The Affiliate Marketing Show – Ep. 67 – How to Launch a Successful Affiliate Program & More!

Josh Sebo (COO of OfferVault), Adam Young (CEO of Ringba), industry legend Harrison Gevirtz and special guest Lee-Ann …

• 0:03 | [Music] well you know people trip out about the feet yeah what’s up Leanne hi um hi
• 0:11 | Leanne are you wearing socks because our audience gets really upset if you’re not wearing socks I do have socks on I’ve
• 0:18 | got tie dye socks on which I can try and lift my leg high enough to show you but it would be really hard want to make
• 0:24 | that paper want to make that now this is the affiliate marketting
• 0:32 | [Music] what’s up everybody this is Josh coming to you with another episode of the
• 0:39 | affiliate marketing show please be sure to like follow And subscribe to stay up toate on all the latest affiliate
• 0:45 | marketing news tips and Trends per usual I’m Josh from offer vault.com the
• 0:51 | industry’s largest aggregator of all things affiliate marketing that includes affiliate networks direct advertisers
• 0:57 | affiliate offers their appro affiliate programs and advertising networks and more we got
• 1:03 | you covered in the affiliate game where your One-Stop shop a big shout out goes to our sponsor this week Max Bounty and
• 1:12 | at the request of my co-host last week today’s read will be in the style of a
• 1:18 | alien super affiliate visiting from outer space Sorry everyone it’s my bad all
• 1:26 | right here we go here we go greetings fellow Earthlings this is your extraterrestrial Ally hailing from the
• 1:32 | far reaches of the cosmos here to share a message from our Cosmic collaborators at Max bouny ah behold Max Bounty
• 1:40 | proudly marking two decades of dominance as the premier CPA Network across your planetary sphere 20 orbits around your
• 1:48 | sun and still shining brighter than a supernova imagine this Max Bounty the Trailblazer of the Stars soaring high as
• 1:56 | the first Network to ascend to the celestial throne red Numero Uno by both
• 2:01 | offeral and mink in the cosmic year of 2024 a feet unparalleled in your
• 2:08 | ter terrestrial history delve into the cosmic Realms of Max bounty’s top
• 2:14 | verticals where Financial Insurance market research and e-commerce converge like constellations in the galactic
• 2:21 | tapestry a universe of opportunity awaits those who dare to explore but wait there’s more our Cosmic overlords
• 2:28 | at Max Bounty have launched the celestial spectacle known as the beat your best promotion throughout the month
• 2:33 | of April Affiliates prepare your Cosmic vessels for each Improvement in your performance yields Celestial bonuses
• 2:41 | Beyond Your Wildest Dreams we’re almost done I promise and behold the cosmic Treasures bestowed upon Affiliates
• 2:47 | through Max bounties owned and operated campaigns Millions upon millions of credits transferred to the coffers of
• 2:54 | our esteemed Affiliates a testament to the boundless Riches of our Interstellar Partnerships so fellow beings of Earth
• 3:01 | heed the call of the cosmos join forces with Max Bounty where the boundaries of
• 3:07 | possibility are as vast as the universe itself together let us Journey to the
• 3:13 | stars and Beyond we also have Mr Paper call Adam Young as well as the industry
• 3:18 | Legend Harrison gvertz and our special guest today lean Johnstone founder of
• 3:25 | aviverse an agency media event and training business that helps Publishers Supply networks agencies and affiliate
• 3:32 | marketers connect learn and grow together she’s also the host of the affiliate marketing podcast not to be
• 3:39 | confused with the affiliate marketing show which you are currently watching but definitely check out her podcast
• 3:44 | she’s got great content on there as well as well as a future episode with yours truly coming out soon what’s up Leanne
• 3:51 | how we doing today hello hello hello this is an awesome introduction to a
• 3:56 | podcast probably the most awesome introduction to a podcast I’ve ever been on so thank you so much for having me on
• 4:02 | how did Josh do on your podcast Leanne like are you scrapping it let’s be real no he was he was super awesome there was
• 4:09 | some gems in there I think so I’m really looking forward to releasing that I think we jammed quite well yeah we
• 4:14 | jammed surprised too cuz honestly that space alien [ __ ] was probably the worst
• 4:20 | intro sponsor ever SE F ownership you know I’m a big advocate for
• 4:25 | accountability and I’m going to I’m going to take account I apologize to apologize to the listeners to you to
• 4:32 | Josh to Matt no the listeners at Max Bounty who finally I have a big update
• 4:38 | for the you know this is like a news graphic news sound effect I have been followed on Instagram for him he wanted
• 4:44 | me to give this to you Adam because you know you keep saying you won’t wear it no no I tried Matt so here’s the thing
• 4:52 | first person that’s a size medium that messages me on Instagram I will send this just 495 Shi
• 4:59 | I’m just kidding no shipping but anyone who wants this hoodie first person to message me it’s yours please be in
• 5:06 | America don’t crust me on sh on shipping but hold on a second here Matt also followed me on Instagram
• 5:13 | which now that he’s followed me I feel so personally whole um and so let me
• 5:19 | redo that intro like look here’s the deal Harrison and I have been in the industry for over 20 years we’ve been
• 5:24 | responsible for hundreds of millions of dollars of commissions in the affiliate space our software that we own tracks
• 5:31 | billions of dollars in the space and it’s kind of hard to find somebody in the industry that doesn’t do business
• 5:38 | with us or hasn’t done business with us and so a personal shout out goes to Max
• 5:44 | Bounty they’re an incredible company I know they’ve paid out hundreds of millions of dollars in commissions to
• 5:50 | Affiliates and so genuinely if I went back to affiliate marketing Matt maoy
• 5:56 | would be one of the first phone calls I would make he answers if he answ
• 6:02 | and I say that even though he doesn’t pay us enough money to get me to wear a hoodie so I mean that’s that’s a real
• 6:10 | personal review also shout out to our fans that hate that I don’t wear socks I’m going to put them on right now dude
• 6:18 | you gota do that with ringba socks next time I’m going to Pilates afterwards okay Josh I’m done harassing you we can
• 6:24 | move on all right lean now that we’ve gotten all the uh
• 6:30 | house cleaning you know the house cleaning done that’s a good way to put it yeah lean you’ve been
• 6:35 | doing a lot of stuff in this industry for a long time which I learned talking to you on your podcast and which I’d
• 6:42 | love for you to fill us in again and our viewers about um I think a really good
• 6:47 | question to start off with is one you provided me with and it’s uh how to launch a successful affiliate program
• 6:54 | for your business you know there’s so many businesses out there who are not yet in the affiliate space who I’m sure
• 7:01 | want to be they know about it they know how beneficial it can be to have a program like that set up so when you’re
• 7:07 | kind of a business who knows nothing about launching an affiliate program
• 7:13 | where are some of the first what are some of the first steps to take in order to do it the right way it’s a great
• 7:20 | question to start off with and thanks very much for asking it I think there is a lot of companies that aren’t
• 7:26 | leveraging the power of performance and affiliate marketing purely because they they don’t understand it because it’s kind of been a bit of a a club a secret
• 7:33 | club like you you kind of land into affiliate marketing by accident and then you start working in the industry and you start learning everything on the fly
• 7:40 | as you go along and nothing’s really actually written down in our space which is is part of the reason why I started
• 7:45 | apperse was just to collect information and collect um an understanding of what
• 7:50 | is actually happening in the affiliate marketing industry so I guess the first place to start is to actually look at
• 7:57 | where you are in your kind of business Journey because affiliate isn’t it’s not for the faint of heart um but it is for
• 8:04 | people that want to go deep and actually work with referring Partners to grow their sales and their revenue depending
• 8:09 | on what industry they’re in and there’s multiple different types of affiliate now so it gets kind of complex because
• 8:16 | you can you could be working with an influencer who is working on a performance basis you could be working
• 8:21 | on a a blogger who who’s writing content and reviews and pay them on a performance basis and you could be
• 8:28 | working with you know a PC affiliate or a paid media Advertiser is purchasing media and selling it you know selling it
• 8:34 | to you um at a marked up cost so it does become a little bit complex and the first thing that you need to ask
• 8:39 | yourself in my opinion is what is your why why do you actually want to enter
• 8:44 | into the affiliate space and what is it that you want all of these referring Partners to do for you um and once you
• 8:51 | figured that out and and you realize that you know you may be exhausting all of the channels that you have direct to
• 8:56 | Consumer and you want to actually start working with a multitude of just different Affiliates you maybe want to go into localized markets where you
• 9:03 | don’t have um expertise already and you can leverage Affiliates that are on the ground in those regions to start for you
• 9:09 | the next thing is to understand how to actually set up the affilia program because there are so many ways like in
• 9:16 | the old days you know you went to one of the big five networks you launched a program and that was pretty much it but
• 9:22 | now there’s hundreds of s Solutions hundreds of um networks that you can launch on Max Bounty being one of them
• 9:28 | um and lots and lots of different places where you can kind of house your affiliate program and so making sure
• 9:34 | that you’re finding the right fit from a technology perspective and also from access to Publishers and partners
• 9:40 | especially if you’re starting out um is really really important when you want to begin because otherwise you could be
• 9:46 | chaining your wheels you know doing you know all the wrong things taking a very long time to get going and many people
• 9:52 | spin out of it because they just don’t get it right because they don’t know how to do it so I guess three in three words
• 9:59 | all less cuz I don’t want to hop on too long it’s figure out your why what is it
• 10:04 | that attracts you to opening up an affiliate program and is now the right time to do it in your business find the right Tools in Tech and Partnerships to
• 10:10 | actually help you get leveraged and maybe ask an expert if you don’t really know how to start a a program properly
• 10:17 | because otherwise you could be spending a lot of money getting very little return and not actually doing a property
• 10:22 | it’s it’s really become a very skillful task to launch an affiliate program and actually get it running successfully for
• 10:28 | your business you know back in the day Leanne I had an e-commerce company this is over 15 years
• 10:35 | ago and I was an affiliate at the time as well but I had never run an affiliate
• 10:41 | program which is which is kind of interesting I I didn’t think it would be nearly as complicated as it was might
• 10:48 | have been about 18 years ago it was literally in my parents basement at the time and I just thought let me go to a
• 10:54 | couple networks I’ll go to link share uh rakuten’s link share at the time
• 11:00 | um with and start running and even back then the first thing that happened was
• 11:06 | the Affiliates that were referred into these programs tried to defraud my advertisement use gift cards to buy
• 11:14 | things um was was were coupon sites an issue at the time coupon sites were an
• 11:19 | issue even all the way back then and so like I think your advice is is fantastic
• 11:26 | and I think to add to it if the it’s in the budget hire someone who has already
• 11:32 | done or run an affiliate program because even as an affiliate at that point and
• 11:37 | i’ had been doing it I think for about two years I couldn’t see all the pitfalls of running a program like this
• 11:44 | and I know A lot’s changed over the years but still like if you’re going to invest in the software and working with
• 11:51 | the network and doing all these things to hire a professional to help you with it that already has experience will
• 11:57 | probably save someone more money and time than the actual cost of the
• 12:04 | professional I I’ll take the other side of that when I was a new affiliate um
• 12:09 | you know I can think of an I’ll give a real example there was a lead gen offer
• 12:14 | for time shares Costa Rica time shares and they were paying like
• 12:21 | $16 for like four fields of information and I apologize I took
• 12:28 | advantage of that and sent them garbage and it was you know I was 15
• 12:34 | years old but clearly this was someone that had a small operation selling time shares and learned about affiliate
• 12:41 | marketing and decided to buy leads but they had no rules no quality or
• 12:48 | parameters or kpis they just said we’re looking for traffic in the United States and I delivered that yeah open zero time
• 12:58 | shares I don’t even theyig out people on the phone and I was eventually kicked off the offer and stuff but simply put
• 13:04 | if they had worked with someone that had experience in building offers and kind of managing affiliate
• 13:09 | programs I would have never gotten paid or gotten my hands on the offer in the first place and that’s really what
• 13:16 | should have happened and I’m sure it happens with tons of e-commerce stores of course you know I think now like the
• 13:22 | large kind of like perale or e-commerce type affiliate networks and CJs of the world they do have some fraud protection
• 13:30 | measures and they do spend a lot of time verifying and vetting Affiliates so it’s like a little better but if you’re a
• 13:35 | brand new e-commerce store you know and you don’t have any online marketing background like you’re definitely
• 13:42 | putting yourself out there in a way that could be risky if you don’t know what you’re doing and it’s you know it’s
• 13:49 | there’s a lot of moving Parts I remember that offer you’re talking about I also ran it hell yeah I had like eight
• 13:56 | different affiliate networks yeah let tell you I mean Affiliates are some of the cleverest humans I’ve ever had the
• 14:02 | pleasure to meet and I’ve been working with them for 20 years okay and Affiliates run the internet like that
• 14:08 | that is the God’s honest truth like I went to um a show a couple of months ago and I met some incredibly wickedly smart
• 14:14 | people and I just thought you know my side of the fence where I’ve been curating and and um strategizing the
• 14:21 | management of these thousands of Affiliates in programs across multiple countries and you know different um GEOS
• 14:27 | and everything else like I know nothing compared to what these Affiliates do in a day and you know you have to be Savvy
• 14:35 | with your strategy and you have to know what that why is why are you working with these Partners what is it that you
• 14:41 | want them to bring and do for your business and you have to get really laser focused on what the kpis are
• 14:46 | because Affiliates can have multiple different like sources for you they can help you with brand reach they can get
• 14:52 | you into localized markets that can put you in front of customers that you can’t reach with your own brand advertising
• 14:59 | there’s so many different reasons why you should be running an affiliate program not to mention the fact that it’s cost efficient compared to many
• 15:05 | other um direct to Consumer acquisition channels but if you don’t have the strategy it’s like you know if you don’t
• 15:13 | know how to use if you don’t know how to drive a you know $2 million car you might as well be driving a jalopy
• 15:20 | because you can have the best car in the neighborhood and still not win the race if you don’t know how to drive um and
• 15:26 | that’s pretty much how I I kind of pull the strategy part of affiliate programs
• 15:31 | together well I see I I’ve learned over the years you know what to do not to do
• 15:36 | how the industry works all those things through experience like you said we’re just thrown into the mix I mean Harrison
• 15:42 | and I literally started as children in the industry like I was in my parents basement Michigan he was in his parents
• 15:49 | house in Santa Barbara and like no one was telling us what we can or cannot do
• 15:54 | we had no idea like how a lot of these things worked when we got started and so I think for the merchants perspective
• 16:01 | what they don’t do a good enough job of in almost all circumstances is clearly
• 16:07 | defining what is okay not okay what they’re looking for and what they’re
• 16:12 | looking for is the key what is something that we’ve done with Merchants when we’ve when we were marketers we’d say
• 16:19 | how do you make money yeah like how does this thing work what’s show me under the hood and sometimes they’d be like just
• 16:26 | just get us leads like we don’t want to tell you that we’re you know secretive you’re going to copy us whatever and and
• 16:32 | it would take us like multiple calls or dinners at trade shows like look we want
• 16:37 | this to work for the long run we’re not looking to you know Costa Rica like that you know Costa Rica and run a couple
• 16:44 | Grand of leads and get shut off like we want to run this for years how do you make money you know there were times
• 16:51 | actually where we we learned how people’s backend worked how they made money and we negotiated like a lower CPA
• 16:57 | but a REV share yeah so we had some upsides so now our interests are aligned
• 17:03 | and most advertisers they just get secretive about it they don’t want me to know that maybe they’re breaking even on
• 17:08 | the product they’re selling the consumer but they want renewals or there’s a you know like it’s a razor product and you
• 17:14 | got to get the razor in the future you know for shaving or whatever like they just don’t want to tell you but if if
• 17:19 | you’re a market if you’re an e-commerce Advertiser and you’re going to work with marketers give us some information it’ll
• 17:25 | really help the entire I hear you and the mind boggles
• 17:30 | cuz 20 years in we’re still having the same conversations about lack of transparency lack of you know like it it
• 17:36 | just like it’s like when are we going to grow up and learn and transparency is not only for the affiliate it’s for the advertiser Advertiser too I mean there’s
• 17:43 | still clients that we work with that don’t want to even allow like pixels to fire on the page that Affiliates can
• 17:49 | optimize campaigns I mean we’re like in the Dark Ages still but what what what the industry is going to realize is that
• 17:56 | it can’t do without Affiliates because they just simply
• 18:01 | can’t reach the masses like Affiliates can at the price point that they do and so as data becomes more transparent as
• 18:09 | transactions become more real time because there’s still programs that upload a day behind like in the gaming
• 18:15 | industry you’ve got like daily batch file uploads and stuff in paper call like I I don’t think
• 18:22 | paper calls your bag but we literally deal with customers that are coming to us and like we get our disposition two
• 18:29 | weeks later on phone calls and I’m like how do you tweak your marketing or deal with an issue two weeks or four weeks
• 18:36 | later it just doesn’t work they just eat it yeah they just eat it about how much more profitable those advertisers
• 18:42 | businesses would be if they had that data in real time you know the last time I this conversation is really
• 18:48 | interesting to me so uh the last time someone actually pitched Harrison and I
• 18:53 | on running traffic was after we founded ringba and Harrison and I don’t run
• 18:59 | traffic anymore we did for over a decade maybe close to 15 years and we were at
• 19:04 | affiliate Summit West and a guy who owns a concealed carry offer came up to us
• 19:10 | and described his offer the insurance guy I remember yeah the insurance guy Dan Dan Schiff God Rest his soul uh
• 19:16 | worked for us and introduced us he was friends and we didn’t really even want to have the conversation we weren’t
• 19:21 | really interested but he pitched us and I loved the product I loved the marketing around it um and then I came
• 19:28 | back to him and I said look I want to know every step of the way how your business functions how you quantify your
• 19:34 | LTV all of the details around your backend kpis he got really freaked out about this and then I said also we’re
• 19:42 | unwilling to run it unless you give us a REV share in perpetuity on the clients not an upfront CPA and The Advertiser
• 19:50 | was so adverse to what we were asking for he he was just like no I have down
• 19:56 | yeah I have Affiliates that are doing it on CPA going to go build a gun insurance offer like well even beyond that like he
• 20:04 | just didn’t want to give us a REV share and I said to him I said look if you don’t give us a REV share we’re not
• 20:09 | coming out of retirement the CPA wasn’t exciting no we wanted long-term money but also I’m older now I’m not a kid in
• 20:18 | my parents basement I’m turning 40 next week you know then I was probably
• 20:24 | 36 and I just said to the guy I was like look if you’re not willing to give us a REV share in purpose U it our interests
• 20:29 | are not aligned I don’t care about your business if it’s a CPA if it’s a REV share we hold all the risk and and we’ll
• 20:37 | never do anything we have to deliver yeah that’s a problem we have to deliver so if you want us to come do work which
• 20:43 | we haven’t done in years right like we own a software company and other businesses now like we’ll do it but we
• 20:49 | have to align those interests and The Advertiser wouldn’t do it and you know the crazy thing is is I think we could
• 20:55 | have probably run maybe $10 million a year worth of traffic on the off so can I tell you why that happens from my
• 21:01 | perspective because I’m on the other side of the coin I can tell you why that happens it’s because advertisers don’t see Affiliates as partners they see them
• 21:08 | as traffic suppliers A supplier you you you treat a supplier differently to how you treat a
• 21:16 | business partner true and if they changed that mindset and thought a little bit about well this Affiliates
• 21:23 | trying to invest upfront to promote my product whilst they are building their own business
• 21:29 | and they want to have regular income for a long period of time so they can hire staff Implement systems get better at
• 21:36 | what they do and all of that stuff’s going to help me if they just turned that mindset off of thinking of Partners
• 21:43 | as being suppliers and actually started treating them as business partners then
• 21:49 | that whole conversation would change it’s like you need to the the way that I think about it and how we run programs
• 21:54 | is we want Affiliates to be like an extension of our own Stu so when you start at a new job on a new day and you
• 22:02 | know you welcome into the company that first touch experience that you get as an employee with the nice little gift
• 22:07 | box on your desk going welcome to offer Vault or whatever company it is that you’re working on I just see offer vault in the in the screen here you know and
• 22:14 | there’s a nice lanyard and you’ve got a brand new computer and you’ve got all the information somebody buddies up with you for the day and they take you around
• 22:20 | the office and show you where the toilets are and the kitchen is and like it’s a really great experience you go wow I’m working for a great place
• 22:26 | imagine if you did that for your affiliates too yeah like it would totally change the starting point of the
• 22:33 | conversation instead of instead of having the conversations that Harrison mentioned which is like you know I need
• 22:38 | to know your LTB I need to have some data transparency you’re giving that all up front and going yes welcome welcome
• 22:44 | to our team Welcome to our club Welcome to our our comp you know extension of our staff compliment we want you to work
• 22:50 | as if you are a part of us and it’s the clients that have that attitude and I swear to God I’ve managed hundreds of
• 22:57 | affiliate programs in my 20 year history the clients that have that open embracing attitude and just want to do
• 23:03 | good work with none of the complicated like [ __ ] that comes with it and excuse me excuse my profanity but you
• 23:10 | said it was allowed it’s encourag oh please you know it just I can see the
• 23:15 | difference that it makes in even a short period of six months of managing their program where they are open to building
• 23:21 | relationships inviting Partners in collaborating so that the greater good can be met all within reason never with
• 23:28 | without any one party having more than the other part is willing to give like it’s never never an unfair Advantage
• 23:36 | there shouldn’t be an unfair advantage in a performance-based relationship um it just it makes such a huge difference
• 23:43 | and I think that’s a mindset that people need to think about if they’re listening to this podcast they need to really adjust their attitude I think well the
• 23:50 | reality is just like in business or in dating you always want the person that doesn’t need you and if want the best
• 23:59 | affiliate they don’t need you just like Harrison and I didn’t need the concealed carry thing right like we’re like we’re
• 24:06 | not thinking about that if you want our mind share we need to be your partner we need LTV and you’re right we would have
• 24:13 | probably put up 50 or $100,000 to kick off that campaign without breaking a sweat we would have
• 24:20 | cracked it we would have ran it but like you know if you want the affiliate that’s like hey I’m doing really well or
• 24:27 | I don’t need more Partners or you know like the people who can actually change the outcome of your business do not need
• 24:34 | you and I I think that’s something that people really need to internalize you
• 24:39 | know like we’re hiring at our software company ringba right now for a few roles and every single person for the roles
• 24:46 | that I’m personally recruiting for right now the ones we want don’t need us have
• 24:51 | no business coming and working for us right like I have to convince them on so
• 24:57 | many different levels like the best talent in the world has unlimited options unlimited opportunities and
• 25:03 | unlimited opportunities they don’t need to work for you and so in an affiliate
• 25:09 | perspective like if you want the best Affiliates who communicate well who aren’t shady who do a great job and do
• 25:15 | all the leg work and put up all the money you have to incentivize them in such a way that is better than what
• 25:21 | they’re currently working on um and those are the real relationships that you you want to find and so I mean I I’m
• 25:29 | grateful that you’re out there pushing this type of mindset but for merchants
• 25:34 | like if someone were to try and convince Harrison and I to come run a program or run traffic for them today like what do
• 25:41 | we care about a CPA offer like I’ll trade you traffic for Equity right like how else are you going to get us to do
• 25:49 | something like that but if you did you know maybe you go from five to 50 million AR in 24 months right like the
• 25:57 | the upside and the outcome of this mindset is one that gets you a 10x return over you know some random
• 26:05 | Affiliates yeah the other thing that you mentioned there is um I mean I don’t know the numbers but
• 26:13 | I’m sure there’s hundreds of thousands of small affiliate programs or even big affiliate programs yeah and there’s only
• 26:18 | a finite amount of traffic and the main mindset that I’m trying to change with people over here on this side of the
• 26:24 | pond is just because you build an affiliate program doesn’t mean anybody’s going to want to come and work with you like they don’t care there’s um 10,000
• 26:31 | other programs that they can choose from so what are you doing to stand out from the crowd to build this program for your
• 26:38 | business and what and how are you investing to actually get these Affiliates interested in you because
• 26:43 | most advertisers don’t even Market their affiliate program you can’t even find the link to sign up to the program if
• 26:50 | you’re interested in the product like so many times the first thing that I check on a client’s um site is how the hell
• 26:56 | does an affiliate find the sign up it’s it’s a great point you made a huge misconception and I’m sure like I’m
• 27:03 | trying to think of an example but like I’ve been like at a dinner with my mom and some friends and then like the lady
• 27:09 | at dinner owns like a small business like a plant shop in you know in Arizona
• 27:16 | and my mom’s like you know Harrison does affiliate marketing and I’m like Mom it’s been a few years and and then the
• 27:22 | woman’s like well I have an affiliate program I didn’t get any sales and I’m like huh you sell
• 27:28 | bouquet in Tucson Arizona like I’m I’m sorry I don’t know any Tucson flower
• 27:35 | Affiliates like good luck and it’s it’s really true that people think oh I’m gonna have an affiliate program and
• 27:41 | tomorrow I’m gonna go from three sales GNA Rich we call those the lambo guys
• 27:46 | the lambo guys that tell you that you’re gonna start an affiliate program and all there’s the lambo guys in the affiliate side too and they tell you they did
• 27:52 | $300,000 in volume yesterday but they did $4 Mission yeah by the way if you have
• 27:59 | an affiliate program and you want to find Affiliates offervault happens to be the largest the largest community of
• 28:06 | Affiliates on the internet where you can simply put your offers and Affiliates can find them I feel kind of bad but I
• 28:12 | told the flower lady to go use she didn’t do it but I told her give us money I tried but to your point Lean
• 28:18 | Like the rule number one of affiliate marketing and I don’t think I don’t think that Merchants are aware of this
• 28:24 | is the people that are willing and can pay the most money for the traffic win
• 28:30 | it and so if you can pay $10 CPM or $10
• 28:35 | per click for the traffic and I can pay $115 CPM or $15 per click for the
• 28:41 | traffic I get to buy it all because it’s an auction and so if they’re not
• 28:47 | providing resources and not optimizing their campaigns and not teaching
• 28:52 | Affiliates what to do and providing additional value someone out there that is is winning the traffic and the
• 28:59 | Affiliates attention um and I don’t think most Merchants are are aware of
• 29:04 | this no they not and they think the other misconception and sorry I know you
• 29:10 | asked one question but we’ve kind of gone on a tangent here about how to launch a program successfully but the
• 29:15 | other thing that commonly happens with um programs is they just discount the
• 29:20 | Affiliates that aren’t sending volume because they think ah that affiliate doesn’t have any volume and that’s not true because that affiliate might be
• 29:27 | marketing three or four other brands that are similar to you and just hasn’t got around to testing your offer yet and
• 29:33 | so you’re just ignoring that affiliate ignoring them and not actually talking to them and engaging with them and discovering how you could be working
• 29:39 | with them because you’re spending all of your time with the kind of big guys at the top which you shouldn’t be spending
• 29:44 | your time with because you’re paying them to deliver hopefully you’re paying them that $15 you know CPM or whatever
• 29:51 | it was that you said earlier and and and that should be enough to get them to kind of deliver and do what they’re doing you don’t they need to be
• 29:57 | relationship ship managing them too or over relationship managing them your time as an affiliate manager needs to be
• 30:03 | spent across the entire funnel of all of the Affiliates coming into your program for it to be it’s funny you say that
• 30:08 | because back in the day Harrison had an affiliate Network and the one of the
• 30:14 | things that was really Innovative that they did and this is going to sound silly I mean no disrespect but they sent
• 30:21 | emails out about offers teaching Affiliates very simple things like hey guys these type of traffic sources work
• 30:28 | on this offer this is where you can go to see you know how can find some of
• 30:33 | these on archive.org whatever you go to Ewa network.com some of those guides but
• 30:38 | he was like and this you’re not going to use this and make money today for sure because it’s like dating offers like
• 30:44 | match.com isn’t buying CPA traffic anymore but we gave stepbystep instructions even examples of creatives
• 30:51 | for like dating offers like Mobile ringtone offers uh various lead gen
• 30:57 | offers and like Ryan and I would actually spend money run traffic to these offers figure it out some of these
• 31:04 | were offers we had never ran before and then write the guide give it away and turn off our traffic because we wanted
• 31:10 | the Affiliates to do it I don’t think people do that anymore I never really saw well it’s not anymore I never really
• 31:16 | saw anyone else do something like that and it was it was a simple concept right like train people and do it and I think
• 31:24 | merch I thought you were going to say we sponsored parties with wrestling did that too I didn’t want to bring up the
• 31:29 | jello wrestling but that was great that was great um you ain’t seen nothing yet cuz I come from the gambling industry
• 31:35 | I’ve made boy party I’ve been to the ice trade show once oh yeah and I just have
• 31:40 | to say like affiliate marketing non-gaming world we really have to step it up you could put the last 20
• 31:46 | affiliate Summits in one ice show Flor and they’d still have space yeah it’s so
• 31:51 | big that’s huge but my point my point here is like if a merchant is able to
• 31:57 | take some of their own marketing and some of their own learning experience and show like hey we tested this it did
• 32:03 | not work we tested this it didn’t work we tested this it did here’s why like
• 32:08 | here are some channels that are successful for our internal media team you know like I think a lot of them are
• 32:14 | concerned about giving away their strategies and tactics to the Affiliates but the the reality is is like if if I
• 32:22 | were to run any type of offer today I’m out of practice right uh the first thing I would be asking is like show me
• 32:28 | everything you screwed up show me every way it didn’t work then show me every way it’s currently working because to
• 32:33 | your point Affiliates are extremely intelligent very clever and if you feed
• 32:39 | that information into their brains they’ll go and create something from it
• 32:44 | actually as you’ve been saying that I just think Affiliates are like AI the more information you give them the more they learn the more they can improve
• 32:50 | like it’s really simple we’re machine learning people yeah yeah you are yeah
• 32:56 | exactly exactly and so some of my best campaigns were like that I had good relationships with the
• 33:02 | advertisers um I’ve spoken about my education campaigns before on this show
• 33:08 | and I just had a really great relationship with Steve also rest in peace that’s two in one show I think
• 33:14 | that’s a record shout out to my boys they would laugh at that even though they’re no longer with us um but like we
• 33:21 | had great Rel I had a great relationship with them Harrison did business with them too and they showed us I to point I
• 33:28 | went to their call center they showed me their internal ads they showed me how their call center operated like they
• 33:34 | showed me their Tech I got to see all this stuff and like I actually came up with like tens of thousands of micro ad
• 33:43 | groups that I I put in there and specific angles that ended up crushing it so consistently on the back end for
• 33:49 | them they gave me the AO for like five years on Google ads for their campaign and like well think about it I mean if
• 33:55 | you don’t have the context you can’t you can’t level up you need the context
• 34:00 | in order to level up it definitely takes I don’t know if it’s like
• 34:05 | humility you you know it takes being comfortable though to accept that if you own a brand you you’re an e-commerce guy
• 34:11 | you’re running some search traffic and it’s doing okay but like to trust the affiliate and to show them what you’re
• 34:17 | doing you kind of have to bite your you know put your pride down a bit because Affiliates might do a better job than
• 34:23 | you and to accept Okay because you’re paying them you’re paying them on performance like that’s the whole
• 34:30 | point better than exactly yeah so to me I’ve got no issues with that so what do
• 34:37 | you see going on right now in the space related to uh merchants and programs you’re managing like what do you think
• 34:44 | are some of the most interesting things that your I mean your customers I guess
• 34:49 | we call them are doing but like Merchants are doing like where’s the evolution of the merchant program now
• 34:56 | well we’re in a very interesting space because you know the networks on the
• 35:01 | e-commerce side like the big CJs and all of those guys they’ve they’ve kind of held caught and and been the kind of
• 35:08 | staple points for many of these programs but now I’m seeing a lot of really
• 35:13 | intuitive tools and Tech and SAS products coming into the market which is enabling people to take a lot of their
• 35:19 | marketing inh house as well so it’s kind of like what happened in the gambling industry right in the beginning where
• 35:25 | everybody took everything inhouse and built their own stxs and everything else and and and started like learning and
• 35:30 | and doing things insularly um whereas everybody in the e-commerce World kind of just left
• 35:35 | everything to three or four or five main platforms and a couple of sub networks and let them run with it so people are
• 35:42 | wanting to take ownership because they want to control the narrative and that’s quite interesting to me um as to like
• 35:48 | where and how service providers are going to up their game to keep that business because now there is
• 35:54 | opportunities and choice to take things in house and the second thing thing that’s interesting to me is obviously
• 35:59 | all of this um gdpr consent um TCP
• 36:04 | everything that’s going on both here in Europe and also in the US dark patterns on the web how people consent all of
• 36:11 | that stuff is is going to impact how we gather data and the biggest thing for me and I am going to just have a little
• 36:17 | plug and you’re welcome to cut this out if you want to but we’re hosting an event in September in London to talk
• 36:22 | about all of this stuff because as far as I can tell performance marketers they know how to work with Affiliates but
• 36:29 | they don’t know how to do lead generation and with cookies deprecating and especially for smaller merchants and
• 36:35 | advertisers who only rely on things like paid Facebook ads and and stuff to drive traffic to their website they’re going
• 36:41 | to have to level up and learn pretty fast and damn quite time to adapt how to adapt their marketing strategies and so
• 36:47 | what we’re trying to do is bring everybody together in London in September to actually start talking about all of these things and to help
• 36:53 | these smaller Merchants actually understand the impact because we see it all over the news Google’s going to deprecate cookies in 2025 but nobody
• 37:00 | really understands what that means and what the KnockOn effect is going to have and so what we’re trying to do on this
• 37:05 | side is just educate people and make sure that they are aware of how their marketing might need to change and what
• 37:12 | other channels and and uh partners and platforms they might need to start
• 37:17 | implementing in order to continue to scale so that’s the the kind of hot top topics and points on my side um but I’m
• 37:25 | sure it’s pretty similar to what’s happening over there in the states too yeah I mean I saw a post this morning
• 37:30 | actually on LinkedIn where someone was testing consent for pixels and it killed
• 37:35 | the conversion rate by 80% wow I think the yeah the popup the little popup that
• 37:43 | was like I consent turns so many people off and like in Europe I think it’s a different thing like every single web
• 37:49 | page you go to asks you for permission 55 times it’s obnoxious it’s not
• 37:54 | actually a good consumer experience it’s really not seems like it was well-intentioned but the execution of
• 38:00 | this globally is just it’s shitty for the customer it’s annoying yeah totally
• 38:06 | and there were talks of actually doing away with it and changing the whole proc
• 38:11 | it’s lobbying and being spoken about a million times but there’s a lot of work being done with um the PMA the
• 38:17 | Performance Marketing Association in the US and also here in the UK the apma um especially in the affiliate space um to
• 38:24 | actually educate uh The Regulators and say like this is actually the impact of what you’re asking us to do and this is
• 38:30 | how it’s going to impact marketing and how it’s going to impact the consumer how it’s going to impact advertisers
• 38:35 | because a lot of these regulations they they’re great you know they they they get picked on by politicians and lawyers
• 38:41 | and everything else but there there’s no real understanding of what actually the the cause and effect would be I was I
• 38:47 | was just going to say and and I’m I’m picking on the system as a whole not one specific side but when the politicians
• 38:53 | are a hundred years old it’s hard for them to understand how the Privacy thing is going to work do they even have a
• 39:00 | computer well I don’t know if you’ve seen us populations I’m just going to go ahead and allow the agism over here
• 39:06 | because I’ve seen them talk about technology they’re not they don’t understand our leadership doesn’t get it
• 39:12 | so the Privacy stuff is well intentioned we know things have gone too far like you know this is quite old with the
• 39:19 | Cambridge analytica Stuff Etc I get it I understand wanting to protect people’s you know privacy but if you make it just
• 39:26 | annoying to and not enjoyable and I have to click consent things everywhere I go
• 39:31 | it’s just like but not only that I mean in some Industries like gaming in the UK
• 39:37 | the regulation and I know it’s a regulated um subject it’s a you know a sensitive subject but the the in in in
• 39:45 | the code of um conduct you literally if a client sees an offer like get 50% deposit bonus or something within
• 39:54 | three clicks from seeing that Banner they have to have their account open and the dep and the bonus in their
• 40:01 | account so imagine that like the the so they’ve had to like streamline the
• 40:06 | entire like registration process the onboarding process and the the like um
• 40:11 | payment process to actually get that money into the client’s account within three clicks so it’s it’s forcing us to
• 40:17 | innovate a little bit because we have to change the way that we’ve always done things but it also needs to be done
• 40:23 | within reason I think um where the customer still gets a good user experience well I think it’s I think
• 40:28 | it’s funny that the whole purpose of this is like protecting consumer data and if you think about this in the calls
• 40:34 | space which is you know where where we primarily Focus once the pixel situation
• 40:40 | goes into play and a consumer has to consent to the Facebook pixel it’s going to murder conversion rate so Affiliates
• 40:45 | are going to remove to Facebook pixel from their website and then what happens
• 40:51 | is the consumer’s going to pick up the phone and call we’re going to take that caller ID the actual pii and API that
• 41:00 | back to Facebook to tie the call to a conversion instead of using the anonymized pixel data well here’s the
• 41:08 | thing I mean here in Europe paper call is not as big as what it is in the US to
• 41:14 | my knowledge I mean you guys are the paper call experts but actually Millions a year here it’s nothing over there
• 41:19 | compared to but wait for it because it soon might be because how else are you
• 41:24 | going to track peeps you know with all of this stuff happening so really you guys should be coming to London and being at this event and educating peeps
• 41:31 | because they need to learn they need to know what’s happening and if they don’t have Forward Thinking experienced
• 41:37 | digital teams in their business they’re going to lag behind and they might even like lose revenue and that’s the that’s
• 41:43 | the real kind of danger is that they don’t know what they don’t know and that’s why I’m so passionate about this
• 41:49 | is that we need to educate people and show them that there are other ways to do things other ways to get First partyy
• 41:55 | Data um and really get them to explore because they’ve been people have been lazy you know it’s easy to open up a Facebook ads account and start going um
• 42:02 | but is that the only way to reach a customer no because half the population isn’t on Facebook anymore they’re on Tik Tok and other places yeah and Lead Jen I
• 42:11 | mean I don’t know how familiar you are with what’s happening in the United States but lead generation is changing
• 42:17 | in a foundational way here where it’s onetoone consent and so all of the data
• 42:22 | broker business all of that for actually dialing consumers it’s going to go away
• 42:28 | and what’s interesting is I know Co companies are talking about it I’m on the board of of our industry’s lobby
• 42:35 | group for this and um I see people talking about it but I don’t think
• 42:40 | anyone is really understanding the impact and what’s going to change around it and you know how they need to adapt
• 42:47 | their business a lot of the education is around like what the law is and what the changes are but not the strategy of how
• 42:53 | to move their business there’s no sink or swim strategy well I mean there are there are a bunch
• 42:59 | of strategies I mean but they’re not talking about it yeah but they’re not they’re not talking about it and so I
• 43:05 | mean I was talking to Harrison about this this morning because I’m giving the keynote at a conference coming up here
• 43:11 | and I’m gonna talk about this but not in the weeds of the regulations but more so
• 43:17 | like anytime there’s a major change in life or business or regulation or
• 43:23 | whatever it is that needs to be looked at as a gift in an opport opportunity like how can you learn about it change
• 43:30 | your strategy and and move it forward we’ve talked about this over the years and on the Pod you know when there’s
• 43:36 | huge regulatory changes to a vertical or a certain thing in the industry there’s
• 43:41 | those that just sit around and weep about it and try to stick to the old ways or find out ways to keep it like
• 43:47 | that Etc and then there’s those that move forward innov build on that and innovate and those are the ones that
• 43:53 | succeed uh and and you know regardless of what you’re doing today if if there’s
• 43:59 | something changing in what you’re marketing or what you’re working on regulator regulation wise use it as a
• 44:05 | time to put your head you know pen to paper figure out ways to to do better than the rest because at that time
• 44:11 | you’re you have a competitive Advantage if you’re able to do so and the future of this is all does it benefit the
• 44:17 | consumer and if the the answer is yes then it’s the right thing to do and if the answer is no it’s always been the
• 44:25 | wrong thing to do but now it’s getting more regulated and so I think Affiliates and Merchants and all these people in
• 44:31 | general they need to start asking like how do I provide the best consumer experience possible because that’s going
• 44:36 | to be the key to Growing businesses going forward into the future well that’s another thing that’s quite um big
• 44:42 | here is hyper personalization of offers of communication everything that that
• 44:48 | that you’re doing to customers to kind of segment them and personalize and Target based on customer interests so
• 44:56 | instead of having a one- siiz it’s all advertising program we’re now seeing Brands here in Europe um you know like
• 45:02 | Target this demographic group this demographic group this demographic group and and really helping Affiliates to
• 45:07 | kind of like Niche down into the into those different segments um and I think that’s cool because again it’s all about
• 45:13 | giving customer a really great customer experience but it’s also identifying on a more deeper level because the next
• 45:19 | generation of um affiliate managers or or of of uh should I say website users
• 45:27 | they search and look for information differently to how we do in our 40s like we we grew up with the internet the
• 45:33 | internet started roughly when when we were kind of like in our adult um you know late teens early adulthood but the
• 45:40 | younger generation and and I I mean I only have to look at my own son he he’s 11 years old and he can find things on
• 45:46 | the internet way faster than what I can because he doesn’t only look on Google he uses YouTube as a search channel he
• 45:53 | uses Tik Tok as a search channel he uses chat GPT he you know like the way that he asks communities he’s in like
• 46:00 | WhatsApp groups with his friends and things and he processes information differently and and really relates to
• 46:06 | the internet differently and I think advertisers aren’t looking at that they’re not looking at how do we change
• 46:12 | the way that we communicate with our customer in a way and in the place where they are instead of where we want them
• 46:17 | to be so this nearby I don’t know if you’ve heard about um outbound inbound near bound um and future bound like we
• 46:25 | need to be looking future band now in terms of how do we actually change the way that we deliver our advertising and
• 46:31 | our content through our referral partners and Lead generators and everybody else um to really reach
• 46:38 | customers in the place and time and and format that they want to receive that message in I think it takes a a lot of
• 46:45 | humility to go through that process um I I am taking a lot of humble pills right
• 46:51 | now I know we’ve talked about it on the show a bunch lean but I just wrote this book the paper call Revolution and I’m
• 46:58 | running ads for the first time in a long time and I went and did whatever anyone
• 47:04 | else would do I did a lot of DD and went through the Facebook ad library and Google ads and looked at hundreds of
• 47:10 | book ads and people who used to run them people who run them now and trying to figure out like what works and what
• 47:16 | doesn’t work and what really surprised me about that process is and I’ll I’ll
• 47:22 | just use specifics the the book ads that I saw that I thought were working that like people were doing really well with
• 47:28 | were just pictures of the books and various areas and very simple
• 47:33 | advertisements and I was like is that is that really how easy it is and so we
• 47:39 | took thousands of photos like we are chewing through thousands of ads um I
• 47:44 | think I I think we have like a thousand in Q we’re working on but we’ve like actually tested about 800 or close to a
• 47:51 | thousand now and um that’s something that as an affiliate like is in my soul it’s do the work right yeah yeah and so
• 47:59 | we tested it so many different ways and the CPAs were really bad and I was like we’re not this is not how this is going
• 48:06 | to work going forward and so I enlisted some uh some people and hired a few
• 48:11 | people and then we went out and we we really tried to make much ads much more geared towards like Tik Tock content
• 48:19 | fast moving content you know grabby ads all sorts of different stories and how
• 48:25 | do you appeal to people people and different text you name it right like we have like a team of content people doing
• 48:31 | it and what I found is actually that the opposite of what people are doing is
• 48:37 | what’s actually working and so I don’t think any of those people are actually
• 48:42 | having successful campaigns in the way I thought they were I think they’re just burning cash and not actually tracking
• 48:48 | anything because what we found is just like literally the absolute opposite and
• 48:55 | um my point here is your point I just had to swallow my pride in such a big
• 49:01 | way I thought like yeah I can predict which ads are going to work I I know how it’s going to work I see this and I
• 49:06 | assimilated the data and I was completely wrong done we’ve done this throughout our career I can think of
• 49:13 | back when we were buying traffic where we have like a really cool looking landing page we’re like this thing is
• 49:19 | sick like we you know I have an idea I’m like walking in circles talking to Adam and designers and then like the other
• 49:26 | page is like looks like you know we notepad you know text like Tech it’s just like Windows 95 and then we’re like
• 49:34 | we made 35% of our on our money with the shitty page and we lost 60% on the work
• 49:41 | the Picasso yeah honestly like I I have quite a lot of followers on LinkedIn and
• 49:47 | like I curate like I curate my content like everybody else right there’s things I want to talk about and there’s themes
• 49:52 | and all the rest of it but the best message that I or the best organic reach
• 49:58 | that I ever had and um I am a little bit ashamed to say this but because we’re in a casual environment I will share it and
• 50:03 | not be very um you know politically correct I went to an awards evening and I won an award and obviously I stayed
• 50:10 | out until The Bitter End and then I had to catch a flight at the early morning like the red eye flight from Amsterdam
• 50:15 | back to London the best post that I’ve ever had on any of my channels is me
• 50:21 | half cut absolutely hanging from the night before with a cup of coffee in my hand literally sleeping on a table next
• 50:29 | to my friend who had also been at the awards and was also on the red ey flight and we were both like this is a rookie era and we posted a message of us
• 50:36 | looking absolutely hammered like really like trashed okay waiting for our flight
• 50:41 | to go back to Landon and we said like this is affiliate life you know you yeah you travel to amazing places but like
• 50:46 | you’re up at 6: a.m. in the morning and we must have had about 60,000 views on that like organic with it and by the
• 50:52 | time I got off the flight in Amsterdam like in London I was like this blue up
• 50:57 | and it was like nothing related to anything that I talk about my business nothing it was just about me I love that
• 51:02 | and people love people and and you know people will remember how you make them feel and not what you say and do and so
• 51:10 | yeah sometimes the craziest stuff works and you just have no reason why but it resonates with
• 51:15 | people you know Leanne I typically don’t talk a lot on this podcast but I usually
• 51:21 | talk more I usually talk more than this that yeah we just kind of left you there
• 51:28 | no honestly I think that one question ended up being like the whole podcast I think uh I think part of being a good
• 51:34 | host is knowing when to step back and let the professionals go to work you know I’m kind of just listening to you
• 51:41 | guys super entertaining myself just ask one more question here before we let you get out of here what are some of the
• 51:47 | biggest myths that you typically see in the affiliate marketing space that not a
• 51:52 | lot of people talk about you know I’m sure there’s a lot of myths everybody knows about but what are the ones that people usually don’t talk about much we
• 51:58 | we kind of covered one of them here I’m going to build an affiliate program and I’m going to be rich because everybody’s going to want to join my affiliate
• 52:05 | program uh no that doesn’t happen that you know the Builder they come methodology just doesn’t work in
• 52:10 | affiliate marketing because it is so uh competitive so you best be having a plan about what you’re going to do after you
• 52:16 | launch that program because the launching is just the first step the second thing is that Affiliates of fraud
• 52:22 | is filled with fraud so is paid advertising so is SEO clickbaited all of
• 52:28 | that other stuff there is fraud everywhere on the internet but you need to be Savvy to it and you need to be
• 52:34 | strategically working to weed those Partners up because there are loopholes in affiliate marketing but that’s why
• 52:40 | you need an expert to actually navigate through that people that have felt the burn who know what to expect know how
• 52:47 | things can be um you know circled around or come out from behind and can help you
• 52:53 | actually navigate all of those things so I think it’s important that you know you have the right people
• 52:58 | backing you when you come into the space that you know how to actually leverage it it’s like you wouldn’t get into a car drive it if you didn’t do your driver’s
• 53:05 | license so you know work with a professional and I think the last myth
• 53:10 | is you know that it’s easy it really isn’t easy to run an affiliate program and it does take a lot of skill and it
• 53:18 | does mean finding resources that can build those relationships because it isn’t fast either it’s not easy and it’s
• 53:25 | not fast building solid relationships with other humans actually takes time
• 53:31 | and some of the some of the businesses that you work with will be huge corporations and big media companies but
• 53:36 | a lot of the Affiliates that you’re working with as small entrepreneurs who’ve got maybe you know 5 to 10 people
• 53:41 | and some contractors that they’re hiring so it isn’t easy and it isn’t fast to build relationships with people it does
• 53:47 | take time and it does take a lot of patience because you are going to try things that don’t work and you are going
• 53:53 | to have to reiterate and retry again and that’s actually part of the fun part of working an affiliate is that you are
• 53:59 | going to you have to be comfortable with failing and Affiliates are they’re comfortable with failure and risk and
• 54:04 | you need to leverage that into your program well Leanne thank you for joining the affiliate marketing show big
• 54:11 | shout out to our sponsor Max Bounty for myself Josh from offervault Mr Paper
• 54:17 | call Adam Young the industry Legend Harrison gvertz as well as the founder of aiv verse and the host of the
• 54:23 | affiliate marketing podcast lean let’s make that paper let’s make that dough
• 54:29 | this was the affiliate marketing show we will see you next to thater to that

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