[00:00:00] Katie Keith: As WordPress product owners, we work hard to promote our products and build an audience. But how much time have you spent building a network of people with existing audience who can promote your products for you? That's where affiliate marketing comes in.

[00:00:24] Matt Cromwell: This is WP Product Talk, a place where every week we bring you insights, product marketing, business management and growth, customer experience, product development, It's your go to podcast for WordPress product owners by WordPress product owners. And now enjoy the show.

[00:00:53] Katie Keith: Hi, I'm Katie Keith from Barn2 Plugins. And I'm Amber Hines from Equalize Digital. And today we're here to talk about how to grow your reach

[00:01:02] Amber Hinds: with affiliate marketing. And that is why we have invited Alex to the podcast today. Hi, Alex. How are you?

[00:01:14] Alex Standiford: Hey, I'm doing great. Thanks for having me.

[00:01:16] Amber Hinds: Um, can you give yourself a little introduction, um, who you are and what, um, you do?

[00:01:24] Alex Standiford: Sure. So, um, I've been in the WordPress space since like 2009. Um, I was using it for my own personal products and stuff like that. I ran some tutorials tutorial sites for the photo editor again for a while and ran ultimately ended up doing some course content for a while and things like that. Fast forward a few years.

[00:01:44] I started getting into development in WordPress. Switched my career over completely just became a web developer, just owned it and, uh. Started freelancing and during that time I built, you know, dozens and dozens of WordPress plugins and themes for customers for a few years. Um, eventually I actually got the attention of, uh, Sandhills development.

[00:02:07] At the time, they're not around anymore, but at the time. And, uh, actually, I worked on the affiliate team for a little while and then, um, after that. I switched over and, um, kind of been just in this flux state where I've been doing some different projects here and there, a little bit of work, you know, working with GoDaddy and stuff like that.

[00:02:25] But, um, this past year I actually released a new product called Siren Affiliates, which, um, a lot of it is kind of focused on building an affiliate plugin that all that has all the features I wish, um, I had whenever I was building affiliate programs for my own agency at the time or for at the time, um, as well as.

[00:02:45] Uh, whenever I was running my tutorial site. Um, I noticed that there was just these features that I couldn't get, and it didn't have access to in any of the existing solutions and, you know, I knew because I was one of the developers for that product, so I, uh, built this product around that and that's kind of where I'm at now.

[00:03:04] Amber Hinds: And you have very fun branding and I love the name Siren Affiliate. Thank you.

[00:03:09] Alex Standiford: Thank you. I appreciate that. Yeah, I leaned hard into the mermaid thing.

[00:03:16] Amber Hinds: Well, I have four girls, so they love mermaids. We have lots of mermaids around our house.

[00:03:20] Alex Standiford: That's awesome.

[00:03:24] Katie Keith: So we always start the show by talking about why this topic matters.

[00:03:28] So in this case, why is affiliate marketing important for WordPress product owners? Uh, personally, I think it's really important because it allows you to tap into other people's audiences There are lots of wordpress experts out there who have really large audiences And if you can give them a vested interest in speaking promoting your products because you pay them a commission through your affiliate program, then that's a really powerful marketing tool and might allow you to reach a segment of the population that might be interested in your product without you needing to have such large marketing resources internally.

[00:04:07] What do you think, Alex? Why is it so important?

[00:04:10] Alex Standiford: Yeah, so I think of affiliate marketing as like a multiplier right of your of your existing efforts, right? So if you're if you've got the hang of some marketing and you're in your marketing Approach for your business and you have a product that you know is selling through your site and you don't necessarily need a lot of one on one activity with every individual customer before that sale happens Um, you can multiply what you were doing with other people by, like you said, using their audiences and essentially borrowing their microphone.

[00:04:42] Right? And there's so many different ways you can approach that, um, beyond the traditional affiliate marketing approach where you, you know, you find somebody who's an active blogger and they've got really good SEO practice and they, um, are basically. using affiliate links, recommending your product and their content.

[00:04:59] Like that's a great approach, but there's other ways you can do that above and beyond that one single, uh, relationship. And, uh, Yeah, so that's, that's kind of how I see it. I see it as being kind of a natural, just a natural extension of just your product marketing. Like you're creating another product being your affiliate program itself.

[00:05:22] And it just kind of opens up a whole nother avenue of ways to work with other people that you otherwise couldn't consider your customers.

[00:05:30] Amber Hinds: Yeah. I think that's a really good point. Um, when I think about affiliate marketing as a product owner, Um, one of the things that we've been talking a lot about is, are there ways that we can reward people who are already what we might consider brand ambassadors?

[00:05:48] Uh, you know, some, some people are motivated. They just want to add a link in a blog post and hope they get sales from it. But the people typically won't actually go out and talk about you on social media or

[00:06:05] Alex Standiford: right.

[00:06:05] Amber Hinds: In a slack group when you're, you know, something relevant to your product comes up, they won't be like, Oh, and Oh, have you heard of this or talk about that?

[00:06:14] And so I think it's really important for product owners to think about affiliate marketing more broadly than just going out and. Asking people to give them backlinks and hey, because the reality is, is most people won't get a commission off that backlink. Um, so I do, I'm excited that we're talking about this today because I think from a topic perspective, it's something we all want to do as product owners, but it can be challenging to do right and effectively.

[00:06:42] Alex Standiford: For sure.

[00:06:44] Amber Hinds: Yeah, I think

[00:06:46] Alex Standiford: I think of it as partnership marketing instead of affiliate marketing. And if you think about it that way, that term, it kind of broadens how you approach this, right? You're treating these affiliates as partners, not just a person who's going to give you a backlink.

[00:07:01] Katie Keith: Yeah, that's a nice way to look at it.

[00:07:03] And we can cover that in more detail later because affiliates need to be invested in your product and really interested and do it properly or they're not going to have results. So the next section we do is story time, where we each tell a personal story about our experiences of affiliate marketing.

[00:07:24] Alex, you've already talked about your story, which led you to create Siren Affiliates, but what about the other side of things, actually running or helping people to run an affiliate program?

[00:07:36] Alex Standiford: So, um, it's been interesting because a lot of what I've been working on has just been building, you know, Um, this I've been building a part, the partnership podcast on my site, which is kind of focused on giving people resources along the lines of what we're talking about on this episode, actually.

[00:07:52] Um, and for me, a lot of that journey has just been observing. Other people's programs, right? So obviously I'm using siren. I'm getting some insider information from all these other programs. And prior to that, I've worked on affiliate WP customizations. I've worked in WooCommerce for almost a decade now.

[00:08:09] And with all of that. You know, I've seen a lot of the point is I've seen a lot of affiliate programs and I'm seeing I've seen a lot of patterns emerge from those and I've heard a lot of the same questions and and, um, for me, a lot of that has been a lot of people will find that they'll have maybe 5 somewhere between 5 and 20 percent of their affiliates are actually getting.

[00:08:31] Most of the conversions, like, the 80, 20 principle is very much a thing in terms of most affiliate programs. Um, and so I've spent a lot of time trying to think about how I can help other people. Find more of that 20 percent and less of that 80%, and then also help people figure out how to take that 80%.

[00:08:50] And get them bumped up into the 20, right? So, so a lot of my, my thinking, a lot of my. Background kind of revolves around that. And for me, a lot of that, and that's a lot of why I made siren was because I realized, um, some of the best programs were more than just a simple, you know, affiliate link relationship.

[00:09:08] There was something else, maybe a course platform where you're, you know, you're creating, uh, multiple courses from multiple course creators and they are selling their courses through your site, kind of like Udemy or something like that. Um, where you can pay these people based on how. Many people actually complete their courses or other measurements like that.

[00:09:30] And just just kind of things like that, realizing that there's there's so many different ways that we can form partnerships that goes above and beyond that basic format.

[00:09:40] Amber Hinds: Yeah, I think it'd be kind of interesting to unpack that even more. And I'd love to hear your thoughts on how, how someone who is a new product owner to affiliates, and they're just looking to build an affiliate program.

[00:09:59] How would they identify people who are likely to be that those 20 percent that are. Actually going to refer back, how would you identify them and how would you even approach them to join the program? Like, You know, starting that relationship that you're talking about as a larger partnership.

[00:10:19] Alex Standiford: So there's there's 3 things that I, um, handle this that I do to handle this.

[00:10:24] But the 1st thing I want to mention is the key, the key point, especially when you're getting started with an affiliate program is you have to remember that this is you have to kind of treat this like a product. So there is going to be a bit of a sales process. There is going to be some networking.

[00:10:37] There is going to be effort from you in order to be able to really get this going. Just like as if you're selling a product. Because really, you're still selling something, right? You're still selling the idea of choosing your program, your incentive program. Um, so, so once you get that mentality aligned, then these other three things kind of make sense.

[00:10:54] Um, so the first one is kind of obvious. It's starting with your own network, you know, start with talking to the people that you know, um, who have an audience who you think might be a good fit. That, you know, you know, personally, and then you can just reach out and just be candid and just simply say, hey, I've got this program.

[00:11:11] I kind of. I would love it if you would work with me on this, but also go with them on different ideas on how to market the product. Right? So, if you can, if you can go to these people. With a plan in place, right? So, what I've been doing, for example, is I'll. I'll message a lot of other plug in companies who I'm integrating with, with Siren, right?

[00:11:33] And I'm saying, Hey, I'm building Siren, I'm building integrations, and I am prioritizing which integrations I want, both from based on my customer feedback, but also in part based on which plug in companies want to run with me, right? Are going to run with me and, and join my affiliate program and let me, you know, Amplify my message and educate their audience on how to build an effective affiliate program and how siren can help them do that, right?

[00:11:58] So by going to them and saying, I have this set of educational resources. I have this stuff. I want to give your audience. I'm going to do this. I'm going to spend my time doing these things. And also, I'm going to pay you for those sales. It's a way more compelling thing than just saying, Hey, you want to join my program?

[00:12:16] You know, so, um, that's the 1st thing, you know, the 2nd 1 is, is like, less organically finding people. You can find people through, um, I've actually been doing some SEO research, a lot of SEO research lately with my blog content and stuff like that. And every once in a while, I'll find a term that I really wish I could rank for, but, but it's, it's too difficult to rank for, especially because I'm so I'm so early.

[00:12:38] Right? I mean, my site is pretty young, so it's still I'm still having difficult, like. Getting that, um, but I'll find blogs where people are, um, writing content that I wish I was a part of that post, right? I'll reach out to those people directly and I'll say, Hey. This is a great post. I really think I could be a good fit for this content.

[00:12:59] Explain why and offer them an opportunity to join your program. Um, and then the 3rd, 1 is a little more complicated and it's about tailoring your products to different verticals. And we can get to that in a minute, but I don't I don't want to. I don't want to go too far down this rabbit hole, but there's a, there is a third one there.

[00:13:17] It's a little more advanced.

[00:13:19] Katie Keith: Yeah. I love your advice about actually adding value and reasons for them to promote you. I get so many emails every day from people saying, do you want to, we have an affiliate program like that's unusual. Do you want to be our affiliate? They don't give me any reason to be their affiliate.

[00:13:38] They're like, we have a plugin become our affiliate. And I just delete them. There's so many, they're not adding value. So that's a really important thing that people just get wrong all the time.

[00:13:49] Alex Standiford: Absolutely.

[00:13:50] Katie Keith: Yeah. 100%.

[00:13:52] Alex Standiford: That's go ahead.

[00:13:55] Amber Hinds: Though I was just gonna say, I think there's a curve to, to affiliate, like, bringing people into your program, um, because we sent a lot of those in, in the early days and got no response, but even when we said, Hey, we'd be happy to write a blog post for you to post.

[00:14:14] And here's how, why it would be relevant for your audience. And you can get a commission off the backlinks. Right. And people like, wouldn't even respond. They would just delete it. Even though we weren't like mass, like we were targeted and we were very. specific, like this is why we think it aligns with what you're already doing.

[00:14:31] Uh, so I do feel like to some degree, there is some amount of notoriety, you sort of, or name recognition you need to have. Maybe notoriety is a bad, it has like a bad connotation, um, before. You're likely to get responses and I don't know if either of you have had that experience that you need to be out there in the marketplace and successful to some degree before you're likely to get a lot of people to join your affiliate program that are actually going to be the really effective people who drive traffic.

[00:15:05] Alex Standiford: Yeah, I can see that, um, especially because for me, you know, I, I've been in the WordPress space for a while. I've been at several work camps and well networked in this community. Um, so a lot of those plugin integrations, um, whether I know it or not, I already know the person who would be the decision maker for that just because of the fact that I've just been in this community.

[00:15:26] So, yeah, I mean, that helps obviously a ton. Um, you're a lot more likely to get a response from people for that. But, um. That doesn't necessarily mean you can't do it. It just does mean that you're, you're, you have to start building those relationships, right? So you have to start finding those decision makers, build those relationships, get to know them a little bit before you just dive right into that.

[00:15:48] Katie Keith: Yeah, for me, it's about a combination of relevance and professionalism more than whether I know them or not.

[00:15:56] Alex Standiford: Yeah.

[00:15:57] Katie Keith: A lot of my plugins serve quite niche use cases and so it makes sense to cross promote them alongside quite niche other plugins that I might not have heard of. But they have to be highly tailored to my audience for that type of affiliate marketing.

[00:16:12] And also in addition to that, they have to look professional because people are going to be clicking on my site to a recommendation to like, maybe for example, they want some extra functionality that my plugin doesn't provide. I might be adding affiliate links to somebody else's plugin, which will, Coordinate with with integrate with my plugin.

[00:16:34] If that looks like an unprofessionally Um coded website if it's bad design bad attention to detail people are going to think the product we're recommending is bad Which recommend which reflects badly on us? And also removes that conversion rate because no one's going to buy after clicking on this link to a horrible website So for me, that's more important than whether they're known.

[00:16:57] Alex Standiford: Yeah, that makes sense. I agree with that for sure

[00:17:01] Amber Hinds: Yeah. So I'd be curious, Katie, about your, your story and where affiliate, I know you've given us a little bit details, but, um, where affiliates fits into the Blarne 2 marketing strategy and what's worked and what hasn't for you all.

[00:17:18] Katie Keith: Yeah, um, I shared some of this on Twitter this morning as well, which led to some interesting discussions that we can get into as well.

[00:17:26] We started affiliate marketing at Barn2 quite early, um, in about 2016, shortly after we started selling plugins. And, um, we've been going since then. Um, at the moment we've got 852 active affiliates. But I ran some numbers before coming on this show, and it turns out we have paid 160, 000 ever to our affiliates.

[00:17:49] But, 72, 000 of the 160 went to one affiliate. So, you were talking about the 80 20 rule earlier, Alex, that is More than that. It might be like 1090 or

[00:18:04] Alex Standiford: something. 199.

[00:18:06] Amber Hinds: Yeah. All affiliates are not created equal.

[00:18:08] Alex Standiford: For sure. And how do

[00:18:09] Amber Hinds: you define active? Like just approved in your affiliate program or those people who are actually sending traffic?

[00:18:16] We haven't deactivated them. So they might not all be sending traffic.

[00:18:23] Katie Keith: No, they're certainly not. Yeah. Active is a bad word. That's an affiliate WP term, but they're not. So our next biggest affiliate after that 72, 001 has done 15, 000. So that's a lot less. And only 15 of our 852 have ever earned more than a thousand.

[00:18:43] in commission from us. So tiny number of affiliates that are actually doing significant volume. Um, I, in my experience, the best affiliates are the well established WordPress blogs and review sites. This is people that rank for pretty much everything. Um, Alex, you were talking earlier about when there's a keyword that you just simply can't rank for yourself, but your affiliates can.

[00:19:09] So that's how we started in a way. So my best affiliates, I actually recruited by doing guest posts for them and allowing them to include affiliate links as a sweetener to accept the guest post, I suppose. And, um, with the very, very best one, once they realized that our plugin sell and that the keywords we were using work and that we were doing proper keyword research and really adding value to help them promote our products, they started commissioning their own writers.

[00:19:42] So they've written dozens of articles for their very high profile WordPress blog site about our products. And when I release a new plug in now, I contact the owner of this site and they write new content. And I tell them the key words and things like that. And that as well as allowing us to rank from top to bottom.

[00:20:01] Cause our page rank now, sorry, domain authority is about the same as theirs now, but it didn't used to be, but that means we get more positions in the SERPs. So on page one of Google, you've got the barn to product page, the barn to blog post, the affiliates blog post, our YouTube channel, you know, it's helping us to dominate.

[00:20:22] And affiliates is part of that. But the, I say the second biggest group of affiliates we've got is cross promotions of products. So companies like Iconic WP who do WooCommerce products often complimentary to ours, they're not. Not quite a direct competitor, but it's very close. So where we have complimentary products, we recommend them to each other's customers, and they're one of our better affiliates, but that's a lot smaller than these high profile blogs that I mentioned.

[00:20:58] Alex Standiford: Yeah, um, I, the, the thing that I, the big thing that I'm hearing from that just matches what I was saying earlier that to me, it's about quality over quantity for this. So, a lot of people I've heard tend to just get so caught up in needing more affiliates. And what they really need is more conversions from their affiliates.

[00:21:17] So, um, I, I, I appreciate that. You said that you're messaging your top affiliate with. Uh, letting them know, right? Hey, this is done. You're handing them information like this. This product was released. This update was released. Um, here's some relevant information. That's that's what I mean when I say partnership marketing, right?

[00:21:37] You're still promoting your product. You're promoting it to your partners who can then promote it to their audiences in whatever way that they can. So if you can create really good relationships with like. 10 affiliates. I mean, even if, even if all 10 of those affiliates were doing nine of those 10, we're doing that, that second place 15, 000 a person.

[00:21:57] I mean, that is a huge difference. You know what I mean? Like crazy, even just five. Um, so it's people get so caught up in, like I said, the number of affiliates, but really. Most of the time, the really good ones, they're really just getting somewhere between 1 and 10 really great affiliates that they are, you know, they're having, uh, they're frequently talking to and emails.

[00:22:18] They might be doing 1 on 1 calls. They might even be doing guest posts on their content. They may doing live streams on their behalf. Um, email campaigns, all kinds of stuff. Like there's just, if you run with them and help them maximize their success, you're probably going to end up making more money than you would have with a hundred affiliates anyway.

[00:22:35] Amber Hinds: Yeah, I think, um, you know, this is sort of an interesting transition into the concept of some of the. things we've been working on internally. So our affiliate program, it's pretty small. Um, and it's, but, but what we've been putting the focus on lately has been doing more partnerships with hosting companies actually, which they end up getting an affiliate commission.

[00:23:05] If they link back to us, um, or like Elementor has a marketplace that's embedded in their plugin for Elementor users. And, and so referring back to ours. And so I think that's something that we've been trying to do more is thinking outside of that blogger box, especially for our product. And I, I. I think, you know, you really have to know, and we've had other WP product talk episodes where we've talked about knowing who your customers are and how you're going to reach them.

[00:23:34] Um, because for us, I, I don't know how helpful some of those blogs are. Um, you know, I'll just throw out there like WP beginner is one we all know that ranks really well. And they have a couple of posts on accessibility that when you search just the key phrase WordPress accessibility, they come up very high.

[00:23:55] And they include our plugin, but I haven't seen a ton of traffic from, from those blog posts, which is interesting to me because I'm assuming they get a lot of traffic on their website. And so that's where we've started to figure out, okay, is it a better to get recommended by a hosting company? Or another thing that we've done is, um, the WP accessibility plugin that Joe Dolson has, he added an affiliate link because our plugins can work together really well.

[00:24:25] So And we're like, okay, well, people who've installed this plug in already have shown that they care about the thing that our plug in addresses. And so I think that's something maybe that product owners, as you're trying to figure out who these affiliates are that are going to be really effective for you, you need to sort of go back to this, where's the best audience going to be.

[00:24:46] Um, that will actually convert.

[00:24:48] Alex Standiford: Yeah, totally. And I mean, I'm doing something similar, like, with my integrations, right? So, um, I've got a, I've got a integration with lifter coming up next month. And a big part of that is going to be, you know, I'm going to be listed on there in their integrations inside of the plug in, just like what you said with elements.

[00:25:07] That's a big part of my, my personal strategy with Siren because honestly, what is an affiliate plugin without its integrations, right? So it has to integrate with everything. So my entire strategy, most of my network is going to be that, right? Because I'm not going to be, for example, like I'm not going to be able to get WP beginner.

[00:25:24] To recommend my product because they're, they're owned by a company that owns my competitor. Right? Exactly. So they're never going to recommend it. Um, so I have to think outside of that box a little bit. And honestly, blogging is kind of in a weird flux right now. So I've been, I'm still using it and I'm still doing the research and I'm still doing all of the things needed for it.

[00:25:44] Um, and I'm absolutely going to, you know, considering affiliates who are using that. But I'm, I'm still kind of looking like you said, outside of the box and thinking about those different partnerships. Um, and that kind of falls nicely into what I was touching on a little bit earlier with how. Um, that's that's a lot of why I built siren to be able to handle multiple programs at 1 time.

[00:26:08] Because something that I, when I was running an agency did was I wanted to create what I called a blog content bonus program where people outside of my network were able to write content on my site. Um, that was optimized that could utilize my own sites wait, right? It's, it's, it's SEO, um, ranking and all that jazz and, uh.

[00:26:30] The idea was, if somebody visited my that blog post. And, um, the writer, the person who wrote that post would be treated as the affiliate link. So instead of you needing to share an affiliate link, you could just share that blog post, but it could be multiple people. So maybe I'm an affiliate and I'm on social and I'm sharing this person's blog post.

[00:26:51] We're both affiliates. I wanted to make sure that both of us could potentially get a commission for that sale. Right. And once you started to get into that, it just, um, even, even just that one example, right. And there's, there's, So many examples like this, um, but that was kind of the impetus for me that made me start thinking about how can I break up this relationship a little bit so that I can create more ways for people to be able to partner up.

[00:27:16] Right? Um, and even think about like an agency or something like that, who maybe you're creating an agency program and, um, maybe there's some kind of different way that relationship works. It isn't just a link, right? Right.

[00:27:31] Amber Hinds: Yeah, so I actually think Codable is a really good example of having an affiliate program.

[00:27:38] They're not everybody's a Codable affiliate. Yeah. But, but the way they do it is really interesting. Um, so obviously they have. The landing pages, which are really not that difficult to create a landing page that just fills in some information off of URL parameters or pulls out of the database. Um, so having a shared landing page, but also one of the things that they do that's really interesting is that they allow what to some degree is a little bit like self referrals or, um, kickbacks on, or get cash back.

[00:28:14] On the work that you either refer to Codable or that you pay Codable, which is a little different, right? And we've, so as an example, we have a dev through there and they'll message me every once in a while and say, Oh, Hey, you've hit this revenue threshold where you've paid us so much money. Now we're going to give you a higher percentage back of what you pay us.

[00:28:35] Right. So you get, it's, it's effectively like tier discounts on their services when you purchase them. Uh, but we've been talking about this. With regards to our product as well, because right now we have it turned off that you can't use your own affiliate link when you purchase the product, right? So you can't get a commission if you go use the link and then purchase the plugin.

[00:29:00] But, It's something we've been talking about because if you target agencies, like we target agencies, a lot of people who buy our plugin are agencies, not website owners, um, or freelance developers. And it's almost like, maybe we should do this codable approach where we're allowing them to use their own referral link, which then gives them a special agency discount.

[00:29:25] It doesn't happen at the time of sale. But if they keep it for more than 30 days, they don't ask for a refund, right? Like all of those things, then they get some cash, cash, literal cash back. Um, and, and I think, The way a codable is doing that, um, is really interesting. And particularly if you're targeting agencies and you know, you're going to have one person or multiple people who might be buying many copies of site licenses.

[00:29:52] Um, I, I think that's really interesting. And then they can turn around and resell it for full price or whatever to their clients, if that's what they do. So,

[00:30:02] Alex Standiford: yeah, and what's fascinating about that and this and that right there falls under what I would consider a special case. Right? So you've got in this case where these people, this specific set of people, right?

[00:30:13] These agencies, whenever they buy, I want them to be able to get a commission. I don't want that to be the case for everybody. Just these people now. And then that's again, 1 of those things where it's like, with, with, you know, And affiliate most affiliate plugins, it's 1 program, monolithic, big, giant program with all these rules built into it.

[00:30:31] Siren and sirens case, that would just be a separate, separate program, right? You would just create a completely separate program. You would add those agencies to that program, and you would allow them to get commissioned for it. And it's completely separate and you don't have to like, dig through everything differently.

[00:30:43] Yeah, all the different rules and all that stuff.

[00:30:47] Katie Keith: Yeah, I really like that about, um, the point for agencies and allowing self referrals, because it's easy to have an attitude that the affiliate program is not designed for people buying your product themselves. And certainly when individual website owners buy our plugins, we don't particularly approve of them using an affiliate discount.

[00:31:07] So they sign up for the program, they buy a 99 plug in, and they get 30 commission. That's not the purpose of it. But one way to legislate about that, which we've done, is to implement a minimum payout amount. So using the example I just gave, said our minimum payout is 50 and so they are never going to get paid their 30 commission unless they start referring us to other people or buying multiple products from us.

[00:31:36] So an agency who's regularly using your products is not going to have a problem with the minimum commission but that is a disincentive for people just doing it as a one off discount code I suppose.

[00:31:48] Alex Standiford: And what else is interesting about

[00:31:49] Amber Hinds: interesting?

[00:31:50] Alex Standiford: Go ahead. Sorry. Um, no, I was

[00:31:53] Amber Hinds: just going to comment that. I think it's really interesting doing the minimum.

[00:31:57] That's something we haven't talked about internally.

[00:32:01] Alex Standiford: Another thing about that, that's interesting to me is, um, those that you made that as its own set of specific side program, right? Specifically for agencies as an agency partner program. Maybe you give them recurring commissions, right? So, maybe unlike everybody else, so maybe instead of giving them a payout, whenever the sale was initially made, you give them a discount for the initial purchase, and then you allow them to get a commission for the recurring commissions for that customer so that they can start to build that passive income stream.

[00:32:30] The relationship with an agency in that regard is a little bit different than what a typical affiliate is, right, because they are maintaining the relationship with a customer, which means that in a lot of ways, they're maintaining that relationship with your plug in by proxy. So you can reward them for maintaining that and keeping those people on your platform and using your platform and continuing to be a partner with you.

[00:32:55] Amber Hinds: I'm curious, Katie, with your minimum payout, do you have a time limit on it as well, or is it possible that five years ago I could have earned a 25 commission and then if I come back now and I get above that minimum payout threshold that you would pay me that from my commission five years ago and my commission today?

[00:33:19] Katie Keith: No, we don't have a time limit on it. I don't even know if that's the feature of the plugin we're using, but I'm not that bothered to be honest. If it's the occasional purchase, I

[00:33:30] Alex Standiford: usually just wait long enough to go outside of the return, the refund window personally. So if it's a 30 day refund window, okay.

[00:33:38] I'll pay you the commission after that, just in case.

[00:33:40] Katie Keith: That's important. Yeah, you should always do your payouts after and your terms should say that. So for example, when we introduce free trials, which we no longer do, but we used to have a free trial of 14 days and then a 30 day refund period after you pay.

[00:33:58] paid. So we had to make sure our affiliate payouts were two months afterwards, basically. And then when we got rid of our free trials, we brought the payments forward to one month and so on, but you should never have the possibility of refunds when, you know, at the time you make that payout.

[00:34:15] Alex Standiford: Yeah. Yeah. I

[00:34:17] Amber Hinds: think it's interesting too, to think about with that minimum payout threshold, potentially that could save you on bookkeeping.

[00:34:25] If you do get to a point where you have a lot of volume of. many small affiliates that are just occasionally referring because then you don't have to maybe process as many manual payments. Um,

[00:34:41] Alex Standiford: yeah, that's true.

[00:34:45] Katie Keith: So one thing we haven't talked about is communication and onboarding with affiliates. I've seen some really lovely examples of this within the WordPress industry, which I have shamelessly copied.

[00:34:57] Um, the first one I copied, uh, was GiveWP, um, the company from our co host, Matt Cromwell. And they have, have you seen it?

[00:35:07] Alex Standiford: Oh my God, I copied so much of that landing page from my own platform. Like it's such a, they're so good. It's so good.

[00:35:13] Katie Keith: But things they do well, they've got a really friendly attitude, um, to their affiliates and they have these, um, regular emails that they send to affiliates with basically advice on how to promote, give WP more effectively.

[00:35:29] So they will provide things like article, uh, keywords and outlines and ideas for topics they can write about. And it's just all really kind of friendly and non pushy while providing really concrete advice on how to be more successful as an affiliate.

[00:35:47] Alex Standiford: Yeah, for sure. Um, for me, as I'm just getting started, so I'm still, um, I'm very much in the mentality of doing things that don't scale.

[00:35:56] Well, that doesn't scale. Well, right. So I keep telling myself it's okay to do things right now. That doesn't scale very well. And 1 of those things in this case, um. Is, uh, 1 on I actually offer to schedule a 1 on 1 with any affiliate who works with me. So I'll give them, I give him an initial email that basically offers out that thing that I mentioned earlier with the, the webinar and, and, you know, the, the, the launch approach and different ways we could potentially work together.

[00:36:21] And then I say, you know, let's have a, let's have a call, you know, 15 minutes, nothing, nothing huge and where we just sit down and I learn a little bit about you. You learn a little bit about me and we kind of come up with a game plan to. Yeah. To move forward, um, sometimes people take me up on it.

[00:36:35] Sometimes they don't. Um, the ones that do tends to do better than the ones that don't. So I, uh, I, I think that there's some value there because it, you know, it, again, it's treating them like people, not numbers. It's a partnership, not just an affiliate link. And I think give does that really well at scale, right?

[00:36:56] Because they, they, they can, you know, they've got the resources to actually build those things and, and, uh, I'm just right now, I'm still just kind of figuring it out. So I'm like, let's do a one on one and see how we can work together. And then using that to eventually learn how I can do that email.

[00:37:10] Amber Hinds: I think though that face to face time is really important because if we're thinking about, you know, what we've been talking about this whole time, which is having affiliates that are not just a one off backlink from a blog post and are the way we like to think about them as true brand ambassadors,

[00:37:29] Alex Standiford: people

[00:37:29] Amber Hinds: who would be willing to talk about your product or maybe already talk about your product.

[00:37:34] Even without having a commission, um, especially if they use it already. That's one thing I would say if, uh, you're a product owner and you're trying to figure out, Oh, I want to start one. Who should I go to? Like I would first start with people who are paying you for your product. Because those are the people who obviously are going to know how to talk about it, understand what it does.

[00:37:58] Um, and you know, if you have people that are really enthusiastic. And so I think, you know, you're saying, oh, it doesn't scale well, but I think actually that is actually, it's not scalable for you personally, but from a scalability of marketing, you having face to face time with those people is only going to make them feel more connected with.

[00:38:20] Siren affiliates as a brand as, you know, a company because they're not going to just think of it as, oh, this is a thing where I can get 30%, right? I can make 20 or whatever, right? Like they're gonna, they're gonna think I like Alex. I want to support Alex. What he's doing is really cool. And so I think there's this deeper motivation that's built out of those face to face connections that is really helpful so that you stay more front of mind for people.

[00:38:47] Um, for

[00:38:48] Alex Standiford: sure, for sure. Um, I love the idea of, uh, like you said, oh yeah, I made 60. I made 50. I love the idea of my, the people who love me giving them something back. Right. So being able to be like, you know, let's work together. Let's do something And maybe from this effort, we're able to get you a vacation or an extra vacation, or, or maybe we're able to pay for a chunk of your salary or something like that.

[00:39:13] Like something significant, you know what I mean? Something that really, that really has a big impact on their life. I just think that's really cool. And for me, honestly, that's my, that is my best, my biggest reason for getting into affiliate marketing. If I'm going to put my money and my effort into something.

[00:39:29] That is going to ultimately promote my business, I would really like for it to actually enrich the lives of the people that, uh, I actually care about, not just, you know, some random Facebook account or Facebook or Twitter or any of these ad revenues. Like, I would rather that money as much that money as I can that I'm going to spend anyway, goes to people who I'm watching and single handedly, like, or not singly, but, like, having an impact on their lives directly.

[00:39:56] Amber Hinds: Yeah, absolutely. So, yeah. So I think it'd be interesting to talk about in a more concrete way what that communication plan looks like. So for us, um, we have been trying to send a monthly email to our affiliates, either telling them something that's new or encouraging them to share a blog post that we've written because they can put their affiliate tracking link on that too.

[00:40:20] It doesn't just have to be our product page, right? Totally. Totally. And then we update our graphics pretty much before sales. Maybe we can be better at that. And I'm curious how frequently you all do that, but we have, you know, the default banners that people can download if they want to, my assumption is most people.

[00:40:40] I don't think most people use them. No, uh, most people are just like writing about it or sharing a regular link. So we haven't put a lot of effort into regularly updating those outside of when we create graphics ourself for like Black Friday, or we do a, an annual sale in front of Global Accessibility Awareness Day.

[00:41:04] Then we'll upload those banners. To and just tell, and we'll make sure in advance of the sale, before it's even announced to the public, we'll tell our affiliates, they'll get an email saying the sale is going to go out. A lot of people buy during sales, make sure that you promote the sale because you might get more affiliate commissions with that, and then we'll tell them that we've updated our graphics, but pretty much that's what we do.

[00:41:28] It's monthly emails, one in front of our two sales a year that we do, and then updating graphics then. But otherwise it's. It's been pretty static. Um, and that's our communication plan. Does that align with what you all are doing?

[00:41:43] Alex Standiford: Yep. Mostly. Um, I have a couple of things that I, that I'm doing. I'm planning on doing, right?

[00:41:47] I haven't actually hit far enough into my program to actually personal program to do this, but the email, like, the emails, the communication, I'm definitely doing that. Um, I'm scheduling quarterly 1 on 1s just to just to offer people an opportunity to chat with me if they want to. Um. And then for my sales, I've actually been thinking about doing, um, promotional programs.

[00:42:10] So during a sale, I might offer a higher commission or something like that temporarily dirt specifically during that, um, that sale. And, but I'm not sure which sales I'm going to do it for, but it has been something that I've been noodling around in my mind, particularly on black Friday or something like that.

[00:42:29] Uh, because a lot of affiliates are, um, they're taking a cut. Whenever these deep sales are happening too. So if I'm, if I offer them a little bit higher of a percentage to one compensate for that, but also to, to kind of motivate them to choose my program over maybe my competitor's program or something like that.

[00:42:47] Um, with their, you know, their promotions or whatever. Um, I think it's a really attractive offering too.

[00:42:56] Katie Keith: Yeah, that's a good idea. We've been looking at that, but haven't implemented it yet. Having tiers of affiliate commission as an incentive and, um, the things like that. So that's the whole way.

[00:43:06] Amber Hinds: Considering that's what notable does, right?

[00:43:09] You refer this amount, you get 5%. I don't know what it is. Then you refer this amount, you get 10%, then 15, then 20. Um, and it's interesting. Yeah.

[00:43:20] Alex Standiford: A sliding scale. So

[00:43:25] Katie Keith: before we finish, we had one comment on Twitter this morning. Um, well, actually it was Mike Scott, Mike Scott from automatic, who shared a comment from Anthony Gallo, who had something a bit negative to say about affiliate programs, it would be good to look at, he says that the affiliate model doesn't work well with his type of business, which spends a lot of money on ads.

[00:43:46] Because the two marketing channels end up competing with one another, which makes the ads less profitable. Um, and they don't want to have that. So they don't have an affiliate program. I've never seen anything like that and see them as complimentary. What about you? What, what is his business? I'm curious.

[00:44:04] Do you know, I don't know, Anthony Gallo, he, he screenshotted it. So I can't click through to see who he is

[00:44:15] spending on ads. Um, and does that conflict with affiliates? I would say it only can, if you allow your affiliates to bid for your keywords.

[00:44:25] Alex Standiford: Yeah, if you, if you look at, for example, Stellar WP's affiliate program, right in their terms, built right into it, they literally say, you can't compete on pay per click ads for the following terms, and they literally just have a list, and if they find out that you do it, you're out, like, it's, it's, it's a rule, it's just something that you have to add, just to say you can't do it.

[00:44:44] Katie Keith: Yeah, and to add to that, So we only have that currently, but with our brand terms like bond too. And my virtual assistant has a set reminder to check this every week. And most weeks she finds somebody bidding for a bond to plugins, keyword with bond to it. And we deactivate them. It's in our terms that we will do that.

[00:45:06] Um, and it happens all the time. It's of course, I don't want to pay 30 percent commission. For a sale that we would have got anyway, because we absolutely number 1 for our own, uh, company name

[00:45:19] Alex Standiford: and I just want to add real quick to that. Sorry, Amber. I, before I forget this, that that plays right into what I was saying about focusing on quality over quantity.

[00:45:28] Right? You wouldn't have you wouldn't necessarily have to deal with those problems. If you have the number of affiliates you have down to a manageable number where you can just be like, dude, we just talked about this last week. Like, what are you doing? You know?

[00:45:40] Amber Hinds: Yeah, well, I was going to say, too, I think there's probably something here on how you set your attribution, whether you're actually giving the, um.

[00:45:49] Attribution to the first click or the last click or, uh, how that works. Um, because if you are cooking people, cause you can add custom attributes on your Google ads. So a thought is, is. You could add a attribute for your own house affiliate account on your Google ads. And then that way, if someone has clicked your ad first, but then they don't make a purchase and they come back in the window from reading a blog post with an affiliate link and they're like, Oh wait, now I'm going to make a purchase.

[00:46:27] You could potentially then have said, well, but our house account is what told them about it. And then they just went and did research, right? You have to decide because maybe the research from that affiliate is what motivated them to purchase. Um, so maybe there's a split attribution there where you're dividing up commissions.

[00:46:44] Like you were talking about before, Alex, between yourself, right? Not paying out a commission. And The, the blog posts, or maybe you've said it so that no, actually they came off of our ad and it's in 45 days. And so we're going to, or whatever the time is 30 days or whatever your cookie duration is. And so therefore that affiliates are not going to get the commission.

[00:47:07] So I don't, you know, I don't feel like we should just throw out, Oh, I market with AdWords affiliate programs can't work because it conflicts. I think there's a lot of ways technically to work around that. And, um, And again, too, like thinking about partners, you, you may have the right affiliates that they don't even post links publicly, but they're emailing links to people and saying, go buy this product.

[00:47:33] And the people who have bought off of an email referral might be someone who would have never gone and Googled for the product. So then they never would have seen your ads. Yeah.

[00:47:46] Alex Standiford: Absolutely.

[00:47:48] Amber Hinds: So sorry to that gentleman. I think we all agree, disagree

[00:47:51] Katie Keith: with them. I totally agree. Yeah, it's good to have multiple marketing channels and there's no conflicts.

[00:47:58] Alex Standiford: Yeah, yeah. Look closer. There's options there for sure.

[00:48:01] Amber Hinds: We are about at the top of the hour. And so I think we're the end of the hour, whatever it is. So I think it would be good for us to transition to our best advice for new product owners around affiliate marketing. Alex, do you want to start? What's your best advice for a new product?

[00:48:22] Alex Standiford: The best advice I can give you if you're trying to start an affiliate program is make sure you're giving the people something to sell. I know that sounds obvious, right? Because of course we're, if we didn't have something to sell, we wouldn't be here. Um, But you think about it a little bit further. Think about the different verticals that your potential affiliates can be exist in.

[00:48:41] Um, think about the different ways that they can approach selling this plugin for me. Remember my thing was I'm integrating with different people. So I'm able to sell, give them something to sell by integrating with their plugin, right? Um, another example of this could be, uh, maybe you're an agency and you have, uh, you know, tens of thousands of dollars for websites that you're selling and high, high price things, right?

[00:49:03] And you want to start an affiliate program. Well, it's kind of hard to start an affiliate program with something like that, but maybe you are very focused in an educational niche, or maybe you're in, let's just do like craft beer, for example, because that was my niche. That's how all of this started for me.

[00:49:18] Um, and you've got all these resources and all of this stuff. Maybe you can create a product or a white paper or something like that specifically for that niche. And now that you've done that, all of a sudden, you're Your opportunities for who would actually refer your business completely changes. You're no longer looking for generic people who are having generic conversations about generic websites.

[00:49:38] You're now talking to people who are probably at conferences that you can meet in person who are specifically in the craft beer industry, for example, and find those affiliates as well as your customers. So, um, for me, whenever I, whenever I hear people are having trouble finding affiliates or having an effective affiliate program, I think it's mostly because they haven't.

[00:49:58] Thought through their product and and their sales funnel well enough to be able to actually Create that program in the first place.

[00:50:06] Katie Keith: Nice. Yeah My best advice is to remember that affiliate marketing is not a numbers game. It's about quality So what you should do is build relationships with a very small small number of high profile, um, websites within your industry that are writing about the sorts of things you do and really work with them, encourage them to create their own content.

[00:50:30] It's going to work better if they do the work, but you support them in it rather than you just providing lots of guest posts because that's not so sustainable for you. So really help them to provide. Um, their own content and make sure they're adequately paid and rewarded and have evidence that that's going to work out for them.

[00:50:49] And that way you can have a small number of good affiliates, which is much better than my 800 plus mostly, um, not very useful affiliates.

[00:50:58] Amber Hinds: Yeah. And I think my best advice is a good follow on to that, which, you know, I said earlier, I think you have to know your customers and where who's going to buy your product, because that's going to shape a lot of not just who you identify as affiliates, but maybe some of the guidelines and rules that you set on your affiliates program.

[00:51:21] Like we were talking about, do you allow self, uh, purchases where they get commissions, different things like that. So knowing who's going to buy your product, use that to shape what your affiliate program looks like, and then to identify the right person or Small group of people to become affiliates, uh, and be partners in promoting your product.

[00:51:47] Perfect. Well,

[00:51:48] Katie Keith: that's a wrap. Alex, thank you so much for joining us. Where can people find you online?

[00:51:54] Alex Standiford: You can find me at sirenaffiliates. com. Um, I've got my podcast and I've got all kinds of resources there. Um, you know, of course you can find me on Twitter, uh, as well as, uh, sirenaffiliates. com. And pretty much anywhere.

[00:52:07] I mean the post out of slack various facebook groups. I'm not that difficult to find on social Um, my handle pretty much everywhere is at alex staniford. So just alex staniford. Um, And uh, yeah, so that's where you can find me

[00:52:21] Katie Keith: and tune in next week as amber and our co host matt will be discussing The model of building apps as well of or instead of plugins with colin daniels from foo sales and foo events

[00:52:37] Amber Hinds: And special thanks to Post Status for being our green room where we organize and plan all of these episodes.

[00:52:44] If you're enjoying these shows, please do us a favor and hit like, subscribe, share it with your friends, reference this show in your newsletters, and most of all, we hope to see you next week. Bye!