Welcome to Affiliate Insiders Affiliate Marketing Podcast. And today I'm absolutely thrilled to have Dustin House joining me on this podcast. It's been a long time coming, buddy, to get you on here. So I'm very, very happy to have you because we're going to be talking about affiliate marketing in the trenches this week. But before we get started, I want to just give you a moment to introduce yourself and tell me your story about how you landed up in affiliate marketing today.
SPEAKER_00Well, thank you for having me. First of all, always good to hang out with other affiliate nerds. And uh, you know, I love all the content you're producing out there and just excited to be on this. My journey started 12 years ago when I got my first job at CJ, working network compliance. And from CJ, I moved on working for agencies, working for merchants, running programs, working for publishers, you know, making my own agency eventually. And I got to a point where I'm at now where I'm teaching affiliate management skills to the masses for this next generation to learn how to be a good affiliate manager. So it's been a long journey, and I'm really enjoying every bit of it and just love this industry altogether.
SPEAKER_02And I'm absolutely thrilled that you said that because we know I'm a passionate I'm about passing on best practices and making sure that the next generation knows why we do things the way that we do them today. And that's why I was excited to get you on the podcast because 12 years is a long time in this industry, and we know what it was like back then. It certainly was not what it is today. And most people coming into the industry will say that it's not easy. But what we're going to talk about today is infinite bouncing in the trenches. And one of the things that I want to start off with is get you to tell us a little bit about the trends that you see in the e-com world and where you think brands can maximize the potential of working with publishers or affiliates much better because ultimately that's what we all want to do, right? We all want to amplify and elevate our performance. And there's nobody I know better that can actually answer that question. So over to you.
SPEAKER_00I think education of actual affiliates has been getting better by the day. I I would say five years ago, there was a thousand different courses of people trying to teach affiliate marketing and trying to teach how to be a millionaire within three months.
SPEAKER_02And this is a rummage.
SPEAKER_00Unbelievably how many will call themselves experts and like just jump into it and try to teach a course. And now what we're finding is the guys that are actually winning, like Adam and Proy out there, and my buddy Rai Rob and some others just are making really good content and setting expectations. This is a long process. We're not going to be a millionaire overnight. And I love the responsibility factor of that. That's teaching the right way of affiliate marketing for the future. And everybody wants content sites. So I think the trend of coupon sites having their heyday is over. And the coupon sites that scratch and claw and steal that last-click attribution, they're getting kicked out and left behind. And now we're seeing this even more uplift of influencers and content affiliates. And even better, one of my favorite trends is influencers are gaining the reality that sponsorship isn't the only way to make money. And that affiliate marketing is this new way that they can make even more money if they do some kind of hybrid deal with affiliate managers. So that's a big part of what I'm preaching out there to affiliate managers to be negotiating for. And I love that trend more than anything.
SPEAKER_02Well, I'm glad you picked that up because that is a huge trend here in the UK as well. But there's a misunderstanding of how to actually work with these micro content curators. Do we try to apply the general frameworks of how we work with PPC affiliates and SEO affiliates and push that into the influencer space? And actually, it doesn't work. So, you know, are you working with some brands at the moment where they're getting really successful with doing this? And what are they doing differently to work with these types of content curators?
SPEAKER_00The most important part that I teach delay managers and in the negotiation process is don't beg for stuff immediately. Like don't go in and move for the kiss before you go on a date, right? You have to smooth it in. You have to get them used to the product, you have to get them excited about the product and the program and give them free stuff, whether that be a backlink or some kind of incentive bonus or whatever it might be. Something's gotta be there to get them interested in the product before you start asking for all the things. And making friends is super important as well with these influencers. Everybody's trying to make a connection. And if you can't make that like personal connection with them and take the time to understand their needs, uh then you're just going to fail. And it's so hard for like affiliate managers to be in the mindset, hey, I've got a job, I've got to get this done, I've got to get these guys promoting. But if you don't take the time to think about what the affiliate and the influencers are going through first, then you're going to fail.
SPEAKER_02I always like to say, you know, this is it's not the long con, but it is the home game. Programs take time to grow. It takes time to build these relationships. You need to have patience to work in this industry, right? It's not just about getting an offer live and putting some money behind the table to pay, you know, commissions. It's actually about relationship building. It's about understanding how you can help these small startups to actually drive incremental sales in your program. I think that's the thing that people forget. They forget that, you know, the reason why we're good at what we do is because you spend 20 years building relationships. And we forget about the small publishers and only focus on that top tier that's driving 80% of the volume still. I hate that 80-20 rule. I hate it because it doesn't for effective affiliate program management. So we've spoken a little bit about e-commerce trades, which is kind of like the rule that you're living in, and I 100% agree. We're looking at that of all influencer spacing and still largely trying to figure out how do we work with these guys? Like what is the model that we use to work with these guys? Because it certainly isn't the same as a normal affiliate program. But let's talk about launching an affinity program for a minute, because I get a lot of brands coming up to me asking me, how do I launch an affinity program? Where do I begin? And I know you've just created a spectacular document that talks about all the tools that you need in Affinity Magazine. Maybe you can touch on some of those tools now and just share a little bit. And we'll obviously share the link in the podcast notes. But what's the best tool do you've ever used to launch scam or grammar and infinite program?
SPEAKER_00There are there's no way you can choose a best. It's like choosing your favorite kid, right? It's like you can't do it. And if you end up saying a name, like you're going to be just ripped apart. Yeah, you're exiled. Like it's not, it's not a it's not a good idea. So I've got plenty of favorite tools, but there is no best necessarily in this world, right? And I think every program is going to be unique, every affiliate program is always going to be a unique factor. So some products in the e-commerce space are going to be using a platform that a SaaS product is not going to be using or is best for, right? And then the tools that go along with recruiting for these two different programs in the B2B and SaaS world over here versus the e-com are completely different. So the tools that I like to use, the first thing I always like to preach, though, is the program setup. You cannot forget fundamentals of setting up the program properly. If you do not have a good landing page that gets affiliates excited about signing up and make that landing page easy for them to sign up, they're going to move on to that next program or your competitors. And that's the last thing you want to do. You want to make that an enticing situation and a warm welcome situation for those affiliate partners. So once you get those fundamentals in place, then we can talk tools, right? And I built that list of 37 plus tools, which is ever growing since I've been spreading it around. People are coming at me with adding more tools. I'm like, okay, yeah, I can add that. Absolutely. Like that makes sense. Like those are tools that I don't use personally, but I'll give them a look and see how they can apply, which I love. I love adding to this tool. And the greatest reason I created that asset is because I didn't have that learning. I had to learn this all on the fly. And I've just been accumulating all these tools over the years and building this list out on what's been working for me. And someone like you, you have your own tool set that is working for you, for your clients. So I think the closest thing I could do for one of my favorite tools is going to be Grovia. I'm a little bit biased on this because I helped that company develop this tool, but I also helped, you know, Media Rails uh make their tool much better before the days they sold out to Impact and went over onto that side. I did the same with Grovia, except for a much longer period of time and in a contract work. So I helped them build that tool as a tool that affiliate managers would like to use. And there's some really cool features in that thing. Not only does it do all the email sequences for you, but it also finds out whether these websites that are good content fit for the keywords you're researching, it also tells you if their content is affiliate related. If they have affiliate links on their page, they're going to pop up as an affiliate. If they're not, then they're going to show you that as well. So that's a huge time saver as far as tools go. So I love Grovia. If you're doing this more on the manual side, you know, using some rush is fantastic. You can split that with the rest of your marketing team because it doubles as an SEO tool and actually more useful for the SEO side. And then, you know, finding contact information using hunter.io or some other toolbar extensions that are helpful. I mean, all great tools. I could go on this forever. But what are some of the things that you're loving right now?
SPEAKER_02I love Pustaga and had a had a connection. Well, that was pretty cool. My my fascination with SAS tools is dangerous because my team, like I hello, my name's Ian and I'm a SASA HOME. I'll try any tool that's on the marketplace just so that I can know what it does. And I probably have, you know, endless, countless subscriptions to tools that I don't even use anymore. So, you know, just because that's my thing, you know, like some people buy handbags and shoes like other tools. Another one that I've looked at recently, which I thought was really cool for content curation, because not every affiliate manager is good at writing email copy or is good at you know reaching out or doing you know sales kind of like the outbound lead gen. Um, a really cool tool that I've used recently, it was called Jarvis.air, but they rebranded to Jasper. And I thought that was pretty cool as well. But the thing that's been exciting for me, especially in the last like three to five years, is that affiliate managers are starting to think about their affiliates like we do our customers. So we're very, very involved in the customer journey, the UX, the you know, welcome that the customer gets, the conversion, the retention. And not many people think about that in terms of their affiliate program, which is the stuff that you and I kind of make sure is done in a program when we launch it. And and maybe this is a good time to ask you, you know, if you're starting to launch an affiliate program from scratch, like what are some of the facts that we can share with people listening to this podcast when brands are into the space? What should they be getting right? What are the basics? Because you did say that you said, you know, you have to get the basics right, you have to build in foundation, which is obviously your tech. But what are some of the other things that affiliate managers need to get in place before they start actually selling their affiliate program? And these some of these tools are some of those things, right? But what are some of the other like strategic things that we need to tell affiliate managers to get ready before they enter the you know the world launching an affiliate program?
SPEAKER_00Great question. Yeah. Uh, you know, I built out a checklist for all this. It's it's kind of like what I do for uh agency work. When I get on a new client, I go through my own checklist. Well, I made this essentially public, right? So it's a step-by-step, like, hey, you need these kinds of assets. And in my course where I teach, I give every company that takes my course all of these assets as a template, right? And these are things like this is what your landing page should look like. This is a good example of it. You need, you know, what you have available and a very clear call to action for them to sign up and easy form. Landing pages for signups are huge, absolutely. Welcome sequences, always underrated and underutilized out there, right? There's got to be some kind of drip campaign to keep them excited about this brand because they are never going to be more excited about this brand than the day they sign up and you get them and their attention, right? So the accept or decline email essentially, like if they sign up, that's that first email. You get that first contact. Hey, this is me. I'm gonna look at your application. I'll get back to you 24 hours. 24 hours, mandatory. Like, don't let this sit there for a week. They will get bored of it and they will move on. I've seen programs do that and annoys the Libby. Oh, yeah, terrible. 24-hour window. It's not that hard. One of my favorite parts of the day is go into your applications. So this is a fun part of your day, it should be. So go through the 10 applications that come through. Then it's accept. Hey, this is me. This I'm your affiliate manager. If you have any questions, please come to me.
SPEAKER_02Personalize it. And your welcome email, you're right. It doesn't have to be boring, it doesn't have to say all the usual stuff. It can actually go, hey, I'm your affiliate manager. This is what I like to do. Yeah, scooper dive, I do this.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. And make sure you have your affiliate link in that welcome email. This is your link. Copy and paste it, do whatever you want with it. That's absolutely mandatory. And then I like to do a four-email drip campaign after that day. And for the next four days, because they are excited about it now. Let's get it to them. And these four emails will be like, hey, here's our marketing assets. These are all the things that you can do to talk about it. If you need help writing this content, I can help you write it. Just reach out to me and let me know. The next one is more about the brand, like the company story about Page. Like, tell them about it and get them more invested, right? And the next one is like, hey, do you want to have a call with me? I can take 15 minutes and we can hang out and I can learn more about you. You can learn more about the brand and what we can do together. And then 50 mail is like, hey, is there any additional exposure you would be interested in? Would you like to do some kind of co-marketing campaign together or where we can help promote your product and you promote ours to your audience? So getting those things out in the air and getting them to recognize that you are open to this kind of open relationship is super important. Moving down that checklist, what else do we need to do? So the recruitment tools, those will come, but now you have to create the recruitment campaigns. I like to do five emails over two weeks span and very strategic about what you're saying in each one of those emails for recruitment efforts, right? And then you have to have a tool that is going to send that out in some kind of automated fashion. But that is much more for the masses. Those are the sites that you don't necessarily are going to be huge different makers, but you would love them in the program, right? Uh I like to build a couple of different lists. One is uh a wish list. Take your top 25. Like these would be the game changers. We want to be doing everything we can to get them into the program. These don't get automated sequences. These are like, I'm going to find the right person at that company to get a hold of them and get their attention, get them free product, whatever I have to do to get them in the program and help them so that we can both win. Then you've got like the masses that are ranking for Google keywords to want to rank for. That's a big thousand URL list that you've got to find contact information. And then the third one is competitors, like getting competitors, affiliates, and scraping some rush for all those links that are linking to your competitor sites. That is a gold mine. Because they've already got content about that, most likely. And now they can switch that out and start suggesting you in some other circumstances that they're not super loyal to that company.
SPEAKER_02So I just want to pause there. I mean, you've given pretty much a blueprint of how to launch your affiliate program. So thank you for that. Top level, high level. But if you're listening to this podcast, I hope that you're listening to how much effort goes into launching an affiliate program. It's not just about opening up the doors and going, hey, we can track now, and here's some money for an offer. There's a lot of marketing that sits behind running an affiliate program efficiently and effectively as well. We've shared quite a lot now in the first 15 minutes, and I've got another kind of 20 minutes to cram in here. So the big thing that I'm going to talk about, which is hot topic, and I know you've got a lot of experience on this, is what's the biggest difference between traditional e-com programs and SaaS and B2B programs becoming a huge trend that you touched on earlier. Where are you seeing the big differences in terms of how these programs run successfully?
SPEAKER_00The biggest difference I see is SaaS programs can get started with an affiliate program a lot quicker. They have um so with an e-comm brand, I like the staple that I give is $50,000 in revenue per month for an e-comm brand before you start getting into the affiliate. Because there are so many other channels in the digital marketing world, including PPC and Facebook and whatever else you might be doing or interested in, uh, that you need to hit up before you start uh trying out the affiliate channel. And the reason behind that is good affiliates are not going to promote brands that are not recognizable yet. And unless they have like some really patented product that it could be an incredible fit for their audience, big affiliates, big publications, they're not going to pay attention to a small-time affiliate program, and they're going to be very difficult to get a hold of and get interested in that program. So your efforts are going to be so much harder if you're not hitting that $50,000 a month and you've built a brand of some sort early on. Now, with SaaS products, I drop that number all the way down to like five or 10,000 is an acceptable level for revenue. And the reason behind that is SaaS products are so much cheaper just to give away. And like every SaaS product out there gives away, you know, seven-day, 14-day free trials to get people in the door. You don't see e-commerce brands like giving away free product like that. But you can get the attention of somebody with a really cool tool to some of these larger publications and they can go and test them out. And you just need to know the right people to get a hold of and the right companies that are going to be doing those kinds of reviews and need help showcasing that product. So that's why I like that early entry for SaaS products. Even though they do need to maximize their efforts for conversion rate optimization of their site and other digital assets that are necessary, affiliate can come into the picture a lot quicker, I feel.
SPEAKER_02So if you're a SaaS product, now it's terms that opened up an Athenium program, basically.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Do you feel the same way? Like, are you seeing that?
SPEAKER_02I mean, I mean, Partner Stack is a testament to that, right? But also there's brand-to-brand partnerships that are coming into play now. It's almost like the the whole industry is evolving. You know, we're in that made secret from a friend into affine, into network, into, you know, now there's brand-to-brand partnerships, there's, you know, SaaS models that are coming out and products and tools and things that all do partnerships as well. It's kind of becoming really difficult to know who's who in the zoo. But I think where SaaS products have a benefit is that, in that they get people in a lot quicker, but then it's retaining and monetizing, and that's kind of more the strategy that's required in the affiliate program compared to e-commerce. But one of the some of the things in talking about this, because people are listening to us to give advice, but the main thing is what do you still see in all of these years that you've been working in the industry? Affiliate managers getting very wrong. We've touched on not marketing your affiliate program efficiently. We've touched on not treating your affiliate manager or your affiliate or publisher as a as you would accustomer. Or what are some of the other things that you see affiliate managers still getting wrong in terms of the strategy of managing their programs?
SPEAKER_00I'd say uh personability and like direct connect face to face, like trying to get them on phone calls with at least your top 10 affiliates is super necessary. Those are the difference makers already, and you need to be doing whatever you can to keep them there, right? But on top of that, the ones that are not necessarily uh working out, they need to be given some kind of incentive to get to that next level. And I love those activation campaigns. One of the really cool ones I see out there right now is Rank Math. I don't know if you know Rank Math, they're uh plug-in for WordPress. It's a competitor for your Yoast, but Rank Math has a contest every single month. They give $200 away to the best video of the month and the best written content review of the product. And this just breeds new content constantly coming in.
SPEAKER_02Like your extra teams are gonna love it. So Antonio Dallas, what is that in the bigger scheme of things? I mean, it's nothing money.
SPEAKER_00Right, right. I mean, but it's incredible how many people are going after this contest. I bit into this contest and I lost. Like I wrote a really nice 1500-word content piece review about this product that I use and I personally like. And I lost. I lost to like a 10,000-word piece of content. Like, how incredible is that? Like that you have that much competition going after a $200 cash prize, which means a lot to an affiliate that's just trying to earn their their early commissions and and start to gain traction, right? So those activation campaigns, super important. So don't forget about them and having that touch point of at least once a month with a newsletter, with either a new campaign going on, activation of some sort. Yeah, stay on top of the mind. Super important for them. One other thing I want to say. Is don't ever stop recruiting. An affiliate manager's job is never done because you can always recruit more affiliates into the program. And that day that you hit like all of your goals for the executives and you're hitting all those numbers, and then you just try to rely on the existing affiliates hanging out and doing good sales for you when you stop recruiting. That's when you're gonna see some really nasty efforts come your way. Yeah, it will blow up in three months. You might have a few months there where you can chill out and pretend to work and not work. Because I've been there and I think a lot of affiliate managers will will get to that point and try to chill out, right? And yeah, absolutely. Uh, but that's that's a bad way to think about it. If you're not continually getting going after that next affiliate, then your program's going to eventually die and your numbers will come back down. And what happens if one of your top five affiliates just gets decimated and now they're the like a hundred sales is gone. That's going to be devastating to your program. And if you don't have that next big player here ready to step up and take his place, his or her place, then you're gonna miss out on affiliates that have potential that you just haven't seen yet.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, totally agree. I mean, one of the other things that I find affiliate managers still get wrong is they don't actually focus on small KPIs. They're looking at the big picture all the time, and actually all they need to do is drive their program forward in small incremental amounts. Even that could be like seasonality, like what do we do around Black Friday? When are we going to do? You know, which which events are we going to be putting our strategy behind and maybe focusing on just two or three events a year instead of trying to do everything all the time. And that really does also map to resourcing because I find a lot of affiliate programs are under-resourced. I mean, gone are the days when you can run a global affiliate program across multiple regions with like two or three people. Even if you've got the best text, you still need to do the marketing behind the program. You need people out at events to go and meet people. So, you know, your affiliate team is starting to become more like a mini marketing team within the bigger digital mix rather than just one person who's now responsible for affiliates. And I think we're going to be talking about that at our innovate events in June, where we're getting CMOs around the team to actually help them understand what they need to do to build the right resources.
SPEAKER_00Well, let me hit on that uh a little bit as well. Like you bringing up some great points. The the structure of companies altogether, I feel like is wrong. I don't know how many companies were I reported to the CMO, like as the affiliate manager. And the CMO didn't know anything about affiliates. So they were just relying on me being there, right? There needs to be some kind of director of performance channel at a higher level reporting the CMO, right? And then below them, they can have an affiliate manager. And below that affiliate manager needs to be some kind of partner development representative where their whole job is going after new affiliates and trying to get them in the program so that the affiliate manager can run that relationship and be the face. But we need somebody spending time going out and recruiting new blood into the program. Like that's just gotta be something that that people just haven't developed into, right?
SPEAKER_02And also the way that they budget affiliate programs, I mean, that's still something that I think is being done wrongly in a lot of brand companies that run big affiliate programs. They still look at, okay, this is the budget for affiliates. If you're really doing affiliate marketing properly, there is no budget for affiliates. If you sell, you make money. Like, but yet still the marketing budget in in companies is kind of like finite, you know, and that also restricts us as marketers because we're supposed to go out and test new things and get new sources of traffic and reach more customers in lots of different places, but we haven't got the budget to test that. So I think those are still some of the key things that I'm wrong in our industry. And hopefully we're going to be able to educate people as we move forward and and then start to change. But I think it also has been lacking because of a lack of data and wall plot and having clarity. And as we move into that sort of Web 3.0 where we've been talking about how do we, you know, do affiliate marketing in the metaverse, like you know We're all great with innovation and everything, but the tech needs to catch up, and that will then help us to actually sort of have those budget conversations too. And that's what makes it difficult to work in the trenches because we have a lot of talent in our industry, but it's not a budget to actually support that talent to really fly and or have those conversations at the CMO level where we can explain why we need to not have a finite budget for performance. It doesn't work the same as all the other digital channels. And in fact, in my experience, if you're doing your affiliate program properly, your direct paid channels actually reduce. And most big brands will admit that at least a third of their sales come in from the affiliate channels. So it's not a channel that you can just siphon off to the side anymore. We've got this little affiliate team sitting here. It's big business. You know, our our channel's growing into a multi-billion dollar industry, year on, year in, year with no certain signs of slate. But where's all that money coming from? It's coming from all the other channels that aren't working so good anymore. And filtering in. So big education piece required, but also bringing up the rear is all the tech companies that need to come along with us.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, agreed. A lot of lot of points you hit on there. Uh absolutely really love. I want to run idea by you. Something that I've been working with for some of my latest clients is creating two affiliate programs. I mean, you could give up all the nuggets of when some people will not execute for for whatever reason, right? Yeah, I mean, it it takes people to go out there and like pound the ground to do it. Here's here's what I'm playing around with. I have traditionally said, do not open two affiliate programs. You don't want to work with the deduping situation of two affiliate programs and and having to figure out which sales are on both channels. I I hated that situation, but lately I've just said, okay, let's have your affiliate program over here with just content influencers and the set. And then you can work with toolbars and coupon sites and give them a ridiculously scratched uh commission rate of one, two percent or something, and they all live on this platform over here, and so now you have the best of both worlds, and just just accept that maybe there are sales here and here, and you're gonna pay out both. Just accept it. What do you think about that theory?
SPEAKER_02I've been doing that in the gaming industry for years. So a lot of lottery companies will have their own in-house affiliate tech built on their own stack, like not even using white label tech, and then they'll launch onto something like a CJ or an A-Win or a Trade Doubler for the long tail, for the publishers that manage direct. So a little bit similar to what you're talking about, but I think you're going a little bit further into segmentation, which I think is a good thing. And actually it brings the conversation of do I launch on a network or do I not? Always, yes, you launch on a network, even if you're using it as a long tail to fill the gaps that your own team can't. Because networks are so dedicated to finding publishers, they're nurturing their publisher base, they're doing that added marketing, they're adding you another layer of tech, like they add value in so many ways, but again, it comes down to your strategy. What works for you? Because I would I would even use a network. For example, we would recommend if a client's going into India and they know nothing about the market, go use a network to launch your program. Well, if you don't have the geographical knowledge of that that sector, you don't understand customer values, you don't understand the you know the niche segments where those customers are hanging out. My thing at the moment is also looking at so I agree with you, the short answer is yes. I'd love to see if any clients listening to this give us some feedback. But the other thing is, you know, also looking at multiple channels because we talk about affiliates as one big, you know, thing, and it includes SEO, influencer, ambassadors, PPC affiliates, coupon, batch, like it includes everybody. But what about like mobile app advertising and all of this kind of stuff that's also moving to a performance-based model? You might find that to run your affiliate program, you need to have a mobile app network, you need to have a network that maybe specializes in a certain geographical region. You've got your own in-house people that you've got direct relationships with, you've got like a partner stack in place that helps you to build B2B partnership. But you could find them you're gonna be managing your program across multiple different platforms. And I think as data, you know, integrates and you know, there's a lot of SaaS tools coming into the marketplace that help us with data and looking at tracking across platforms and things. But I think that's gonna be the future. You know, you're gonna go to different places for different it's gonna be different strikes for different folks, you know? And so I think that is definitely the place where we're going to. But we're also gonna see that uh the resourcing that we're gonna require for all of these different programs is gonna be specialists. Like you're gonna have an influencer streamer, you know, video content curator, affiliate manager who will specialize in working with those types of publishers. We'll have a the affiliate manager who knows everything about PPC and works on a performance basis with those types of partners. And so the list can continue. And e-commerce and coupon affiliate manager will know exactly how to navigate that part of the industry and and and work with those rewards-based sites and loyalty-based sites. So I do I do think we're gonna see a lot of specialisms coming in. You know, affiliate managers that are listening to this and entering the industry, maybe now's the time to think about where do you want to be. I mean, if you type affiliate marketing into LinkedIn, you get so many different job titles. Like there is destination for job titles in our industry. Like you could be a sales account manager, you could be it's almost impossible. Like everybody calls us a different thing, but who who are we? What are we? I think that's what we need to get clarity on.
SPEAKER_00Oh my gosh. You can't formalize and and get everybody to say the right same word. And you know, that's why I created performance marketing manager.com because I thought I was getting ahead of the industry. Like, oh, this is all gonna be performance marketing. Like it just didn't turn out. People still love the word affiliate. And then at least affiliate is getting more wretchedable again. Ten years ago, it was it was taken and beaten by like fraud and and coupon and toolbars and whatnot. But like Oh, true. I mean, we're we're just little kids back then all together. But you know what? That's why you and I are are like have designed these courses to teach that next generation and teach them the right things. So if you're out there and you're a digital marketer and trying to get into affiliate, like you and I can put them together in you know two weeks' time and get them fully ready to go to run a program and get that job that they're looking for. And that's very fulfilling to me. I don't know how much you're doing this nowadays, or not so much, but I love doing it. I I love teaching.
SPEAKER_02Well, that's the thing, is that's what our industry needs because there is no school room for video marketing, right? We haven't created it yet. And this actually brings me on to something that a client said, and uh, you know, I think of myself as a dinosaur because I've been in the industry 20 more years, right? But one of a transit million, you're not a dinosaur, you're a unicorn because you are the sum of all of your experiences from media buying to you know, in the affiliate industry, you've like network side, agency side, client side, publisher side, and and because you've done that, that is what makes you a teacher now. It's experience, and and that's yeah, I mean, I mean I can get in my soapbox and talk about this for ages, but you're not gonna become a head of affiliates after two years in the game, you're not gonna be profitable. I mean, you could go on Dustin's course, but you're still gonna have to go and integrate and actually execute. It's like you said, I can teach you everything. You can teach a framework, but you have to go learn how to execute it, and that takes time, energy, and budget to actually go and execute that stuff. So we need to move on to our last question that I haven't actually got to talk to you about, so we might have to do a part two on this. But my passing shot, because we have spoken about metaverse next big affiliate trend, or is it a long time coming? Because we are I mean, before we we're catching up to work with what we have right now and all the problems and issues that we've discussed on this podcast. Do you think now is the time for affiliate managers to start looking at the next thing, or do you think we should just focus on getting our stuff right now? What's your million-dollar feature prediction?
SPEAKER_00Life of an affiliate manager is tough enough to try to get ahead and get into that next level. I would highly suggest experimenting with everything that you can, right? If you're just working with content sites, you're doing things wrong. Like content sites are absolutely great, but if you're not getting PPC in the mix and getting those guys that can be real difference makers, you're you're missing out on opportunity. Yes, your brand might be too big to be allowing keywords to be trademarked bid on and everything, but there is some real potential in PPC. And there's also potential in influencers, and there's also potential in in the mobile categories and downloads, and like you need to be like co-marketing. You should be co-marketing with your affiliates. Go find the big name affiliates in your program and see if they want to do some kind of co-branding marketing together and start making that up. Those can be huge flash sales for your brand. So, I mean, you've just got to experiment. That's all there is to it. Like, don't just sit on what you know you're good at. You need to keep expanding your expertise and trying new things.
SPEAKER_02But you need the budget for that too. So if there's any CMOs listening, because we're gonna spend that money and we're gonna make a perform for you.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. And with every affiliate program, you keep talking. I mean, every executive I've ever talked to is like, hey, this is a performance channel, they need to be working off performance. Well, that doesn't work for everybody. Like content affiliates that get too big, they need to pay for their time. You have to pay for their time to create that content. And once that's up and six months later they're ranking for it, now they're killing it for you. But if if executives don't have that vision to invest that money early on to get this process running faster and get that affiliate to put your content on the calendar much faster than it would be from organically, then you're missing out on opportunity and that program isn't grown nearly as fast. So, like test out your affiliate manager by giving them a $2,000 a dollar a month budget. Here you go. Here's PayPal again. Go get them. And let's see what they do. Let's see what they can come up with. Where can you spend this money? If you don't spend every dollar of this this month, it'll roll over. You've got budget. Let me see what you can do in the next three months and see what happens.
SPEAKER_02Why don't you and I do a little challenge out for anybody that's listening to this podcast? Take $200 and let us know how it worked. Like, share. Share what you're learning and share what you're experiencing and come and feed that back and we'll feature you an affiliate insider. So a little bit of free PR for your affiliated man or a little bit of PR for your publisher site if you're a publisher and you're trying it as well. Like I'll put that challenge out to you guys listening to this. You know, we've we've dropped nuggets of wisdom here with Dustin today. Go take $200 next month and go and experiment with it and tell us what happens. And I'll put it up, you share it, share it, and we'll see what comes back. But you have to share. You have to share what happens. You have to share what happens in order to get the media prize at the end. It has been super fantastic having you on the podcast today, Dustin. You have shared so many nuggets of wisdom. We will share your toolkits with everybody so that they can have a look at that as well. And I'm really looking forward to meeting you in person. I'm hoping to get over to the States at some point soon. And it's just been an absolute pleasure to have you on the podcast talking about affiliate marketing in the trenches.
SPEAKER_00Beautiful. Thanks for having me. It's been fun. Let's do it again.
SPEAKER_01And that'll wrap for this week's Affiliate Insider Affiliate Marketing Podcast. If you're loving what we're putting down in this series, head on over to Apple iTunes and give us a thought on the rating and subscribe to our podcast channel so you never miss another entitled episode. Tune in next week for more digital marketing insights and traffic driving tips, tricks, and strategies to keep your digital marketing fresh and your affiliate program driving consistent sales. Making a high quality podcast like this takes a lot of work. That's a fact. But not when you hire code person. With our White Live Experience, we handle everything for you. From guest outreach all the way through to publishing and promotion. We handle it all. You show up to hold great interviews and build relationships with your guests, and we take care of everything else. Podcasting is not just about the audience. Every podcast interview is the start of a new relationship. With a weekly podcast, you would build relationships with 52 ideal partners or prospects through your podcast interviews over the next 12 months. Do you believe that 52 new relationships would grow your business? We do. Contact Jason at copestkovs.com and let's talk to the