Hi, and welcome to the affiliate insider podcast with me, Leanne Johnston. This is a podcast for digital and affiliate marketers in the gaming industry. Listen up as I explore the latest digital and affiliate marketing trends and give you the insider scoop on what's occurring in affiliate marketing. Join us as we explore affiliate strategies, host expert interviews with leading affiliate in tech entrepreneurs and discuss the latest affiliates and digital marketing trends. If you want to stay at the cutting edge of affiliate marketing, you're in the right place. Join me for this week's episode and let's get started. Hey guys.
Speaker 2Hey guys. And welcome back to their affiliate insider affiliate marketing podcast. In this first episode of our season three of this affiliate marketing podcast series, I wanted to talk a little bit about the key things that I learned about affiliate marketing about myself and about this business during 2020 and why they have transformed the way that affiliate insider. And of course this podcast will be shaping up and supporting you in 2021. But first I wanted to start off with a bit of our backstory and what has led me here today, for those of you who are listening for the first time, and maybe don't even know about affiliate insider or me and all of that as well, 2020, what can I say? I mean, let's face it this last year was probably one of the most challenging any of our businesses have had to face in during this global pandemic homeschooling and eight-year-old and running a fledgling business that hadn't quite determined itself and had no idea how, or when things would get back to normal was certainly a challenge for me. I remember when it all changed and truthfully it was during my trip to Bonnie near the end of 2019. And for those of you who follow me on LinkedIn, you can go back and look at the posts from back then when I took my first bit of time out from running affiliate insider to take stock of what I built and to figure out where we were going to go as our next steps ahead. The key thing that I'd realized about the business is that for it to work, it had to be operating as an extension of me. This meant that we had to pursue more of what I'm really good at in order to serve the customers who were seeking to help at the outset affiliate. Insider has been the second child that I didn't have. This business was born out of a need and a desire to help businesses brands and new digital marketers, marketers entering the market to get the support that they need to build successful affiliate programs and better working relationships for too long. I'd seen how the industry had grown fast without supporting fundamental principles of digital marketing and or giving training. This has resulted in an ecosystem that didn't perform as well as what it should have. Affiliate insider was created to plug that gap. And at the outset, we did this in a number of different ways as we bootstrapped the business into existence, leveraging strategic partners like SBC and IGB affiliate, and a lot of creative marketing along the way. We did it all on a shoestring budget, giving away our thought leadership and content, running numerous events and building our agency reputation as well as providing in house training. I'll be the first to admit that I have made some mistakes. Boy, have I learned the hard way in terms of what it takes to run a business and be a solopreneur to walk in the shoes of a new business owner is an experience that I would highly suggest every affiliate manager takes at least once in their career journey. It will literally give you a behind the scenes view of what it takes to build a business and a website or even a following from scratch. And I'm pretty sure that you will build a much better affiliate partnership with the people that you want to work with. Once you do, if you're starting a side hustle, isn't it for you tune into the affiliate life on affiliate insider, where we're currently detailing this journey with Martin McGarry . Who's the founder of stats , checker.com . I highly recommend that you take a read in our features column and see exactly what it takes to become an affiliate. But anyway, ultimately 2020 was a year for us to stop everywhere, manically doing, get ourselves centered and pivot to where we could deliver our original goal, which was to help people to do affiliate marketing better. When I came back from that trip in Bali, I was so excited to get going with the changes I knew we needed to make after taking that much needed time out to really think about what affiliate in slider should be focusing on and how that translated into our ongoing service offering as an agency and Google news approved content up , then COVID hit absolutely everything I had planned was stalled. We pivoted remotely to ensure our team was safe and supported. Our team literally pulled out all the stops to keep this business running and they really did give it their all. We worked with clients to Batten down the hatches and focused on driving revenue, wherever we could. And as a by-product of doing this, we've actually built a really strong digital community that supported ongoing insight and learning and has remained engaged ever since. Okay. Just share some of the lessons now that I've learned and taken away from 2020, and I'd really love to hear yours too. So do you come and find me on social media and tag me with some of the things that you've learned and let's share our experiences together? So no particular order. This is my list of things that I've learned and lessons that I've taken with me in 2020 first up, I learned that we to stay in our own lane, we focused on what we do best. And we did what brings us joy. We streamlined our offering. We listened to what people needed and wanted. And we delivered the products and services that met these objectives and goals. Ultimately, this is a partnership we're here to support our clients and our clients are here to learn from the expertise that we're willing to share. The second thing that I realized in 2020 is that I'm a great coach and an even better teacher. I just happened to be really good at affiliate marketing and , and know what it takes to build a successful program on any budget. I discovered that I really truly love to teach and that I want to connect to more people and help as many new affiliate marketers as possible to become empowered and skilled with the knowledge that I've been blessed to amass in over two decades of doing this amazing job, I want to help people build their careers. And I want to help brands meet their sales goals with a strategy that's not recycled, but that's made to order just for them. The third lesson I took away with me this year is that if I don't look after my health, I won't be able to deliver what my team and what our clients really need. As an entrepreneur, working all kinds of crazy hours work should not take over your life. And it should never define who you are being at home with my family for 12 months straight with literally no travel went since events have been canceled. I changed my view on how my work life balance needs to really be affiliate. Marketing is undoubtedly one of the most highly stressful work environments I've ever had to work in. And often I see young affiliate managers entering this workspace, working hours and hours of overtime to get things done. They're doing tasks that can be automated manually. They're forgetting to delegate or drop tasks that aren't reaching numbers on their bottom line. And their time management plays a part in making sure that they have time to think to exercise, to learn , uh , to keep themselves balanced, thereby supporting their affiliates to the fourth thing that I learned this year is that if it isn't a hundred percent, right, we'll tell you that. And we're not going to take on clients that don't actually fit with our business model and our goals. A lot of what we do in our agency relies on clients. Having the belief that affiliate marketing is the right channel for their business growth and development, and that they trust that we can deliver on these goals. We can't deliver on that. If we aren't given the space to give and create the strategy that we think will fit when the chemistry isn't right, or when the timing is wrong, we've learned not to be afraid to say so, despite being a small , independent business that is reliant on you , customer income, if things aren't a hundred percent the right fit, we'll just say no. Why? Because we always want to be able to deliver positive outcomes on strategies we create for our clients and the customers who work with us to meet new partners and grow their brand reach. We will never sell something for the sake of selling something and we will provide nothing but honest and no nonsense advice. The next thing I learnt working during COVID 2020 was that I really liked working with people. I didn't like being isolated and not being able to see people at events. I was always resistant to working one-on-one with people as the cost to do that is quite high, and it's not a viable business model, but I thrive on human contact. And I like getting into the thick of doing the work to deliver the outcomes. It's how I keep learning as an affiliate marketer. And I want to know all our customers personally, despite how big we may eventually grow. Therefore I will always be public and personable touch point for the affiliate industry. Even as this business continues to
Speaker 3Move forward. The sixth
Speaker 2Lesson I learned is that recon build a full-time business with part-time staff, hiring people with the skillset that you required to deliver your objectives right now. And not for the potential that you see in them later is one of the mistakes that a lot of entrepreneurs probably make. If you can't find the right people or skills, be brave enough to hire an agency or specialist contractor who can deliver the expertise and the experience that you need in order to get the job done, take time to find the right people, to partner with buy into the services and the delivery and the chemistry that they're offering you and your team people are what really make a business grow. And I'm blessed to have learned this early on and found a team of stars to join affiliate insider this year, who was passionate about affiliate marketing as I am, if that's even possible. I learned that consistency is key to growing your social profile and also your business leads. I learned this from growing my own LinkedIn channel, following the engagement I received when I visited Bali the year before, it was a trip that made me focus on growing just once social media channel, as my space to commune with my followers last year. And by focusing our efforts on one channel and being consistent with our audience, we doubled our following and the men and the majority of our new business that comes from LinkedIn. Social selling for affiliate recruitment is hands down. One of the best ways that affiliate managers will be able to recruit and engage new affiliates for new business in 2021. And this is something that I'm going to be teaching on. Repeat during our Amper training courses, as we move forward, the world has changed and we need to change along with it being consistent with your message and engaging people in channels where it's free to do so is something that you really need to be focusing your time on as an affiliate manager. The next thing that I want to talk about is marketing and how quality over quantity is going to be our focus for the next year. No doubt. We have an engaged community. Uh, email open rates are high and our unsubscribes are virtually non-existent,
Speaker 4But why
Speaker 2It's because we've consistently delivered content on affiliate insider that is useful. That's engaging that opens up the door to look behind the scenes of what needs to happen in order for an affiliate program to grow events may never really fully come back. So until then we have developed our new associate and premium partner, editorial and advertising packages for brands that want to benefit from our content hub, who want to get good SEO. And you want to speak to an audience of engaged affiliates and business owners who are serious about doing good affiliate marketing. We want to be a hub where people can come together to connect and to get new business done. The second last thing that I want to leave you with on this podcast about lessons that I've learned in 2020 is that I'm grateful for a business that has multiple sources of revenue from just one singular niche. I've built a business that has a variety of services that support customers in all stages of their launch life cycle, whether you're starting out with an affiliate program, or whether you need someone to help you choose the right technology, or you're a global brand, and you need help to figure out where your next move is going to come from. We have a range of services in this niche that can help your business to grow. We've simplified our services industry three key support areas, media. If you're launching a new program, a product that is servicing a need to spread the word you want to get new leads for your affiliate program, our content hub has a range of options that can help you to do that. Just go back and listen to point number eight on this podcast. If you are in any doubt in terms of how you can reach new affiliates this year with the AARP attending events, our agency, if you want to launch an affiliate program and you don't even know where to start, an agency service can help you get from point a to Zed from what technology you should use to how's your affiliate program to performing complex technical migrations and handling the day-to-day of affiliate program management and support. And lastly, our training Academy, our new amp performance program for affiliate managers is going to help businesses train their in-house teams to get the very best out of their affiliate partnerships and to understand the principles of marketing that helpful successful affiliate programs. Lastly, I learned to follow the beat of my own drum this year, and I hope that this is something that you will learn to do too . I've learned that I can't worry about what other people are thinking about or what other people are doing and how this compares to what we can deliver for our customers. The fact is people buy people and your clients and your affiliates kind of resonate with you because of who you are and what you do. If you follow your instincts and do what makes sense you and your customer and for your customers, the results will follow easily to also learn to stop procrastinating this year, which is something that I tend to do when I'm not quite sure how I want to move forward. And it's something that a lot of us need to learn to overcome in our day-to-day business lives. And also in our careers, when you stagnate, you don't move forward. And I need to look at what's happening in the future and just get on with doing what needs to be done, to make it through today and to allow tomorrow to begin. Sometimes you just have to do it like the Nike ad says , you can take advice from everybody, but ultimately you do what you think is best. And that brings me to the end of this first podcast. I hope that you will be joining us as we move forward to interview some really interesting people this year, and to talk to some of the brightest digital minds in our industry, as I go deep and uncover some of the technical and trendy items that are happening in our digital marketing landscape today, I hope you have a wonderful start to this new year and fantastic a year ahead and affiliate marketing too . We look forward to seeing you in our next episode of the affiliate marketing podcast. This podcast is sponsored by one account. One account offers a free real-time age verification solution for affiliates and helps to ensure audience compliance in highly regulated markets. The process is super simple for players who need to age, verify to access free to play games, and the tool integrates seamlessly into your existing affiliate site to find out more and get started with one account in your affiliate business, visit www.one account.net forward slash business.
Speaker 1[inaudible] .