to make money in 30 days, I’d be active for 15 days. Right? They’ll take 15 days to where people are like, oh, I know this guy. He’s like, but yeah right. He’s always talking and like posting himself. Um, and then you start doing these little offers, right, where you’re posting lead magnets and then, well, I would say if you need money now, client offers, right? Hey, I’m taking on five people, I’m going to build your funnel. I’m going to set up your ads, you know, something for 500 bucks. And literally, anybody can do that. Like anybody, you can learn a skill in 15 days, that can be enough and you can build your audience in 15 days if you are desperate enough and willing to do that. So the fastest way to hack profits isn’t necessarily to go and create a massive system. It’s just to go and work like a dog and Facebook. If you need speed, yeah. I’d say hop on a Facebook work like a dog. There are so many people willing to hire on Facebook and looking right. And if you could spend 500 bucks, that’s nothing to a lot of these business owners. And while it may feel like a lot to you and, and honestly you just need to be a little ahead of them, right? Like go learn email marketing, go take a course on you to be any on marketing. Go take a course on AdWords. 90% of people I talked to are totally clueless on AdWords, but every single one of them, their business could benefit from it. You could go take an AdWords course in three days and you know, AdWords and you can go grab five clients. 500 bucks a month is, is tiny to a lot of these businesses. So yeah, that’s how I do it. Ben: Nice. Thank you. I think you got a cool thing going. It’s like the funnel hacking thing. Like I don’t know how well it’s doing in terms of audience, butbut I think you’ve got a cool idea. Like I keep telling my like I don’t, because I don’t, honestly, I don’t watch any content ever and like I’m terrible at that. But I keep seeing you alive. Spencer: I want to go in and watch like what this guy’s business looks like right from me and like get a good idea. But then I forget and I don’t, because I seriously don’t ever watch anybody’s content, which that’s all the conversation, but I think you’ve got a good thing I think should build up. I like the same strategy, right? Get 5,000 followers in the dozen friends and the click funnels group and then just start posting like, hey, we went inside this guy’s business today. You know, let me know if you want access and then do those stupid ladder posts and you’ll get, you’ll explode and then go do lives like in other people’s groups. And the funny thing is I’ve been reaching out for interviews because I did those lives for the other, for another business. I’m like, this is funnel hacks because I did those people like, you still doing that cause you do that, my group, like, could you give value to mine? I’m like, yeah, I’ve thought I wasn’t gonna be able to even reach out to you. We’re desperate for, for anything. The youtube video that’s coming out. And so I talked about group owners are desperate, like it’s so hard to like keep pumping out value for these guys. And so interviews as the easiest way. So I would do that. And then all you really need is some is a small lead magnet, right? Like start building your audience. Um, and then, and then for you, like you can just publish your content. You don’t even need an automation in the beginning. You can just can’t email out the content that you’re creating. So yeah, I would say make, make a crick, make a lead man. You probably have like 40 lead magnets. Ben: Just start capturing. Yes sir. I will go live in groups and start posting on your own Facebook. Maybe you do a lot. I don’t really know. I can do a lot more. Yeah, I, I’m pretty bad honestly. Like I think my Facebook group is awesome, but I like just hate Facebook. So what I did, and this might take too long now at this point, I’ve created a list of, in my Facebook friends, I have a list of all of the entrepreneurial ones, like my original like 500 friends that I actually care about that are like living around here. And then that’s on a list called entrepreneurs. And when I post, I exclude regular friends and just do my entrepreneurs do, can you do a youtube video about that and pump Thompson up on, on Youtube? Yes. Like that is, that is attractive because everybody’s afraid of being businessy on their, on their Facebook page. Ben: And I was talking to Josh 40 and he was like, yeah, you need to delete everybody who is in not your family and friends. And I’m like, that’s painful. But he said, go meet everybody that’s not your family and friends that are your family and friends and dope devoted business. Yeah. I hate when people recommend. Yeah. That drives me nuts. And so I, because like, I’ll even like, I’m ready to do it, but at the time I’m like, I feel like I’m tearing off the bandaid. Yeah. Well, I mean, I don’t know, to me like to me that takes an approach of like, the only thing I care about on planet earth is making money and building my business. And if you’re a friend of mine, I don’t care. I’m deleting, you know, like I want my face or pages just to make money. I got to know that’s what it says to me. Ben: So that’s what I did. And it works. It works pretty well. Um, cause yeah, I hate, I, well it would work pretty well if I posted a lot. I never post, but oh, back when I did post, that’s how I did it. I did that a lot in the beginning. Like when I was selling my course, I posted in Facebook groups, you know, I posted screenshots and uh, and I’m just so glad that doesn’t happen anymore. But everyone kind of does that and beginning all right. That’s why I’m getting people all the time. So you’re a crypto guy. Ben: So, um, we’re going to ask two more questions. And this is all post the interview. So what we’re gonna do is we’re going to shut this down here. If you want to go in and see these next two questions, but I need you to do is go to hack that funnel, radio.com when you sign up, you’re automatically going to get my master’s pack that teaches you how to hack, but we’re also throwing in the last few questions of every interview, so go ahead and go and often there, I’ll get you these two questions from Spencer. I want to thank you for being on and if you have not done it yet, go sign up. I’m going to go make these answers. So juicy. Good, so sign up. Spencer Mecham: Nothing. Was that cool or was that cool? Guys, I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did, but I actually do something very, very special. After the interview is done, I actually record two more questions. Those two questions spark a whole new conversation and I record those and I’m happy to give you access to that. All you have to do is go to hack that funnel, radio.com when you enter your email address there. I will automatically give you access to every single interviews, two extra questions in the conversation that sparks off of that. Go to hack that funnel. radio.com Ben: yeah, your access now.
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