The Ultimate Blog Podcast - 117. Using URL Genius to Increase Conversions with Jackson Brodie

Episode Date: March 12, 2024

Welcome back to another episode of the Ultimate Blog Podcast! We are interviewing Jackson Brodie, from URL Genius, today. We dive into the advantages that URL Genius offers to bloggers and how the platform elevates your affiliate marketing efforts. URL Genius enhances the user experience and boosts conversion rates. He shares the straightforward sign-up process, the fee structure, and the data analytics that you can leverage as a blogger. We also chat through authenticity, data-driven strategies, and the need for engaging with your audience. Tune in to hear more about this platform that you can utilize as a blogger!Thanks for listening! Let us know your thoughts on Instagram: @sparkmediaconceptsThank you to our sponsor Lulu for sponsoring this episode! Check out more about how to self-publish your next book HERE. Sign up for URL Genius here!Check out the show notes (link below) for more information including links and resources mentioned in today's episode!SHOW NOTES: www.sparkmediaconcepts.com/episode117

Welcome to the Ultimate Blog Podcast with Amy Reinecke and Jennifer Draper. We're on a mission to empower women who want to start or grow their own blog. This podcast is for women who want to learn blogging basics and who crave inspiration and encouragement. Whether you're just getting started or have been a blogger for years, we're excited to welcome you into this space where we are passionate about creating community over competition. We are bloggers who want to encourage you to believe in your potential, step outside the norm, and step into a life where you create your own schedule, your own success, and your own story. Join us for weekly episodes as we navigate blogging

and work from home life, all while raising a family and having some serious fun along the way. all while raising a family and having some serious fun along the way. Welcome to the Ultimate Blog Podcast, where we're going to dive in today to give you a tool to help in your blogging business. And it is really important to Jennifer and I that we continue sharing these new tools with you, new research. And something that we have been hearing a lot of lately is URL Genius. And to kind of talk about the specific tool that you can utilize with your blog, we have brought on Jackson Brody, who is from URL Genius, to tell us a little bit more about what this is and how it benefits bloggers. So welcome to the podcast, Jackson. Thank you both for having me.

Yeah. Well, we are really excited to hear from you. We've already actually had a meeting with you. And we decided, yep, we need to have you on the podcast that way you can reach more people and talk to more bloggers about this product that people can utilize in their blogging business to help with monetization. So Jackson, what is URL Genius?

Perfect. Appreciate the intro. So URL Genius is an app deep linking platform that allows creators to earn more in affiliate revenue, manage their links, and learn more about their audience and individual link performance. So that's what we do at a high level.

Just to give an understanding about the problem that we're solving is traditionally, I'm going to pick on Amazon. Let's say you're an Amazon associate and you're linking out to your storefront or product on Amazon that you want to recommend. Traditionally, when that link is clicked, and specifically as it relates on mobile, that takes the user into a broken experience. So you click at the link, it goes to the mobile browser, which is not optimized for shopping, you're not logged in. And so again, it's a broken experience. So the odds are conversion,

or what happens is conversion falls off the table, the user hits that good old X button, and nobody wins the blogger, the creator loses, the user gets a bad experience, and Amazon and the brand who's selling the product do not win. So what our platform does is it gives and provides this, if you will, app-to-app experience. So instead of going to the mobile browser, you click a URL genius, in this case, Amazon link, and it takes you right into the Amazon app

and into the correct page inside the Amazon app. So you're talking about potentially two clicks to buy because as you both know, if you're a creator, in any capacity, you're in the attention economy. So by providing that better shopping and app to app experience, you're able to increase conversions, see an average order value increase, and again, provide that better experience to your consumers. So I hope that makes sense. And certainly happy to answer any further questions on the function of the platform. I think that that makes perfect sense. I think almost any

blogger can relate to having that happen. That's a question that we just got yesterday, like, why did I sell something and not see the commission? And it's like, well, probably it opened up in the in the browser, they went to their app and bought it instead. And it completely disconnected the two from each other, which is not what anybody wants. In all honesty, can you tell us a little bit about when that happens? Is that only if they're like clicking from like an Instagram app? Or can it happen in other places too? That's an awesome question. It can happen anywhere. So I know we're talking in terms of blogs, but it can be a blog, Instagram, Pinterest, really YouTube, anywhere where they're linking, that can be where the broken experience begins. So our links, again, that's what regardless of whether it's any of those platforms that I just mentioned, others, that's where we're able to provide that value

and if you will, what I like to call almost like that bridge into the app. So in any way that the blogger is trying to monetize, whether they want to share that link within their blog post, whether they want to share it as an aside on their Instagram, you can use your product

to kind of cover all of those bases. That is correct. Yes, To put it simply, yes. So I know we've talked about Amazon and that is a very popular affiliate platform for bloggers. Most bloggers are using Amazon affiliates to... Or Amazon associates to utilize that affiliate program. What other affiliate programs are you associated with right now? And is that going to expand? Yeah, that's a great question. So what's funny is traditionally, we've been B2B and have recently and only in the last few years entered the creator space. So it made sense given how large of a presence Amazon has to try and be there and help creators in that

regard. We now actually, it's great time and we now provide the same direct service as we do Amazon to a Target, a Walmart. We do have other platforms that we're working on building out to as well. And if you will, bridging into as well. That list will only grow as time goes on. Awesome. Yeah, because we are just in the digital age of sharing links all the time. Exactly. And like you said, user experience is really important.

We coach our students on that in regards to their websites, making sure that when somebody comes to your website, that they can actually navigate what they're wanting. And the same really does go for links. That is grouped into user experience on a website or whether you're on social, because there is nothing more frustrating than when you actually are interested in buying something and like you just can't quite figure out how to get it done. And so what do you do? You log out and you have to like, usually what I do is I

then I log out because I don't know why. I mean, it really only takes three and a half seconds, probably. But the thought of being taken to like an Amazon sign in page, I immediately am like, not interested, X out, I'm just going to go to my app, and I'll search for it there. I'm literally probably typing in the exact same amount of letters into that login. But there is something about it not just popping up. Isn't that kind of disgusting that we're in a digital age that we need it like that? But we are. And you know what? That's why URL Genius exists. It's because of people like me who want it to be that easy and effortless because we want what we want and we want it

like yesterday. And so this really does kind of serve that purpose. So when a creator is like, okay, they're trying to decide maybe they are already an Amazon affiliate, and they want to incorporate URL genius. What does that process look like? Like, do you have to qualify to be on URL genius the way that you have to qualify to be on Amazon Associates? How does that work? How do you get on the platform? That is a great question. And for us, we are come one, come all. We work with creators of all different sizes and where they are in their journey. Some who are only on one platform, some are on a number. It completely depends on the individual. But for us, there is no, I guess, minimum to entry, if you will. So we literally can get creators live within 2-3 minutes. By going to

the platform, just URLgenius.com, you're able to immediately sign up, start creating links almost instantaneously. And do they have to have accounts with... So far, you're at Amazon, Target, Walmart. Do they have to be an affiliate with those accounts already? Or how does that work? How does the linking work with those different brands? That's a great question. So yes, we do recommend that because that's where you actually have your tags that we're passing into the app. So by having those tags, that's where we're able to do our magic. But we need those to be able to again, pass those into the apps. Is this something that you then install on your site to make it work?

Is it a separate platform you're logging into? Can you just walk us through as a blogger who wants to utilize this? What would the steps be after I sign up for URL Genius? How do I make it work? That's a great question. So after you sign up, we do have our composer that lives on both desktop and on mobile out of the browser. So right now it's simply you go there

and you're able to take your affiliate link, be it from Amazon, Target, et cetera, and just copy that into the browser and the browser will just spit back out what your URL genius link is. And there are other more intimate details there. You can customize the link. There are more backend features of the platform.

But just in terms of ease of use, that's how easy it is. And I can assure you there are other features that we are rolling out to make it even easier to link and link quickly. Thank you to Lulu for sponsoring this episode of the Ultimate Blog Podcast. Blogging is about so much more

than just creating content for your website. Blogging in 2024 also means sharing your own products and services, affiliate links, brand sponsorships, podcast interviews, and so much more. The thread that is woven through all of it is sharing our stories and passion. And one way to do that is by creating and selling your own books. As a blogger, you can easily create and sell your own books with Lulu.

Lulu is an on-demand print company that prints your beautiful books and mails them directly to your consumer. You don't have to worry about the hassle of inventory or shipping, and you get to remain focused on what you do best, creating. Visit lulu.com to learn more about how you can self-publish your own cookbook, novel, journal, notebooks, etc. Creating another stream of revenue

by selling your own books without the hassle is an awesome way to grow your brand in 2024. Visit lulu.com, that is L-U-L-U.com to learn more about how you can get started self-publishing your own books today. Is there a fee for a creator to use URL Genius? Okay, I know the answer to that question. Yes, there is a fee. So I would love for you to explain that because that was something a little bit different about it. Just to be really transparent with you is that there is a fee to use a service, which makes complete sense because you're a company that's growing and you're making life

easier for people. But I would just love for you to explain the reasoning behind that and then the fee schedule and how that works too. Great questions. Yeah. So just to give a little more context, in Q4 of 23, we did over a billion dollars in supported revenue for creators and brands. So there's a lot of links that are being created on our platform. And there's a lot of revenue that's being driven from our service. And I will say something I didn't mention at the top is our solution, when I say that acts as a bridge, we have a patent on how we actually, that methodology, how we're able to pass tags and how we're able to get individuals into, or users, I should say, into the app. So that's something that we're super proud of. It's something that I would be wrong of me

not to offer on this podcast. Now, your question is in terms of why we're able to, why we charge, why we do what we do. There are layers to our organization. So in terms of providing best practices and helping creators not just learn what to do with the links, how to use the platform, but to garner more clicks. There's all other layers that we help, in a sense, almost like what you both do, coach and support our creators. We have a customer success team

that does an incredible job. Something that would be wrong to be not to offer up there is this past Prime Day in the fall, some of our competitors, candidly, their services went down. We did not. So our infrastructure is literally enterprise grade and you're getting that regardless. You're on our biggest plan.

You're on a smaller plan. You've got 2 million followers. You've got 20 followers. You're getting that type of service and support. And as I mentioned a second ago as well, last thing I'll say here is we are always adding on, again, new marketplaces, new features, new tools. So it is not just there's one person with some code behind a website. There's far more a service that we're offering and a lot of depth to it as well. I hope that answers the question. a service that we're offering and a lot of depth to it as well. I hope that answers the question.

Oh, yeah. I think it really does. Because there's one thing to share links, but there's another thing to really learn how to do it and have support and how can I be the most successful. A lot of times when you're in this content creation space, quite honestly, you can figure out a lot of things on their own. We're obviously blog coaches, but people can go on Pinterest or on Google and they can learn all of it. But sometimes, we don't want to spend as much time because it is going to take more time. So to me, it's just like, how can I be coached better in that space to make sure that when I'm sharing a link, I'm doing it in a way that's going to create a conversion as well. Because that's the purpose behind sharing the link. Hopefully, we're all sharing authentically about things that we actually use and like and enjoy. And then when you share that, you want to make sure you're reaching people in a way that is going to create that conversion.

Right. And to your point, and it's something that we are super passionate about, and we've proven it time and time again, is to your point on conversions, we make creators more money at the end of the day. So when you talk about charging, something that one of our clients said at a conference several months ago was, she views us like an ATM. She's like, okay, I'm putting $1 in here to make $5. And I just keep doing it. And that's something that is super important for us to put out there. And you can learn more to your point. It's linking is not just linking.

With the backend of our platform, you're going to learn more that you can leverage potentially into brand partnership deals or to leverage and negotiate or have this type of data and information to talk to other brands about. So, hey, this product or this category,

these are the actual real clicks that I'm driving. This is where the audience is in terms of metro areas that are engaging with me for this product or this category. So there's all these different things that you can learn about yourself as well in your audience through our platform that you'd be unable to learn elsewhere. And I think that brings up a logistics question for me. So I'm going to give Amazon as an example. I want to share Amazon links. So I'm using your platform to share my Amazon links.

Where am I going to A, see the data on how many people are clicking, what they're buying and all of that. And then where am I seeing how much money I'm making? Am I still going into the Amazon dashboard? Are they the ones paying me? Is it coming through you guys? How does that work? That's a great question. So when it comes to payments and actual conversions and dollars that you're earning, you're going to see those in the marketplace apps, i.e. in Amazon. We, again, are the bridge functioning to take the user and provide that experience

and move your tags, etc. into, in this case, the Amazon app. So for us, you're going to see anonymized data on your audience in terms of clicks, app opens, and like I said, where that traffic is coming from. So is it coming from your blog? Is it coming from Pinterest or Instagram, etc.? And then where that's coming from? Is it coming from Austin, Texas? Is it coming from New York City? So there are all these different data points that even though yes, we cannot tell you how much you actually sold, that's where an Amazon or a Target will tell you. There's all these other points that you can get from us acting as the bridge that are super valuable to creators and potentially their managers, representatives, things of that nature. I think that data is really

important because as we're sharing things, we want to know, is it working? That's the whole point of sharing is, is it working? And having some of that data and looking at it, knowing how many clicks you're having, I just think it's really important data to have. And if you're paying per click, depending on what kind of plan you have, you either pay per click or a monthly. Do you call it a membership? Yes. To get to that, yes. So we have a spectrum of plans, a range of plans. So it starts at two cents a click.

We want everyone to try the platform. So when you sign up, sometimes some creators will want to go into a little longer of an extended trial, but you do get, if you will, 500 clicks on the house to try the platform out, see what it can do for you. And then from there, two cents a click, and it can range up to $199, $399 plus a month. It really depends on how many clicks you have. That's where we break out from a pricing perspective. It's not a link perspective.

We don't charge based on how many links. So that's something I like to say because people often ask me that. We do it based on a click perspective. So let's define a click. That's just any user who's going to click that link, whether it's on a blog, whether it's on a social media outlet. That link is clicked and that counts as one click. Correct. Okay. Just out of curiosity, if the same person clicks on a link, let's say I watch somebody's story in the morning, and then I watch it in the afternoon, and I click that link three times. Is there an IP thing that, oh, they can tell that I've already clicked that link? Or are you charged each time?

you. But I did have this with a brand actually several months ago, we have a team, this is part of why we charge what we charge. Because we have an entire engineering and tech team at URL Genius. And we actually have, if you will, like a just tech behind the links, where if they're seeing some type of, for lack of better term, bot attacks on a link, somebody you're just in there, right? It's like what people do with like artists on Spotify, they just keep a song going on loop. If someone's doing that, those links will not be counted that gets flagged. So if you click something once, and then you come back in 12 hours, yeah, it's going to count as two clicks. But if you're just sitting there, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. No, those are those will get flagged. Like a safety mechanism. It's a good question. I don't get asked like a safety mechanism. It's a great question.

I don't get asked that often enough, but it's a great question. Yeah, but sometimes you come back to something, but I didn't even think about the spam aspect of it or a bot coming on and doing that. So that's good that you do have a way to protect creators in that way who are sharing links that can flag it. I will tell you, I have not seen that with any creators.

I've seen it with some brands that we've worked with where we've had to say, hey, there's clearly some bot activity here. We're just flagging this. It's not going to go against your account, but just letting you know, I have yet to see it happen with any creators. And again, I work with creators of all different sizes.

I've yet to see anything like that happen. But again, it's a great call out. Yeah, yeah, just call out. Yeah. Yeah. Just in case. Yeah. Do you want to know how you can grow your mobile and affiliate conversions by up to 200%? You can do it with URL Genius.

With URL Genius, you can compose links for social apps, brand apps, or even your own app. URL Genius makes sure the consumer goes straight to the product or service you are sharing right away to make the sale with less effort. Use the link in our show notes and get your first 500 links for free. It is quick and easy to set up and you don't have to install anything either. URL Genius is here to help you boost your mobile conversion and engagement. Check out the link in our show notes for more information today.

I would love to revisit something that I know you already said, but I kind of want to expand a little bit upon it. And that is, okay, so we talked about you might be paying per click. And somebody's like, well, why would I do that? You know, I think the the ultimate goal is that those clicks are going to result in more sales, because you're going to create a more seamless user experience. But are there also things that you can help with in terms of and I know you said you have some training, like what tips would you give somebody who is sharing links to like get more people to click on those links? And how do you create more conversions?

Do you have some high level advice there? Great question. So you know what? I hate to sort of, Amy, steal your thunder. And Jennifer, I know you say this too, it's about being authentic. It's a combination of being authentic and learning from the data and let the data do some of the talking. And we have creators in different spaces, fashion, makeup, DIY, cleaning. What is it that you're passionate

about that you want to talk about as a part of your career, your life, and leaning into those products and doing that in as organic way as possible. And you have to train your audience, right? It's not necessarily an instant, you know, you flip on a light. It takes time. Now, some, there's no silver bullet. Some people might take longer than others, but it's about being authentic to yourself and your audience.

Because at the end of the day, your audience is there with you for a specific reason. And you want to make sure that they're on that ride, that you're doing stuff and you're posting content and products that make sense to what you're actually engaging with and care about, things of that nature. The more you do that, the more your audience will engage.

And so in terms of you talking about the two cents a click, that's nothing when you're getting your average order value increases, when you're getting better quality of clicks, where the intent is to go through and buy something. So being organic, and then again, in terms of the analytics side, I know I mentioned that a second ago, going in and seeing how is my performance. So if I'm, and I'm just, I'm horrible with examples. But if I'm linking out to this one kitchen product, and I get 10 clicks, but I link out to a cleaning product, and I get 300 clicks,

that should tell you something. Right. So listening to the data as well, where it makes sense. Right, because they're going to be able to go back and look at that data and say, okay, my people actually don't love that. I thought that they would, but they actually don't. And so don't share it anymore. It kind of does give you that knowledge because clicks... I'm talking social media here. I'm not talking blogging. But clicks on social media is also engagement. People are engaging with your content, which is just going to drive up engagement on social media. So you want that. So if you have that data seeing, people aren't going to click on that or they're not clicking on that, then that just drives your data to also in turn help with engagement over on social media. Now in blogging, I mean, you can look at it like, okay, if this... Because we recommend having internal and external links on every single blog post that you put out there, that's good for SEO practices. So if you have some of those links that you see are literally never being clicked, well, then that's going to give you data as well. Otherwise, you just have links on there that you

have no idea if anybody's ever clicking on them. You might know that nobody's ever buying, but there's got to be this piece of the link and the purchase. And then what's happening in the middle of that? Is it that they're going somewhere else? Is it that they're never even getting to the checkout page at all? Is it that they go and look at the product, but they're like, yeah, it's really not the best thing since sliced bread. I don't really want it. So I think that having that data is honestly worth investing in a little bit, especially if you're wanting to grow your affiliate income. If that's an aspect of your business that is easy for you to... If you're already doing it and you're like to grow your affiliate income. If that's an aspect of your business, that is easy for you to like, if you're already doing it and you're like,

okay, I want more data to learn the behavior of your audience and what they're doing and understanding what they want more of. And that, you guys, that's really all being a content creator is, is learning what your audience wants and giving them more of that. It's actually far less about us than we make it

and more about how can we show up for the people who are engaging with our content and want to learn from us. Well said. I think that's entirely accurate. And that's the biggest thing is as long as you're giving them what it is that they want,

but it also makes sense for you and it's natural to who you are, what you're all about, etc. Then that's where you're going to see, again, those high intent to shop clicks and higher quality clicks, things like that. Absolutely. That integrity and authenticity, I think, is a really important component, especially as more and more voices enter the arena of content creation. The more authentic that you are, I think it will always serve you well doing that. When you were just talking about looking at that data, Amy, it made me think about

going in practically speaking and looking in the in the dashboard or whatever. When you're sharing a link, you know, are you able to see like, which clicks are coming from your blog, which clicks are coming that you shared on Instagram, because I think that is also really important data, because most of our audience is different on those different platforms. So something that performs well on one and not on another, you don't want to, you don't want to make a mistake in saying like, well, nobody clicked, you know, or only this many people clicked on it, or this percentage of people clicked on it, when in reality, if you just shared it on this one platform, it might do really well versus like diluting the data that you're getting. See that then that's the powerful thing is that is another use case

that I haven't brought up today. But that's it. That's exactly spot on. And you can see that with our platform is, hey, if I want to grow, for example, if I want to grow a specific channel, so I'll have creators telling me all the time, I want to grow my blog, I want to grow, for example, if I want to grow a specific channel, so I'll have creators telling me all the time, I want to grow my blog, I want to grow my Instagram, et cetera. You can get an understanding of, okay, where are my clicks actually coming from? And do I want to double down here versus there?

You can make those types of decisions and see where the traffic is coming from, both on web and on mobile. I should point that out as well, that they are separated. So you can say, okay, maybe I'm more into blog for potentially desktop, whatever the case may be,

and Instagram for mobile, mix and match, etc. But it's super important and a really great use case and a number of creators lean into our platform for exactly that. And I think the more data that you have as a blogger, it just makes

it easier to grow your business because you can make better and smarter and more informed decisions when it comes to things like that. Like you were saying, it takes a little time to train your audience and you have to be willing to test it out to try it and then not just throw it out there and never come back to it, but go back and look at the data and see what actually happened. Exactly. It takes time. I mean, there are some creators that I've been fortunate to work with throughout my time at URL Genius. And they started with maybe a few thousand followers. And now they've crossed the four or five-figure follower threshold.

And it's exactly that. It's a patient game. You have to have patience. You have to have persistence, patience. I think one of the things that is an easy trap for people to fall into is they want to go viral in two seconds and everything's great. They've got 100,000 followers and it's all blue skies. But it takes time and you have to be consistent. You've got to be focused. It's not like a quick sugar high and you don't necessarily want that. So it's

definitely something that it's a point of view. And again, just like, you just have to stay focused. It's very easy to sort of like, again, look for the sugar high, look left, look right, you see, hey, this person just went viral. And now look at them, they just went from 2000 to 20,000 in two days, it takes time. And the ones who persist and stay consistent, those are the ones who have the longer track record from what I tend to see, longer successful track record with a good core audience. Yeah, I would agree.

Consistency and patience, authenticity, all those things I think is important. And at the core of all of it, it is offering that user experience that is a good one. We want them to stay engaging. We want to stay relevant in their eyes because the way that you connect with people is... Obviously, there's a reason that brought them either to your social media account or to your blog and keeping them there and keeping them as a customer.

And often we don't look at followers as potential customers, but they are. When they're clicking on an affiliate link, they're essentially kind of a customer. And so taking care of them and making sure that you are providing them with what they need. And I think that URL Genius can really help make sure that as a blogger, you're taking a look at that data that you guys provide and knowing how we can show up better for our audience. So thank you, Jackson, for sharing more about this. I know that I pay attention probably because I am a blogger.

When I click on a link, I see what it's taking me to. And I've seen a lot more URL genius since we talked last fall and learned about it ourselves. And so I know that this company is definitely growing and going to just continue to support bloggers. So that's awesome. We're excited about it. We're excited to share it with our community today. And you did mention a free trial that you had. We can put a link to that in the show notes. I'd love for you just to share a little bit more about that free trial that you do offer though. Sure, sure. I appreciate that. So yeah, so we do have a two week trial, which again, unlimited links clicks on the house. The reason why it's two weeks is we want users to become comfortable with because it is a bit of change management, right? You have to Okay, I'm going to go take this step, create the link, and then go ahead and post that and make sure that you're

posting it and following best practices. So we want users to get comfortable in two weeks, we think is a very fair base to see, oh, I'm growing my revenue, my affiliate revenue, I'm getting more clicks, I'm seeing higher conversion. We found that two weeks is definitely a healthy period for that. So we love putting creators in that and there's nothing better than and this happens pretty often, creator comes back after four or five days of the trial and says, hey, I used to make X over a two week or a month period

and I've literally surpassed that in the first four or five days. So we love the free trial and again, always happy to put any bloggers, creators, et cetera, into that. Awesome. Well, we will put that link in our show notes for you to check out URL Genius.

And if you have any questions, Jackson, I will give them your information. Yeah, so it's jackson at urlgenius.com. So nice and easy. Awesome. Thanks so much, Jackson, for just sharing about URL Genius. And hopefully lots of bloggers

start to make lots more money. Absolutely. That's what we're here for. Thank you both. I really appreciate it. Yeah. Thank you. Thanks so much for tuning in today. If you'd like to continue the conversation about blogging with us, please find us on Instagram at Spark Media Concepts. You can also sign up for our weekly newsletter where we share blogging tips and inspiration. You can sign up by finding the link in the show notes. For those of you who are ready for the next step and want to start your own blog,

join the waitlist for the Ultimate Blog Bootcamp. The link to join the waitlist is also in the show notes. Go out and make today a great day.