The (Very Much) Overlooked Reason How Pat Flynn Makes Money With Digital Products

We all know Pat Flynn makes money with digital products- mainly through affiliate marketing. He even tells us on his website. Usually in the vein of:

• promote something you are passionate about
• write good content
• intertwine affiliate links throughout the text
• someone clicks on it...and buys, you get a commission from that sale
• repeat

But if you follow that pattern you will find that it doesn't always work out. You even friendly copy the same text...still doesn't work.

Pat Flynn makes money with digital products through Love Me marketing

This is his first website (SmartPassiveIncome.com) and the start of the monthly reports which show:

1. Ebook started in Oct 2008
2. SmartPI started on Oct 2008
3. Ebook Sales: 309 Copies - $7126.91
4. Google Adsense: $596.31
5. Private Advertising (pro-rated): $183.33

That is very quick for an ebook that has just been released. So when you have a look, Pat actually funnels traffic to the ebook through PayPerClick (which in 2008 is cheap). So the $7126/91 is not profit? 

Also Google Adsense in September was $485...which again is a very large jump.

So where was the Adsense being generated from? Seems like eHow. So Pat creates quite a few articles and then gets paid a percentage of the Adsense revenue generated from those articles. 2 articles promoted on SmartPI (linking directly to the eHow website) are:

• How to Get Rock Hard Abs Using Ankle Weights
• How to Blog Surf to Increase Traffic to Your Website or Blog

These are higher generating Adsense income topics.

So Pat then creates a digital product. He wrote an ebook for architects on how to study and pass their main qualifying exam- in 2008. That is how it all started. However the website that it was hosted upon was full of content specifically for that niche group. Nothing was off topic. It also gave you the following:

• told you to bookmark the page
• to contact the author whenever you wanted
• what to study
• post a comment
• "sharethis"
• print the page
• gave links to other websites- showing where to find content
  
• donate
  
• tips and tricks on top of the content
• promoting the website as "Think of this website as one HUGE LEED AP Exam Study Group"

Guess where all the pages went to? An ebook.

The ebook was a walkthrough. But the sales page had all the elements of a good sales page:

• testimonials
• pictures
• free relevant bonuses with their cost
• why is the price so low

The price? $29.95 (with scratched out previous price). And sales going through e-junkie.

Even this (coupled with his blog posts) we can see the following:

• some trust....look-at-everything-laid-out-for-you-to-review type of discussion
• willing to help
• I want to give you stuff, not asking for anything in return. Oh that ebook? It will help but I'm not promoting it much. But you see all the cool stuff on the website- what could the ebook be like?
  

I am just like you

It is very hard for someone online to state to someone, what you are doing is wrong, trust me, here is a better way.

People are always skeptical.

That is why if anyone is trying to sell something they will try their hardest to get down and be like you. So these are the most common words you might see:

• was bankrupt now I have a million dollar business
• I do my work in bed
• I have a job but do this successful business on the side
• I earn $10k/month

The last one is always a common figure because people have been searching for that.

Anyway. What Pat Flynn does when he makes money with his digital products is to frame the whole experience in help mode- which he does really well. In his early years he says "I am not a millionaire but I make a living from passive income". You are more than likely to:

• trust in someone who shows off his family (including pictures) 
• the whole "open" business disclosures
• how they actually sold something
• read their diary

It makes them more human and relatable. As humans we band together with relatable people and if someone opens themselves up then we trust them more because, we are the same, we are not infallible.

This worked really well with...ProActiv (the anti-acne regime). When celebrities showed you their skin blemishes viewers were shocked but more importantly they grew more fond of that celeb. That celeb was like them, going through the same issues. Sure the products worked, but the main success was "Love Me marketing".

Pat moves on to other digital products

Affiliate marketing now comes into play. You start to promote the products that you use or you can put your name behind. So BlueHost is a frequent promotional tool because it is also residual- pays a percentage as long as someone stays with the program. Email programs are also quite helpful.

But why?

Because the chances of someone coming away from these two platforms are low. If you spent time and money creating a website then (unless the host is really bad) you are going to stick around for a while. Same with email.

But what we have seen is that the ebook promotion starts to reduce and the affiliate section starts to increase. The SmartPI website is increased.

So now we are invested with Pat. We like him (he is just like us) and now what Pat shows us we give that product some trust.

But remember this trust has been long time in the making. It started in 2008 and Pat has to keep that trust level high. The more open he is with projects the more likely we are to trust Pat. It is a perpetual machine.

Now we have PatFlynn.com which is his main site, nicely removed from SmartPI. He has built up a nice newsletter and subscriber list and his books go to best sellers (which is also another trust factor). So you promote the book to your targeted lists and it goes to the top of the XY or Z charts.

Throw in some:

• Courses
• Seminars
• Speaking engagement
• A conference
  

Now you have income that was initially generated not from digital products as such, but from a "love me marketing" approach.

Check out FoodTruckr, one of Pat Flynns startups which he then sold- it shows how he did it and how it could make more money.

We wish Pat all the best. Want to know more digital marketing and product strategies, check out the blog.

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