I am Charles Schwartz Show - Profit With Affiliate Marketing

Episode Date: May 7, 2024

In this episode, Charles sits down with Lee-Ann Johnstone of Affiverse Media, a seasoned affiliate marketing expert with over 25 years of experience in the industry. Lee-Ann shares her invaluable insights on navigating the complex world of affiliate marketing and offers practical advice for businesses looking to scale their affiliate programs. Discover the key differences between affiliate marketing and paid advertising, and learn why affiliate marketing is a powerful long-term strategy for sustainable growth. Lee-Ann breaks down the essential questions to ask before launching an affiliate program and reveals the critical components of a successful affiliate marketing campaign. Throughout the episode, Charles and Lee-Ann dive deep into the technical aspects of affiliate marketing, exploring the various tools and platforms available to businesses. Lee-Ann provides guidance on choosing the right affiliate marketing solution based on your business’s unique needs and budget. Gain valuable insights into the common mistakes even experienced affiliate marketers make and learn how to avoid them. Lee-Ann shares her proven 5-step flywheel for perpetuating success in affiliate marketing, offering a simple yet effective framework for businesses to follow. Whether you’re a business owner looking to scale your affiliate program or an experienced affiliate marketer seeking to enhance your skills, this episode is packed with actionable advice and expert guidance. Tune in to discover how you can leverage the power of affiliate marketing to drive long-term, sustainable growth for your business. Key Takeaways: Uncover the little-known advantages of a marketing strategy that can outperform paid advertising in the long run Learn the crucial steps you must take before embarking on a campaign that could make or break your business Discover the surprising pitfalls that trip up even seasoned marketers, and find out how to steer clear of them Head over to https://podcast.iamcharlesschwartz.com/ to download your exclusive companion guide, designed to guide you step-by-step in implementing the strategies revealed in this episode. Key Points: 0:24 What is affiliate marketing? 3:37 When is affiliate marketing right? 5:42 Questions before starting 12:02 Consideration phase leverage 13:44 Leveraging network for trust 23:55 Profitable affiliate programs 32:44 Affiliate managers as funds managers 36:08 Front end website visibility 37:40 Affiliate onboarding experience 39:44 Loyalty and retention 48:56 Long-term agency relationships 50:28 Authentic agency partnerships 52:21 Constantly evolving industry

Welcome to the I Am Charles Schwartz Show. In this episode, we finally talk about profiting with affiliate marketing. Our guest, Leanne Johnstone, the CEO of Affievers, is a sought after veteran in the field with over 20 years of experience. She will share with us the harsh reality of affiliate marketing, the top tools she swears by, and the only proven income strategy that has survived the test of time. Her no-nonsense approach to business and life has led her to over 20 years of success hosting the Affiliate Marketing Podcast, leading webinars, and speaking at events around the world. For those of you who think that a few Instagram videos

are enough to get into affiliate marketing, listen up. This podcast will probably save you from going bankrupt. Leigh-Anne shares the exact reason that 99% of all people who attempt affiliate marketing fail. More importantly, Lee Ann shares the five steps she has used to turn her clients' programs into cash cows. Buckle up. The show starts now. Welcome to the I Am Charles Schwartz Show, where we don't just discuss success, we show you how to create it. On every episode, we uncover the strategies and tactics

that turn everyday entrepreneurs into unstoppable powerhouses in their businesses and their lives. Whether your goal is to transform your life or hit that elusive seven, eight, or nine figure mark, we've got the blueprint to get you there. The show starts now. I am excited to have you here. Thank you so much for having me, Charles. I can't believe I'm at the end of your mic. Super excited. It's amazing. We finally got to do this.

So one of the reasons I brought you on is you are very civil. We are people who don't bullshit. We want to get directly to the point. When it comes to these things, we don't want to flop. We hate people who scam. But before we get into all of that, what the hell is affiliate marketing? I know you're the queen of it. We've already just talked about your power. What the hell is it? All, what the hell is affiliate marketing? I know you're the queen of it. We've already just talked about your power.

What the hell is it? All right. So what's affiliate marketing? Very simply, it is a stream of digital marketing like paid media, like SEO, like pay-per-click, where you are actually using other people, other people's websites, assets, mobile apps, whichever way they drive traffic to leverage your own sales. So I'm going to work with you, Charles, because you've got a website that has a whole bunch of customers that buy products that I sell. And we're going to make a partnership. And every

time you send me a customer from your ecosystem platform, Instagram page, whatever it is that you are curating this audience to, I'm going to pay you a commission, a percentage of whatever that person purchases on my site. So let's say, for example, you've got a book in the background, you've got an Instagram community all about the book that you've written. And one of the things that they want to purchase is a secondary book that complements the book, you know, takes them to the next level in their journey after they've read yours. You'd send all of those customers to me, they'd purchase on my website and you'd get a percentage of all of the sales that I've made. So in the most simplest form, it's a referral agreement using other people's traffic. So you're

renting other people's traffic and every time a purchase happens, you're paying them for the privilege of having that brand space or having that customer come into your ecosystem and capture that lead. And there's many different ways to monetize this referral partnership from a cost per click, a cost per acquired customer, a cost per lead, or even a percentage of whatever that customer spends, which is typical for kind of retail clients. And it's really a fun place to be because it's pay on performance. You only pay for the sale of the good, but you leverage all of the branding and the marketing and the promotion that happens behind that at the start. So for me, it's kind of better than paid media because you've got to put the money behind

the paid media before the campaign starts. This way, the campaign starts and you put the money down when the sale happens. What I love about it is there's so many things when it comes to affiliate marketing. We're like, hey, go to this website, type in these three things, and magically you're in affiliate marketing. Magically, money is going to come out of their toilets and it's going to make you rich forever. And you and I both know that's complete trash. And one of the reasons I want to bring you on here is like, look, listen, there's, there's a lot of potholes. There's a lot of things that you need to know from when to do it, how to

do it, what tech to do it, who to do it with, how to set up the relationship, all these things that people just completely don't understand. They're like, Hey, I want, I want to make sushi. So I just go buy rice. I'm like, Oh God, no, there's so much more that you need to know in building that final output. So I would want to have you come on and really just say, hey, how are you going to scale whatever it is that you're going to do with affiliate marketing for your individual product? Here are a bunch of the potholes.

Here's what you're going to run into. Here are some of the mistakes. And then ultimately we'll get to what we think you should be doing, which you and I both agree on that already. It's a really simple idea. So when it comes in and there's yeah i was gonna say let's start at the beginning because there's quite a lot that you unpack there and i don't want to

kind of like lose that spread but the first thing is maybe deciding when is affiliate marketing right for you because i think a lot of people they do hear the hype they do see all the tiktoks they do see the youtube videos and everything else that's out there on the interweb about how easy it is to become affiliates, how easy it is to make money in an affiliate program. And I think the first thing is to just tell the honest truth that that's not the case. It can be incredibly complex. It can be costly if you don't know what you're doing. But I think the first step is to figure out, is an affiliate program right for me? So figuring out where you are in your business journey and what it is that you're trying to achieve, like what is your why? Are you trying to get more customers? Are you trying to grow brand awareness for your business? Are you trying

to just leverage like business to business partnerships where you work with other companies that are similar to you and you want to be able to do a referral agreement, having that clear in your head first will tell you what road you go down to actually create an affiliate program for you or whether it's the right time to give you the ROI that you need versus perhaps doing a paid campaign on Facebook, for example, or any other native advertising network. So I think what you need to think about first is where are you in your business journey?

What's the investment that you can make? Because the other thing to consider about affiliate marketing is that it's not you pay your money, you start getting your traffic. You're working with other companies, other humans, other entrepreneurs. Their timelines are not always your own. So to get a campaign started, to get the technical integrations put into place, to track all of this and to actually compensate people for the sales that they're bringing you, there's a timeline in place for that. So understanding where you are in your business journey, understanding what other marketing channels you're currently leveraging and whether affiliate is the right time for you to get it to kind of like extend that.

And then understanding the price points and the kind of budgeting that's going to be required in order to launch a program because whilst you pay your affiliates on performance when they deliver traffic there are upfront costs that you need to account for as well so i think let's start with when is the right time so i think the right time what are the yeah what are the questions like before you start everything before you do an outreach to say i'm gonna go to the website, what are the five or six questions that say, hey, I need to, as a business owner, have these bulletproof answers. I need to know what they are. Do you have those that you kind of, when you work with your clients and you help and you've been coaching people and you've been doing this 20 something years, 26 years, I think at this point, what are the questions that you're like, hey, these are the ones, answer these first before you even bother me. Answer these five or six.

So the first thing is, have you got a product that you can pay a reasonable amount of commission on? So for example, if your product is $5, nobody's going to really be able to drive eyeballs to your website for 20p. So is your product robust enough to pay a reasonable amount of money for a new customer being sent to you? And you would have that understanding of that if you had done a little bit of paid media in your business, because you'd know more or less what the price is that you're acquiring a customer for. Now, there are many different ways to commercial a referral agreement. So I would say if there's anything from like five pounds or $5 for a lead is more or less average. So if you can afford to pay $5 for a lead for a smaller product

and up to $1,000, $2,000 for whatever it is that you're selling, depending on whether it's a product or a service, then you're pretty much in the range of being in a space where you could potentially open up an affiliate program and look at it. The second thing is, do you have a budget? So do you have money in place to invest now for the long-term gains that an affiliate program is going to give you? Because if you've got, and the amount of money that you'd need to kind of put together or put aside to actually start an affiliate program is anyway, depending on the infrastructure that you're going to use, anywhere between sort of 10, 20 grand to 50 grand. So if you don't have 10 to 50 grand just to invest in getting the infrastructure right for an affiliate program to actually launch it and start to track it and pay

it and manage all of the administration and everything that needs to happen technically for the referrals to go between you and all of your partners, then this isn't the channel for you. I'd rather, if your budget is limited, you should rather take that money and spend it on paid where you're going to get upfront income coming back in immediately. So timing as well is also important. How quickly do you want an affiliate program to actually start bearing ROI for you? Because typically what happens with the setup of an affiliate program, and this is where we need to educate customers, is it takes anything between three and six weeks to actually just set that technical integration up so is your website robust enough to actually integrate with the tracking solutions whether it's a network or

a sas product that you're going to be implementing in-house and there are two you know different schools of thoughts as to which way you're going to run it. Is your infrastructure robust enough to actually accommodate all of that tracking? Because that's the first thing. Do you have the budget? That's the second thing. And thirdly, do you have the resources to actually manage all of this when it's live? Because you might think you're only going to get 10 affiliates signing up to your program. What happens if you get 100? If the product is robust, if the revenue is attractive and people start to go hey this is a great product and i want to promote it how do you then leverage to support all of those partners in your program and and this could be things like customer support you know how do you answer things like i've lost my password i can't

log in i don't know how to get my tracking link i need a new banner have you got design design you know, or an agency that can help you with creating banners, content, all the things that your referral partners are going to need? So I think there's actually only three really. You asked me for five,

but I think it's three to get you started. It's, is my infrastructure robust? Can my tech actually, you know, can my backend actually track all of this stuff? Do I have enough money to invest to actually get the infrastructure in place? And have I got money to invest now for the long-term gains that an affiliate program brings me? Because it will take you anything between three to six weeks to actually just set up the tracking solution to enable you to actually

house the affiliate program. It'll take you another sort of three to six months to actually outreach and sell the affiliate program into referral partners and get them onboarded and maybe another two three weeks for them to then set the campaigns to live and then go so your first six months of investing in an affiliate program is really the cost base that you have to put up up front to actually get the whole program started so you could be funding that for, you know, 10 grand a month, for example. So anything between, let's say 10 and 50 grand, there are cheaper options to launch into the affiliate space as well. If you've got a very simplistic program just in one region, you know, maybe it's just one or two products that you're selling. So it really depends on what your business is and how

complex the program has to be. And that's probably one of the reasons why we would say, if you are thinking about getting into an affiliate program, set up a call, set up a strategy call with an agency and actually investigate what are the minimum parameters that you're going to need before you just go ahead and launch yourself onto a network, which is incredibly easy to do, by the way. I love that we did all that. One of the things you hit was paid advertising versus affiliate program. If you don't have the budget, don't go to affiliate program.

That's not your niche. That's not your jam. Go over here. Why would someone ever choose, because I've done a lot of paid advertising versus affiliate programming. Why would I choose affiliate versus paid? If someone's listening and is going, okay, you just told me there's all this upfront,

there's all this backend that I have to have set up, there's all these resources that need to be there, why would I even do affiliate programming in this environment if paid is so much easier? Paid is easier at the beginning, but it gets harder to scale. And you tap out on certain communities that affiliates aren't even touching. So you're actually, by extending your marketing plan from outside of just paid channels, cost per click, Google keywords and paid media through social channels or in Apple, wherever you're going to be buying paid advertising, there's still customers that are being

brought to you through lots of other different channels. I mean, they's still customers that are being brought to you through lots of other different channels. I mean, they're saying now that customers have anything up to a 26 point touch journey. So they're going to, you know, buy awareness and then consideration and then they purchase. Now affiliates help you in all three of those categories. So whilst paid media might help you with branding and purchase, like the actual purchase model, what's happening in a consideration phase? So depending on the kind of product that you have, this is when you would leverage affiliates,

because they can not only push your brand for nothing, where they put your campaign live, they only get paid when they send you customers, but they can also help you at different touch points within that customer journey based on the content that they're creating. They can also help you leverage other social channels. So if all your money is invested in Facebook, for example, what are you going to do on Instagram? You can leverage affiliates to actually help you grow that channel instead or use content creators or brand ambassadors,

and you can compensate them in different ways and still leverage those other channels into your marketing mix. So you wouldn't just do any one form of advertising to grow your business. You'd be doing a little bit of SEO on your own website to get direct traffic. You'd be doing a little bit of social media to talk to people about your products, your services. You'd be doing a little bit of pay-per-click advertising on strong keywords that customers are looking for you. And affiliates is just another feather to that boat to expand your reach to customers that maybe you aren't able to touch with the finite budget that you have for immediate spend. I think what's great about that is the paid advertising gets a car rolling,

but it doesn't have the other stuff that is so important in the psychology of selling. We talk about things like inherited trust. We talk about things like KLT, which is no liking trust. The idea that if I walk into a room and I go, I'm amazing. No one talks to me. No one buys me. It's not going to happen. But if Leanne walks in and no one knows who Leanne is, and she still says, hey, Charles is amazing. I automatically get this inherited trust.

I'm like, oh, well, he must be amazing. Affiliate programs have the ability to do that where you're leveraging a network because remember your network is your net worth. Paperclip-click doesn't do that you're just gonna know one of those ads that's going to buy for me i'm great give me a thousand dollars buy for me that that doesn't sustain as you said really well you can't scale that and this is about how you long-term scale it is you're building that relationship because if i bring you into my network and i'm like hey listen guy leanne is just she's absolutely a queen of she's the's the absolute goddess. You don't have to sell yourself anymore. It's done. And that's really what I love about the affiliate world is you're borrowing and leveraging that network that

already has that trust buildup, that already has this idea. So if you go on and you can leverage someone else's audience, that sale from 26 touch points drops down to a lot less. And that's why it's so much more important for affiliate marketing. Now, how money the bank, as you were mentioning, it takes a little while. You got to get that engine built. You got to have everything sustained. You got it. It takes a little while. So again, I think you said it really, really well. Do your paperclip, get your money going, do your paid advertisement. That's fine. And then if you actually want to scale this long term, you got to get yourself in the affiliate space to actually hit those higher numbers. And also if you've got the kind of business where you've done exceptionally one in one country where you are maybe based, but now you want to take your product into another

country, leveraging affiliates in that country to actually do that without having to spend up front to test the market, to get customers on, to get testimonials. And that's a great way to actually expand your reach at a lower cost than paying for advertising in a country that you're not maybe familiar with or that you don't understand the localization for. So affiliates play a really important role in not only brand reach and brand awareness,

but also in terms of localization. So they speak the local languages, they can talk about your product in an authentic way or your service in an authentic way. And that's really what you're tapping into is the long-term authenticity and the long-term branding and brand reach that affiliates can bring you. And you're only paying for that when they deliver your customers. So you're getting that bit for free. And we are also getting to leverage their network and giving them something in return.

We talked about before we started recording, you have access to XYZ Person. x or y and we are also getting to leverage their network and giving them something in return you know we talked about before we started recording you have access to xyz person xyz person has you know 50 000 people in his network well if you set up an environment with xyz person you say i'm going to give you affiliate feedback of that he's going to open up that network and that's not something you're going to get through paid ads you're getting that leverage trust and leverage is a huge word when it comes to everything in scaling a business, but especially when it comes to affiliate. Now, we also talked about there's some tech behind it.

And there's some things that people need to know tech-wise. Like, hey, what app should I use? What banner should I use? Should I use Canvas? Should I use this? What is the tech when someone goes in and they're going to do affiliate that's like, listen, clearly this isn't just one website that I drop 50 bucks in and completely lose my money.

I need to go through what is the tech that i'm walking into okay what are the tools that i should be using versus the ones we shouldn't be so there's two schools of thought so and this is really going to be depending on your price okay because in affiliate marketing i always liken it to when you're buying a house when you buy a house you always want to buy the absolute best house in the best neighborhood so even if it's absolute best house in the best neighborhood. So even if it's the smallest house in the best neighborhood, that's what you can afford. That's what you're going to go for versus buying a huge house in a neighborhood that maybe isn't so nice. Okay. So long-term, you're going to think long-term with affiliate marketing because

it is a long-term play. So there's two schools of thought to launching a program. You can either do everything in-house and use what we call a SaaS solution to track everything, where that is just an off-the-shelf solution that you can get, they white label it up for you, you plug it into your website backend, and it tracks everything. But that SaaS solution will not do personalized customizations for you. So if you wanted to maybe, you know, they've got all the basics and basic features that pretty much everybody uses, but if you had a business that you wanted to compensate affiliates in a different way to the basic model of what the SaaS solution does, then you'd need to start to do workarounds and you need to start to like find customizing and development and things like that. A SaaS solution is going to be a lot cheaper for you to plug in and go. So if you're doing a beta

test, for example, and you're going, I'm not sure if affiliates is or if i want to go all in just want to test something there are so many great sass solutions that you can plug into to just test the waters quietly in the background and get your feelings out do you like there's loads um there's so many but i mean depending on what your business is there would be different ones that i would recommend so for e-commerce there would be different solutions that are built specifically for e-commerce. For B2B SaaS products, there would be certain solutions that are built. They all customize it. It's kind of like shoes.

Nike, Puma, Adidas, you know, they all do the same thing. So SaaS is one way, but then you're going to have to do everything in-house. So you're going to have to pay all of your affiliates yourself. You're going to have to run all of the customer support for all the affiliates. You're going to have to design all of the creator for all of the affiliates. You're going to have to upgrade your systems yourself because all they're giving you is the technical solution that sits between you and the partner. Okay. And the reporting suite that happens, the tracking and the reporting. Slightly cheaper to launch, but where you're going

to spend more money is on the recruitment to bring new partners in, to find them and bring them in. So that's one way. You own all of your own relationships in that solution. There's no override fees or anything that you need to pay other than the technical cost of the tracking solution. So it's like a subscription-based model. The other way to launch your program is to go into what we call an affiliate network. So it's the tracking solution plus access to all of the partners that they've already recruited into their platform.

So you save a little bit of money on when you launch, going out and finding 100 affiliate partners to invite into your program because they already have a partnership platform that you can plug into. Now, the problem with that is, is that not all of the partners in that network will be suitable for you because there's thousands of publishers in there. So maybe only 20 of those publishers are suitable for you. You're still going to have to do recruitment, but you've got a little buffer to get you started. Slightly more expensive though. And out of all of the networks, they will have different things. Again, she's issues. So Awin would be a specific retail platform. CJ would be a specific retail

platform. Then you've got something like ShareASale, which is very geographically focused into a certain region. So lots of different choices to make in terms of whether you go direct and you're going to do everything in-house and you've got the skillset in-house developers, designers, resources, account managers to manage that, or whether you're going to do everything in-house and you've got the skillset in-house, developers, designers, resources, account managers to manage that, or whether you're going to leverage the benefits of an affiliate network to go into, which will be slightly more expensive

because you're getting all of these add-on services and you still have to dictate your own strategy as well on top of that. So both of them are much of a match and it's going to be down to price. There is no school of thought of one is right and one is wrong. It's what fits you at this point in your kind of customer journey into affiliates. It's interesting because having scaled businesses for a very long time, people come to me like,

hey, I'm a chef. I'm like, okay, congratulations, you're a chef. Cool. I'm going to do the accounting for my company. I'm sorry. What? I'm like, you're a chef. I'm like, okay, congratulations, you're a chef. Cool, I'm going to do the accounting for my company. I'm sorry. What? I'm like, you're a chef. Don't do that.

This is one of the things you and I share a very strong belief on. I think it was Ford. The Ford of Rockefeller. He talks about where he came in and he got interviewed. And they said, hey, we're going to interview you. Find out if you're really the genius guy. What is the circumference of the moon? And he reached over and he pressed the button.

And he goes, hey, send Jeff in. And Jeff walking in. Hey, Jeff, what's the circumference of the moon? And Jeff said it he pressed the button and he was hey send jeff in and jeff walking hey jeff what's this comes to the moon and jeff said anything okay and the people the interviewer was like um okay and then he asked him another question and he brought somebody else in like dude you're cheating they're not cheating i hire people smarter than me and i get out of their way one of the things that's important when you're trying to scale anything ever and this will this is a universal theme that you'll hear a bazillion times hire the person who's smarter than you, get out of their way. Don't try and do it on your own because you might save a couple of dollars, but it's either

out of pocket or out of hide, and it's going to eat you alive long term. And that's why I think when you first brought up the conversation of paid versus affiliate is, okay, get the money in the bank, make sure that you can keep the lights on, and then play the long-term game, have someone else who already knows what they're doing and do that. And it's one of the things when we first started talking about this, okay, does this make sense? I'd love to have you on and all that. We hit very quickly, like, no, this is the reality. There's a way that works, that's proven to work.

Yes, people are going to be at different parts of their lifestyle, their businesses and their life cycle of their businesses. But it's like, hey, this is what works. I'm not going to throw fluff up your butt. I'm not going to say this book is the ideal book. Let's get directly to what actually works. So I guess for me, that's really the question we have now. We know what affiliate marketing is.

We understand the difference between paid and we understand the long-term gain. We understand there's these things. If someone sat there, gunned your head and said, listen, I need this to work because my family has to pay their bills. What do you do? What are the things that you're like, this is what happens. This is what is the next step. Okay.

So I think it's very important to just go back on what you said a little bit earlier. You wouldn't hire a doctor if you needed a dentist. Okay. So there are digital marketing agencies out there that will tell you that they can run your affiliate program for you but what you're getting done is very low level watered down account management support and unfortunately in the affiliate marketing industry because it's such a complex channel we need to know everything about everything all different types of traffic sources all different types of commercial negotiation the The price, like if you pay peanuts, you're going to get monkeys in this industry.

That's unfortunately the truth. So if it's too cheap and it sounds too good, it's probably not going to be great. Okay, you're not going to get the best results. So you're going to spend money, spend money, spend money and not actually see like quantifiable results with that. Now, bear in mind that affiliate marketing does take time to ramp up because you're dealing with other humans, their timelines are not your own, you've got all of these technical things that you need to get ready and in place, you should start to see ROI on your investment within six to nine months. I mean, I can do it in three to six months because I've

been doing it for 25 years and I know exactly what triggers to pull. But if you are not seeing a return on investment within six to nine months, there is something fundamentally wrong with your affiliate program and you need to get it fixed. What's a good ROI? Let me interrupt you there. What's a good ROI? Well, a senior program should be profitable in terms of if you look at all the expense, the cost of your tech, the cost of running it, the cost of your promotions that you're

giving to affiliates to push because you obviously have to deduct all of that off of the cost of the sale of goods plus the cost of the resources behind actually managing all of these publishers okay so but within six to nine months your program should that initial investment that you put in place to actually get the program started should be paying back dividends and you should start to see the revenue line raise so it's kind of like have you ever heard of the fibibonacci sequence? Yeah. Where the Fibonacci sequence grows like this, okay?

And that's how an affiliate program grows. So the first three to six months or three to nine months is really just the setup cost in technical integration, the brand push, the sell, the launch and everything else to get you going. Then you start to mature on that

and that's where you start to build the relationships, grow the scale, find which partners are actually bringing you the right value, customers, tweak those to increase them a little bit more, like you would with a paid media campaign. If you're running an ad campaign, you tweak it all the time, right? Same thing for Affiliates,

except you're dealing with humans. You're asking humans to do things. And so you really do need to start to see a result within six to nine months. And if you're not, then something's wrong with your program. Either you're not commercializing it correctly, you're on the wrong tech, you're overpaid. Because there is instances where I get clients who have got the Rolls Royce of technology when actually all they needed was the Mini Cooper. So they're spending all the money on the tech and not enough money on the promotions. And that's why you need to really deal with an expert because you can burn a lot of money

if you don't have the right strategy in place with a 3DX. Same like you can burn a lot of money if you don't have the right strategy in place with SEO, same way you can burn money with paid media. So why would you go to a generalist when you actually need a specialist? And that takes me back to the, why would you go to a generalist when you actually need a specialist? And that takes me back to the why would you go to a dentist who's also a doctor if you actually needed a doctor, a GP? So in affiliate marketing, in my experience, it has always been good to either get an initial upfront strategy session with an expert who can actually direct you and you're paying

them to direct you then by all means take it in-house if you want to have a go at account managing and doing the kind of day-to-day stuff or hire an expert and get out of the way and let them just crack on with it and give them the budget and kind of sense check with them every month what you need them to do so during that initial strategy session what are the questions that someone should be asking when they when they go and they meet with someone who, again, you've got 25 plus years experience? What are some of the questions? What are the questions they should ask? Because most people don't even know what they don't know.

So what are some questions you should expect? Not only that you should be asking your potential affiliate individual that you're working with, but also that they should be asking of you. So, you know, hey, this is probably a good person because in the IT world, we know there's some litmus tests. When I showed on an IT company and we were interviewing somebody who was a database engineer, we knew that there were certain questions that he had to ask me. There's just no way around it. If he didn't say certain things, I knew that he didn't know what he was doing and then vice versa. The biggest secret for those of you guys who are looking at hiring anyone in the IT space, hire the person who's annoyed. When you're

asking a question and they're annoyed that you're asking the question, that's the expert. He's like, oh my God, you're asking about this again? Just as a bonus there, the person who's annoyed and doesn't want to deal with you, that's the person you want to hire. Anyone who's trying to sell you, they're fluff, it's BS, don't hire that person. Hire the person who's actually annoyed. But back to the affiliate world, what questions should I be asking someone to do? And then what should they be asking me? So I would expect a client to ask me questions that validate that I can actually deliver and understand their product. So if I was the client, I'd be asking me, how will your team manage my program? Do you suggest that I go in-house or network and why? Always ask the and why,

because I could give you any answer and how would you know that that's correct? You're not the expert I am. So always ask the quantification, like why would I go in-house versus network? Why are you suggesting that? The other thing is also quantify what your budgets are up front, because if you come to me and you give me, it's kind of like an organogram, like a flow diagram. I start with a whole bunch of questions and each time you give me an answer, it goes yes, no, and then down to another option, yes, no, and then down to, and eventually we arrive at a conclusion. And sometimes it takes me upwards of like half a day in a strategy session to figure out what is the best strat plan for this client. And the other thing to also check about is, does your agency or strategist or consultant or whoever it is that you're talking to,

are they asking you about what you're doing in all of your other channels? Because if your agency strategist consultant is not interested in finding out what else you're doing in the other marketing channels, they're not the right partner for you. Because what I do is I consider what the client is doing in all of the other channels that they're working in, and how do we best then leverage their affiliate program to augment everything else and improve everything else? So if they're spending money on link building and SEO, what am I going to do in their affiliate program to find partners that can do that for them for free upfront so that they can reduce the SEO and spend budget and maybe plug it into paid media a little bit until we get the program up and running. So you've got to be looking at your strategy holistically across all of your digital channels. And if your agency that

you're talking to is not asking you about what's happening in the rest of your business, they're probably not experienced enough to take your program on. That would be the big red flag for me. Yeah, absolutely. You talked about in one of the things you were sharing before, are you a hunter or you're a gatherer? And the reality is you got to be both.

You know, there's some people who are one or the other, but you're ideally find someone who has the ability to play both worlds or at least have team members that can play both worlds because this isn't, hey, I'm going to teach you Facebook. This isn't, hey, we're doing SEO. This is, and again, I have so much more empathy for your world and the people who work in your world because I feel like, oh my God, that sucks. Because it's the difference between a doctor versus a vet, right? A doctor becomes a doc in four years, a vet takes seven years, because it has to learn all these different anatomies versus one anatomy. When you talk to someone who's a proper affiliate marketer,

they have to learn so much forever. It's a forever thing. Actually, you know what? That is the best analogy I've ever heard somebody say of what the skill set that an affiliate marketing needs to have because you are 100 correct we are the vets of digital marketing um and we have to learn everything that goes on in every channel from influencer marketing to b2b marketing to seo ppc paid, because our partners work across all of those channels

and bring us traffic from each. And that's one thing that, you know, I've spent 20 years kind of beating my drum about because more often than not, affiliate marketers have always been the people in the shroom room. Nobody really understands it. They don't really know how it works. Yet it is the only digital channel that is growing by double digit figures year on year worldwide. So more money is being invested into the performance marketing slash affiliate channel by brands, by big advertisers around the world than any other digital channel at this point. And that number keeps growing. And because we've got a recession, we're changing the way we spend our budgets. Because we had COVID, we were changing the ways we were spending our budgets.

But honestly, this is the only digital channel that I've seen continue to grow in the last 20 years where budgets have continued to pour in because it is the most efficient. There's also huge psychology built in behind it. And people don't understand this. When you're selling, people don't buy products or services. They stories identities and ways out of pain and they

don't buy from complete strangers they buy from people they know like and trust and you're when you're just doing ads when just the new thing that hey instagram's new or facebook's new or whatever that new thing is that's not going to sustain you you got to have the psychology of selling behind it so when i first walked into i was like what the hell is affiliate marketing and then i was like oh wait the psychology made sense to it. So when I first walked into it, I was like, what the hell is affiliate marketing? And then I was like, oh wait, the psychology made sense to me. Like this makes sense. This is sustainable. This is going to give me long-term results versus what you have with people who do one sort of paid media. Sooner or later, that car starts sputtering. That engine starts ticking out because you've already hit that well so many times. There's just nothing else.

You've dried out that well versus what is an affiliate environment it's like okay which well do you want like all of them like okay we have access to all of them let's decide what works right now based on your goals and having that strategy session and kind of going through there so that's what you know all of you behind it 100 yeah 100 and affiliate managers are actually more than just practitioners they're also also funds managers. They need to know at any given point, where do they spend the performance budget more or less? It's like marionetting the puppet strings all the time. Do I spend more on brand ambassadors at the moment because we've got a new product that we want to launch to market? Or do I spend more on content and review-based sites because I need to increase my SEO rankings and build brand awareness and push my competitors out? Or do I spend more on

affiliates that are doing paper thick because there's a whole bunch of long-tail keywords that all of a sudden people are searching for us for? So they're constantly having to move the budget in between all of these different types of referral partners and figure out where's the ROI on the program as a whole on average. So it does become a little bit complex. And I'm not saying that that's what's going to happen at the beginning when you first launch in month one, two, three, and six. But when you get to month 24, you know, 48, and you're going into multiple regions,

and you've got multiple products, and maybe you're launching multiple brands within your affiliate program, that's when it starts getting a little bit complex. And that's when you're going to want to have an expert on hand. If I don't, we did the intro, like, Hey, if you've never done this before, there's going to be people listening to this who are affiliate mark. And they're like, Hey, you've been doing this a long time. I'm never going to have access to Leah and how are we going to actually have, what are the questions? What are the biggest mistakes? I guess, if I'm an experienced

affiliate marketer, I've been doing this for five years, you know, maybe 10 What are the things that when they come to you and you're like, oh God, what are you? Okay, now sit down. Let's pivot you around here. Okay, love, let me help you out here. What are the major mistakes someone who has experience as an affiliate marketer who is maybe working for an organization or doing it on their own that you're just like, oh God, please stop doing that? So what are the things that they run into? The complacency. And that's not a criticism. It's when you're working internally in your own business all the time, you do become a

little bit sight blind. So often when we take on clients, we see that there's complacency and heavily reliance in just a few top publishers, which is never a good idea. So we call it program segmentation. Your program has to have a really good diverse mix of publishers because say, for example, Google changes the algorithm and you're heavily invested in SEO affiliates at the top of your program. Your numbers are going to go down overnight. And how do you plug those numbers back up again? How

do you maintain that stability? So there is complacency in terms of not recruiting new talent in. There's forgetting about the long tail of publishers that sometimes go dormant for whatever reason and just not understanding how to reactivate and reinvigorate those relationships because you're too worried about the top guys who are driving the bulk of your revenue. And then also simple things like not actually just marketing your program. Like the front page of your, or the shop front of your affiliate program doesn't actually sell why affiliates should effectively be working with you. And it's not just always about money.

You know, sometimes the clearest USPs of the program or the products that they're expecting affiliates to promote aren't clearly marked on their website anywhere and or easy for affiliates to find and then they wonder why they're not getting a lot of affiliate signups to their program well how are they finding you that you're not even you know listing it on their website there are even clients that come to us that don't even have a link to the affiliate program in the future on their page now you sit in there wondering why do affiliates not sign up so why are we struggling to find affiliates? Well, it's nowhere on your front end website, which is kind of where an affiliate would go to look. So just really basic, simple marketing principles that sometimes just get lost because you're overwhelmed with the kind of day-to-day of managing the admin and

the kind of going with the daily tasks that go with managing a program that gets big. So we, in every industry and every company that i've worked with um there's always kind of this running joke when you go in there like okay well there's these top five or ten things that you're like oh god like when in the it world it's like hey my printer doesn't print we're like did you put paper in it they're like yeah no good job there buddy well done well done so there's this kind of laundry list you know when you know i go in lawn care companies and they're like the mower doesn't work like is there gas in it they're like no i mean and they think about that hang up and they're like i messed it so there's it's kind

of this laundry list so just like did you do this can you just i know we didn't talk about this beforehand but are there's kind of like these like things that are god did you just do these the hot five like the biggest mistake whatever they are that like okay so the first thing i'm gonna i'm gonna kind of do like a little fly mini flywheel here because that i always think if you do it easy and and you know people can follow step by step it just uh it self-perpetuates itself to continue success right so the first thing is think about the front end of your website what i've just just said. Like, are you actually actively selling your affiliate program? And are you upselling the really key benefits that affiliates need to know before they sign up to your program?

What they're going to earn, you know, what the benefits are, how they're going to be treated, and are you giving them a great onboarding experience? So the first part of the flyer meal is, is my onboarding experience for my affiliate partners absolutely beautiful and giving them the great first touch experience and how I want you to think about that is when you start a new job at a business and you come and and you come to your desk on the first day there's a beautiful gift box saying welcome to our company you've got your pen your laptop your mac all nicely set up on your desktop you've got a nice notebook that's branded and

you're ready to go and you've got your lanyard or your key fob or whatever the case may be. That makes you feel special, right? So what are you doing to make your affiliates feel special when they join your program? What's that onboarding experience that you're giving them? And how are you educating them in order to promote your brand? Because they're going to look at everything that you give them. And from that, they have to go and create content. They have to go and figure out how they're going to reach the customer that you're looking for. So are you even giving them a customer profile of who you're trying to attract so they can then take that away, investigate it, and then build their campaigns around your program? So think about the onboarding experience.

Next thing is think about how do you contract and commercial with them and commercially negotiate with them. Do you just let them register into your program and they have to take the bare minimum and then only when they start delivering revenue, do you then maybe reach out three to six months later and go, hey, I'm your affiliate manager. Would you like to talk about a deal now? Like that should not be happening. You should be contacting every new affiliate that comes into your program and actually

identifying how can they drive traffic? What kinds of customers are they looking to get to you and how you can leverage that opportunity? So how are you managing that in the program process to contract with them and actually get value upfront rather than waiting for them to first deliver? And only then you pick them up and you all kind of look reports and say, hey, I noticed you've got some traffic. Well, it's a bit late now because I tried that campaign for three months and you didn't contact me. So think about how are you contracting with them? And then how are you keeping them active and

loyal? So that could be the third step in the flywheel. And what do I mean by active and loyal? Sometimes affiliate managers go through years without ever doing something basic like a SWOT analysis on their program. So where are your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats against your nearest competitor? And you should really be doing something like that with your team or your affiliate database once a quarter at the minimum because stuff is changing all the time around you your competitors are developing products you're developing products your price points are changing your method your messaging is changing so how are you doing that analysis

so that you can help educate your affiliates to continue to doing the right things for you to bring in the right customers um so really doing that loyalty piece, that reactivation piece that I spoke about earlier, which kind of just gets left off the radar because you're so focused on the guys that are bringing you sales, which is the right thing to do. But you can't forget about that long tail of partners that suddenly drop off for whatever reason,

because maybe they didn't like your customer service. Maybe they had a bad campaign and you didn't contact them and say, hey hey how can we work this out how can we make it better so they went off to your competitor to promote them instead so first one is onboarding second one is contracting third one is um loyalty and retention how do you actually keep them active and then the fourth thing is um education so is education. So keeping them educated. Things change in our industry all the time. Even for certain types of programs,

compliance rules change. Like we've just recently had a really big announcement in the US where the FTC is putting guidelines in place so that consumers have accurate advertising from any kind of publisher, brand, anything that goes online. You have to have certain disclaimers that are in place so that consumers have accurate advertising from any kind of publisher, brand, anything that goes online. You have to have certain disclaimers that are in place. So how are you investing to actually help your affiliates to continue to promote your program and to continue to grow with your program? Because they're working with hundreds of different brands.

How can you possibly expect them to keep on top of everything that's relevant to just you? So there needs to be a continual education process that happens with your affiliates. And then the fifth step is having a regular touch base. So reviewing everything that's happening, looking at campaign analysis, and that should really be happening once a month with the big guys and once a quarter on the program as a whole. So having that time to actually look at all of your analysis, look at the lifetime journey of all the customers that your affiliates are bringing into you and assessing whether those are the right customers that you need and want.

Because just having a first sale might not actually be what you need the program to do. Having repeat sales from that customer is something that you actually want to go after. And then assessing where are you spending your budget every month? Are you spending it with the right partners in your program? Or are you spending it with the partners that are bringing you the most customers, but not the highest-landing ones? So if you stick to those five simple steps, that could be a really easy way to continue to do this. It was two steps. I mean, they are. I'm breaking the down into a very- It's been done over 25 years. It's all in absence.

But it kind of self-perpetuates success if you just keep doing those same five steps. Use the word, they've pulled well. It's interesting because I bought and sold companies. I bought and scaled companies. I tell people all the time, there's this stuff down here in Florida. There's the opportunity to buy these little boats.

You sit two people in the little boat and they go on the water and you rent them out for a hundred bucks an hour. And you're like, buy. There's, you know, you buy these mobile little dog grooming thing. Really simple. Really, really easy. You acquire them. You scale them. You let them go.

There are certain times, even in the IT world, I would tell people like, listen, you don't really need an IT guy for this. You just go to YouTube and it'll tell you what to do because that's what we're literally doing when we go into the server closet. Do we have some problems? We're like, oh, really? We're walking through that white paper or whatever. We're just doing it on our own. So this is the hand up.

There are ways and there are businesses where you can cut the corner. There are businesses when you can do that. You and I have had many conversations. I have access to some of your training material. I know where I sit on that as a business owner, as someone who's scaled multiple businesses. There isn't a chance in hell I will ever try and do this on my own.

It's overwhelming. I think someone who is an affiliate marketer, someone who becomes an affiliate manager and someone who does it, this is a special breed of people. So I think there's two worlds. There's the people who, if you have this on your team and there's a member in your world and you're like, hey, you know what? We've already got an affiliate marketer.

We love Susie. Susie's great. She's doing that. Mazel tov. Thank God you found a Susie. These are very rare human beings. And then there's the people who are like me who are like i'm going to try and do this and the minute you listen to this hopefully we deterred you from don't try and

do this on your own you're gonna yeah this is yeah this is don't try at home what would be the you know if you're ever here saying okay you're trying to learn more you're trying to optimize who you're you know your affiliate manager helping them out or if you're a affiliate manager now hey i need some of this knowledge because it's a lot versus the business owner who's like, okay, I thought this was going to be fun, but I clearly don't know how to scale it. What would be the two avenues that you would recommend for those two people? So for the CZ camp, so I've got somebody in-house. They're doing a great job. They're managing everything on a network.

Maybe they want to scale it. Maybe they want to get into different markets maybe they want to understand you know different types of publisher publishers that suzy hasn't ever worked with or doesn't have the experience so that's when you would kind of send suzy on a training course or um you know bring in a strategic consultant to come in and sit alongside suzy to augment whatever suzy's doing and and just give an extra set of hands and some insights on how Susie can maybe leverage and go forward. Whether Susie wants to hire in-house and send them on a training course, that kind of like, I would say coaching almost is kind of what you want. You want to send Susie on that coaching course and just go, here's the top line things that you can

maybe do a little bit better and tap into some of the other strategies that maybe Susie hasn't ever done before because Susie's learning on the job as she's going okay everybody's learning affiliate marketing on the job as as we go because the entire industry changes all the time we've got new channels new things happening so Susie can in fact nobody 25 years experience I'm not even I never ever call myself an expert. Nobody can ever be an expert in affiliate marketing because tomorrow it changes again and the next day it changes again. So tapping into that knowledge base and going on like a coaching journey with somebody who's gone before you and has a lot of experience is a very valuable thing for you to invest in in your business if you want to scale.

The other camp is the people like you and I who hire experts and then get out of their way. That's the time when you go and find an agency. And when you're going down the agency route and you want to work with an agency that wants to partner with you and actually really handle this channel for you. So you pay the budget, you set the ground rules, you explain the KPIs that you're trying to reach as your business. And the agency takes that on to actually go and deliver it with the staff that they're investing in and training and getting done. That's the other option. So it's kind of done with you and done for you. Those are the only

two options that you have. And you can decide how much or how little of each you want to do because you can do them both together and you can also do them either or, or you can do a little bit of this and a little bit of that because most agencies will tailor a package based on whatever you already have in your business. They would never try and take it on and not work with your marketing team because that's just counterintuitive to everything that we would want to be doing.

What to ask those agencies? We've shared some of those questions, but I think the biggest thing that you need to think about when you choose an agency, for me anyway, when I take on a client is chemistry and an authentic belief in the product or service that they're selling. Because if there isn't those two things, it doesn't matter who you are and it doesn't matter how much money you're paying them. If you are not aligned in terms of

what the outcomes and the goals need to be, it's never going to be a positive relationship. You're going to be paying money down the toilet and never getting the response or the return that you need. So finding an agency owner or an agency team that really understands your product, is excited about the product, wants to market the product as if they are employees of your own company, and more importantly, has ideas around how to actually take that product or service and expand it and add strategy into the meeting when you're meeting with them rather than just taking a brief and going,

yes, we can deliver that. That's what I look for when I work with new clients. I want to hear what their thoughts are. Then I want to add my thoughts, Jen, and I want us to have an amazing experience together. So for me, chemistry is everything when choosing an agency. Well, yeah, because you mentioned this is a long-term game. This isn't a campaign. This is a long-term relationship. And that's the difference, I think, for paid versus affiliate. And you know I'm going to bother you and I'm going to say, hey, you know, you've got this wonderful wheel. I'm going to make you give me a copy of the wheel. And then you're like, hey, there's examples of what the websites would look like. And then with your link, you know, I'm going to bother you. I'm like, give me the examples. I want to see if I can share with everybody.

But I think the examples and I think the flywheel and what we talked about, that's barely stretching the surface to your point of you've got to have someone when you sit down where they understand your product, they resonate and connect with you. And they see a vision that could even take your vision above and beyond. Because when you get in bed with someone, this what really what this is, this isn't, Hey, I want to make a website. This isn't, Hey, I want to have a new computer. This isn't, Hey, I want to do, you know, I need a new logo. This is a long-term relationship in order for this to be effective. So sitting down and meeting with someone who is the best that you can find is important because yeah, it might cost an

upfront a little bit more than pay-per-click, but use your paper, you know, your paid ads to fund it so you can have this long-term relationship so that when it doesn't work, you don't have to pay attention to that. You can go back to doing what you're supposed to be doing. So if you're a doctor, go be a doctor. Don't be an accountant. Don't be the guy, you know, we talk about this all the time. If you're a high-end entrepreneur, if you're a high-end business owner, why are you mowing your lawn?

Why are you making your own meal? Why are you doing your own laundry? This just does not make sense. If your hourly rate is $500 an hour, why are you doing your own meal why are you doing your own laundry there's this it just does not make sense if your hourly rate is 500 an hour why are you doing anything below 50 bucks and it's not a matter of ego it's just a matter of hey you either should be working on your business or working on your health it's really simple it's either help or wealth that's what you should be working on your relationships working all this dynamics mowing your lawn and doing things that are outside of your wheelhouse it's kind kind of like when Michael Jordan stopped playing basketball and then decided to go play

baseball. It's like, what are you doing, man? Just get over there. Oh, grab that ball. Not this. What are you doing? So when it comes to this one, this is one of those rare times where I tell people, I would never do this on my own. I would never try and do this. I'm like, just get out of the way. Find someone who's an expert that you resonate with, that you want to have a relationship that you enjoy talking to them, that's going to give you examples and find the most authentic person you can. I mean, one of the things that,

because we've had lots of conversations before about this, you're sort of like, yeah, you're not my person. Cool. Awesome. Or hey, you are my person. Let's get together and rock and roll. It should be that hell yes

or hell no pretty instantly because this is someone you're going to be in a dynamic with for an exceptionally long period of time because now we know what affiliate marketing is it's a long-term relationship that helps you scale your business versus facebook ads this make you talk and you know what the funny thing is is i've been in this industry for so long i mean i actually looked on tiktok the other day for the term affiliate affiliate program management because we use type in affiliate marketing it's all of these people that i'm going to show you how to make money on pinterest and for the term affiliate program management. Because when you type in affiliate marketing,

it's all of these people that I'm going to show you how to make money on Pinterest. And that's kind of not my bag. But when I typed in affiliate program management, there was very little content on TikTok, which actually spurred me to think, I need to be making some TikTok videos. But also the content that was there was actually rubbish.

And I could spot it in seconds. And I was like, this is not good content. But also the content that was there was actually rubbish. And I could spot it in seconds. And I was like, this is not good content. And it's actually derailing the good work that happens in the affiliate industry because people that don't understand affiliate marketing are now trying to become content creators. And people like me can spot the BS like 10,000 miles away. And I've spent most of my adult life in this industry. Like I'm extremely passionate about it. And I spend a lot of time training the next generation of account managers coming through because I care about what happens to this industry when I one day leave. I mean, one day I'm going to retire, but all that knowledge,

that brain drain is going to leave with me and all the other practitioners that have learned this craft on the job, because there is no school of affiliate marketing. There's no university degree either. You have to learn on the job by doing. And so that's why you're investing in value. You're not investing in hours for money when you work with an agency. You're investing in the value and the knowledge that they bring to you to fast track your own success. And what you were mentioning before, yeah, I agree. What we were mentioning before is that even if you have all this knowledge and some school or some person taught you or you

went to a coaching program, great. Six months from now, you're like, oh crap, I need to go do this again because it's constantly evolving. It's constantly changing. I mean, threads came out and then crashed out. So it just, it is what it is. And I think, and again, for complete transparency, I have more access to the backend. I have more of what you're doing and I'm seeing your coaching programs and I get to see all of that.

And it reminds me when I was a young kid, one of my first cars, the fan belt was making noise. And I was like, it's a $10 fan belt. I was like, I'm just going to go install this. And I threw a little temper tantrum. And then the mechanic's like, come with me. And he popped open the hood and he was here.

Install it. And I looked and I was like, he's like, go for it, stud. Install the fan belt. And I was like, okay, I'll pay you. I wanted to do it. In this case, pay the firm. Like, you know, if I went back 10 years ago and said, hey, install a hard drive into a computer. Now it's two screws.

Plug it in. Years ago, you had to change so many things it was a nightmare yeah and this brings me to a new you'll probably resonate with this show and tell there's a difference there's a difference between telling you what you need to do in your affiliate program and me actually showing you what to do it in your specific affiliate program so whilst there are frameworks that you can learn in affiliate marketing, you are always going to have to apply those frameworks in a very different way in a very different situation. So it's kind of like skiing and snowboarding.

Like they both go on snow, but you need totally different skills to do them. Apparently, it's a lot easier to learn how to snowboard very quickly and to be efficient and go down the slopes than what it is to learn how to ski because you need a whole different set of skills to actually get going. Or it might be the other way around. I don't know which way I've got it. Going down. As someone who grew up in Florida, I'm phenomenal. I just fall down and then gravity is over and over. Yeah, you can get down.

But how do you get down? I'm not quite sure. Kendra, the other thing is, you know, we talk about snowboarding versus skiing. And again, I'm just sharing one of your examples. You brought people in and you had them do an exercise. And you're like, hey, how would you sell this specific thing? Yeah. How would you do it?

And the people gave completely different answers. So when you're working with an affiliate marketer, when you're working with an agency, making sure that their ideas they spit out resonate with you because each one is going to have different ideas. Just because someone has two decades of experience, trust me, you're being interviewed as much as they're being interviewed because they're going to decide if they're going to work with you or not instantaneously. And that's what strategy does.

And that's the difference between show and tell. So I can have 25 years experience, you can put somebody right next to me who's got 25 years experience. So we will give you two totally different strategies for your program, because we are the sum of all of the experiences that we've had. And luckily for you, I've worked across multiple different industries, multiple different verticals and across multiple different regions in my lifetime. So I know what works in different regions and I know why things don't work as well.

And that is really the value that you're buying. You can see when you work with a performance marketing agency or an OPM as they're called in the US because there's also a heck of a lot of jargon in affiliate marketing. An outsourced program management company is the same as an agency, which is what we call it here in the US, because there's also a heck of a lot of jargon in affiliate marketing. An outsourced program management company is the same as an agency,

which is what we call it here in the UK. We say it's people's money. And this is the thing. This is why affiliate marketing is so contextual and unique because there is no right or wrong. There is no, this is how you do it. And you follow those steps all the time. There's no cookie cutter, like playbooks.

There's frameworks that you can use. And even those frameworks get applied differently, as you saw it, as you gave me that exercise, at the fundamentals of marketing and the psychology of sales and all of those things still apply. And I don't know if you saw the last episode that I did. Well, you've got access to the backend, but I was a little bit shocked that none of the affiliate managers that were coming into my training program had had a basic marketing background. They didn't know about the basic principles of marketing.

And that's because traditionally account managers come into affiliate marketing by accident they either come through a customer support stream where they've worked in customer services and they're really good at building relationships or they come in from a sort of business development sales stream where they're used to going out and finding net new partners but none of them have had marketing training, basic principles of marketing training. It's not psychology in any way, shape, or form. They don't understand the human behavior.

They don't understand how to... And that is what... And as we talk about this... Yeah, it's important. And that's what makes a good affiliate manager is if they actually have a mixable tree. And then you've got to add in analytics and kind of numbers and commercialization and stuff

like that as well so it's a very complex role it is and having behavioral science and knowledge and all that this is where i talk about you know if you're in this industry and you're in this nation and you're doing this don't work in a vacuum find a community where there's other individuals who are affiliate marketers we can sit there and say say, hey, I'm working on selling oranges. That's my feeling, what it is. Go in the environment where you can have this community, where you can talk to each other and say,

hey, what do you guys think? What are your ideas? Because I guarantee you, if Susie has ABC ideas, Bob has XYZ ideas. And you're going to get things. Don't work in a vacuum. Find a community wherever it exists.

Find them, work with them, have someone who's done it for a really long time that can give you that instance. Hey, I love your idea. I didn't think of that idea in any way, shape, or form. This is how we can implement the idea because I'm paying attention over here. We talk about this all the time. Your network is your net worth. If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. And I really think that's the narrative. That's an African proverb, do you know that? Do you know I'm from Africa? And it goes, that's an old African proverb.

And it's something that we actually have on all of our proposals. If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. And that principle is 100% summing up affiliate marketing. If you want to go far, work with multiple partners, work with people that are experts. If you want to go fast, you can do it yourself, but it's not necessarily going to be very successful. You're not going to go far.

You're going to have a spike and a collapse. But again, if we talked about the beginning, that's your paid ads. That's your initial, okay, let's get the engine going. But after that, find an electronic community that can do this with you so you can go far with them. And even if you're doing it on your own, if you're an experienced affiliate marketer, whatever you're doing, find a community that knows how to do this. Connect with an agency that they've been doing this for a really long time. Bring your ideas. Your ideas are valid,

but they've been doing it for a really long time. It's this running joke that Jesus didn't walk on water. He knew where the rocks were. Find someone who knows where the rocks are. And if someone's been doing it, that's what I would do. So I'm going to make you give me all these examples. You know me, I'm a pain in the ass when it comes to that. But how do people find you? How do people get ahold of you if they want to ask you more questions? What's the best way to reach out and get ahold of you?

Anyways, so first contact me on LinkedIn and connect with me on LinkedIn because you'll get so much free information and like I pump stuff out on LinkedIn all the time, stuff that I'm learning because I genuinely do have a desire to help people around me to learn how to do affiliate marketing better. In fact, it's our strapline. Our strapline is Alphaverse. We're helping the world to do affiliate marketing better. And the second way to contact me is to just come onto our website, alphaversemedia.com. Come and sign up to the newsletter. You'll get a constant stream of weekly stuff that isn't spam, but actually educational and informative

that will help you to do your job better. And or email me on LJ. My name is Leanne Johnston. So just my initials at afibus.com. Simple as that. I love it. Thank you so much for coming on. I really appreciate it.

I know we gave so many examples and for a lot of people, this is going to be overwhelming, but welcome to the world of the 50th March meeting. There's so much there. You've got it. Thank you so much for coming on. I really appreciate it. I know we gave so many examples and for a lot of people, this is going to be overwhelming, but welcome to the world of affiliate marketing. There's so much there. You've got to, it's trying to drink from not a fire hose, but from a tsunami. And having someone who's learned how to ride that tsunami is important.

So thank you so much for coming on. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much for having me. It's been so much fun being on this side of the mic. Thanks for tuning into the show with Leanne Johnstone. If you're looking to profit with affiliate marketing, check out Leanne's website at affiversmedia.com. There, you'll find a wealth of resources and insights to help you succeed in this exciting field. For those who want to connect with Leanne and stay up to date with her latest projects, you can find her on LinkedIn. She's always eager to engage with fellow marketers

and share her expertise. Once again, a big thank you to Leanne for sharing her time and knowledge with us today. And to our listeners, thank you for your continued support. Until next time, keep learning, keep growing, and keep striving for success in your affiliate marketing journey. give a special thanks to Jason Allen Scott, who has been instrumental in bringing the I Am Charles Schwartz Show to life. His expertise and support have been invaluable in creating this platform for entrepreneurs. If you're feeling inspired to start your own podcast to add value to your business, head over to podcastingforbusiness.co. Jason and his team can help you create a podcast that establishes you as a thought leader, generates leads, and connects with your audience on a deeper level.