In the age of online courses, many people want to create a digital product by teaching something in which they have skills. Without understanding marketing and the internet, these people end up resorting to co-production with an affiliate manager, launch agency or marketing specialist. Is it worth it?
In fact, marketing is the soul of the business; a person can take a wonderful and perfect course, but if they don't have marketing, they won't be able to sell it. If a person understands marketing, they can sell courses even about defecating.
What about Affiliate Managers? Marketing Managers? Companies that help in the production of courses? Or people who help with co-production? Is it worth getting involved with such people, often mercenaries?
What is a Coproduction at Hotmart?
On online course platforms such as Hotmart, you can create a product together and share the commission within the platform, with total security and without having to break the contract or personal disagreements with the team.
The co-production tool allows people to create a product together without tripping each other. You choose different types of commissioning for the people who helped you produce a certain product.
Generally co-productions are made between a group responsible for the course and another for the website, content, marketing and advertisements. The fairest percentage in these co-production of pairs is 50% of the profits earned, excluding the percentage of affiliates.
How can a Coproduction be useful?
I consider myself a content genius, I have a website that receives more than 500,000 monthly visits, but I don't have the ability to make a product for my niche, because I hate cameras, I can't speak, let alone teach.
I already tried co-production with my friend who has studied a lot about marketing and who is not ashamed of the cameras, besides being great with words. Even so, I had no results, probably due to the type of product and the marketing used.
The advantage of a co-production is that you will work less than doing everything yourself. My friend takes care of one thing, I take care of another, both honestly sharing commissions at Hotmart or another similar platform.
A co-production allows you to separate your company's tasks in conjunction with other marketing companies, launch agencies, and traffic specialists. The question is whether you will have more advantages or more disadvantages with this.
How can a Marketing Manager help?
Suppose you are a musician and want to teach students to play a certain instrument. You buy equipment to record the video lessons, but when it comes to joining Hotmart, you don't really know what to do.
The Marketing Manager or Production Manager helps you in all these parts of the online, knows how to invest correctly in ads like Facebook ADS or Google ADS, in addition to understanding creatives, copy and other triggers for sales.
If you are barely able to access Hotmart, due to lack of experience with computers, really an affiliate manager may be necessary if you want to have results, you just need to be prepared to give a good share of your profits.
Watch out for release agencies
The launch agencies are increasing more and more. These are companies specialized in the sale of digital products that take care of the structure, marketing, traffic, advertising, copy and sales of their product.
Usually they want 50% of the profits from sales, and these agencies really deserve it, because they get a lot more work than recording the course. The big problem is that many end up depending entirely on these agencies.
I know several products that I am affiliated with, when talking to the teachers of the course, I realize that they have no knowledge about Hotmart, its operation or even about affiliates.
This innocence can be expensive, I had a friend who had disagreements with one of these agencies that was stealing their profits and failing to do things correctly. For this reason, it is good to study the market you are entering.
Most of the time these release agencies use lies and offer terrible support. Most of the time, I refer to small agencies made up of 3 or less members, who look for innocents to create co-productions.
Traffic Managers x Affiliates
Most traffic managers or posting agencies close their doors to affiliates. They hinder the entire affiliation process, hotleads, funnel and other things that can benefit affiliates.
At first they open the door for affiliations, they expect the product to have a good return, then they start to close those doors, since they have gotten enough traffic to leverage the products. Affiliates always lose out because of these agencies' dishonesty.
Unfortunately, launch agencies and traffic managers close the door on the relationship between affiliates and producers. It is much better when you have direct contact with the producer and he understands what you are talking about.
Generally, affiliates can help much more than any traffic manager or agency, without eating a large share of their profit, and teaching the producer about things that managers and agencies will never talk about.
If you want something good, do it yourself!
If you don’t want to be disappointed and have issues in creating your product, it’s worth learning at least the basics about traffic, digital marketing, SEO, website, copy, and social media. Remember that the best marketing is content!
Co-production is good, but get to know the person or company in which you are going to create a product first. In this market the only thing that interests people is money. If not, you will simply be abandoned and thrown into limbo.
These companies are not interested in making you grow, but taking the slice of your money. Sometimes it takes more into account to invest in specialists separately instead of giving a large percentage of your commission.
There are traffic managers who still have the nerve to demand that you invest all your money in traffic, not knowing if it will have results or not. If you are going to co-produce, remember that both profit and investment must be equal.
That's why I suggest you study a little about digital marketing before you start creating products that could disappoint, wasting time and money. There are affordable and comprehensive courses like the FNO and derivatives of Alex Vargas.