#374 – Using Affiliate Marketing as a Secret Weapon with David Katz
Unleash your full potential and be the Amazon seller who stays ahead of the curve. This podcast episode is your ticket to gaining an edge in the competitive world of Amazon selling and affiliate marketing. Our guest, the accomplished David Katz, shares his unique insights on the latest strategies for launching products on Amazon, especially now that Search, Find, Buy is no longer available. David’s firsthand experiences as a consultant for a transitioning beauty brand and his ability to adapt to ever-changing market dynamics will guide you in mastering the art of Amazon selling.
We also explore the exciting world of affiliate marketing, the structure of affiliate programs, and their benefits for brands and influencers. You’ll get a behind-the-scenes look at an expansive network of over 500 affiliates that includes influencers, media publishers, and deal sites, and how you can tap into this network. We discuss everything from deep linking to affiliate link integration and commission stacking, helping you understand the technical aspects of Amazon’s affiliate marketing.
Finally, we unpack the world of influencer marketing, affiliate programs, and the role of deal sites in boosting product exposure. David’s fascinating insights into commission-based payments and his own experiences with earning through influencer work promise to enrich your understanding of the perks and challenges of this model. We wrap it all up by underlining the importance of networking and building relationships in this industry and sharing details about the Billion Dollar Seller Summit and newsletter. This episode is a goldmine of practical tips and information, designed to prepare you for success in e-commerce and affiliate marketing. Don’t miss it!
In episode 374 of the AM/PM Podcast, Kevin and Nate discuss:
- 00:00 – Growth Strategies and Networking in E-Commerce
- 01:28 – Amazon Accelerates Show and Networking Experience
- 07:38 – Qualifications and Strategies for Amazon Sellers
- 08:26 – Salary Based on Performance and Growth
- 15:14 – Affiliate Marketing for Amazon Sellers
- 18:37 – Affiliate Program Structure and Network Expansion
- 23:59 – Deal Sites as Top Affiliate Niche
- 35:09 – Commission Safeguards and Live Links
- 39:40 – Understanding Commission-Based Influencer Marketing
- 40:24 – Affiliates’ Role in Product Selection
- 50:01 – Trends in Furniture and Beauty Purchases
- 52:16 – Verifying Identity on LinkedIn and Business Strategies
- 54:10 – Kevin’s Words Of Wisdom For The Week
Transcript
Kevin King:
Happy holidays everybody and welcome to episode 374 of the AM/PM Podcast. I hope sales are going gangbusters for you, don’t forget. You can see a few days of die-off here over Christmas and then it’s going to pick right back up again. I do a lot of business into the year and first of the year, as people are redeeming gift cards and everything. Also, if you haven’t yet, be sure to sign up to the Billion Dollar Sellers Newsletter. It’s like a $25,000 mastermind for free in your inbox twice a week, billiondollarsellers.com, totally free. It’s not a newsletter like anything else you’ve seen before. So if you haven’t signed up, be sure you’ve signed up. This week I’ve got David Katz on the program. We’re going to be talking about a really cool way that you could launch your products now that, since Search, find Buy is gone and a lot of other things are gone. This is a pretty cool, interesting technique that we discovered in our talk. I think you’re going to enjoy this, so make sure you listen to the entire thing. It’s some great content. Welcome to the AM/PM Podcast. David Katz, how are you doing, man?
David:
Doing pretty good. Thanks for having me. Kevin, yeah, I’d heard all these stories about you. Then I finally got to meet you a few months ago up in Seattle at the Amazon Accelerates show.
Kevin King:
That was awesome.
David:
One of the better shows, that’s for sure, accelerates. I mean, it’s put on the Amazon, so you would expect the grandfather of them all to put on a good one, and they sure didn’t disappoint.
Kevin King:
And you weren’t sponsoring that event. You were just up there, right, just attending.
David:
Yeah we didn’t sponsor it Just walking the floor and meeting some awesome people in the community. It’s pretty tight-knit community so over the years you kind of get to see a lot of the same people, develop some awesome relationships and ultimately meet new people at these shows, which was really awesome.
Kevin King:
And do you get out to very many shows, or are you pretty selective in what you go to?
David:
I try. I try as long as the travel’s not too crazy and the timing is not too crazy. I mean, for some reason I feel like all the shows are around the Q4 time within the same like three weeks span and it makes it a little hard. And then there’s, like you know, your dead times in the beginning of the year. But definitely try to make it out to as many of them as possible. I think they’re really important. It’s a lot of community relationship building, learning new ideas, I think, some especially for us to meet our current clients and just really hear where their troubles are at, where their heads are at and how they’re using our program. And all of that is the most rewarding and probably the most important part of kind of what we do and what we’re doing.
Kevin King:
Yeah, I find these shows, the bigger shows like I think Accelerate had.
I think they said 20, some like 2,600 sellers there which would make it probably the biggest concentration of sellers ever at any show. I know Prosper gets anywhere from 1200 to 1600 or so. Depends on there. But what I find that these bigger shows like that is, it’s not the content on stage. That’s actually good. That’s how we met. We’re sitting there at a table and someone said hey, kevin, you got to meet David, that you came up. You know we met. That that’s the value, I think, for me at least. Are you similar or?
David:
Absolutely, it’s a great call. Didn’t think of it before, but it’s a great call. It was just that the Prosper show in New York actually, and there was like much more of an intimate setting, much more of like a workshop setting, and there it was awesome. Everybody was sharing their tips, their ideas, their kind of you know what their best practices are, and all that as opposed to what you’re talking about by Accelerate great show but probably better off for the networking. I personally your spot on it. I personally didn’t attend any of the lectures or presentations there.
Kevin King:
Yeah, I agree. So what’s your? What’s your story? I mean people, there’s a lot of people that are like who’s this? David Kats guy, what? What’s your young guy? What are you like? 20, young, early 20s, right, 22, 22.
David:
22.
Kevin King:
You just used to baby man. I’ve been selling on Amazon longer than you’ve been alive. Jesus Christ, that’s freaking old, oh man. I might have sold your parents their freaking baby diapers or something on Amazon for you that but so what’s your story? How’d you get involved in this stuff?
David:
Sure good question. So started on Amazon pretty early, was looking for an interning job, just, you know, to keep myself busy after high school part-time job. My friend at the time was actually starting up his marketing agency. It was more of a general marketing agency but it was a marketing agency brought me on board. I was managing that at the height of it, the marketing on Amazon for about 60 plus brands from their kind of transition more into this is the way this is at age like 17 or 18. This has got to be yeah, 18, 19, 18, 19. It was when I was doing that was brought on by a brand in the beauty space. From there, more of a consulting role was a hair products brand helped them kind of. They were pretty established in the retail world and distribution and big box retailers and big box stores. A lot of their products were sold in hair salons and actual physical retail. They brought me on to focus more on the Amazon side of things, specifically on the marketing. So I have always tried my hardest to stay out of the Amazon sphere of opening, support tickets and inventory management and financials of Amazon all that dirty stuff and really just stay focused on growth, what I call the fun stuff. So this hair products brand kind of brought me on to focus on that. They were very much in growth mode at that company.
Kevin King:
What does that mean, though? What does that mean when you say the focus on that? Does that mean helping them develop ad campaigns? That said, help, helping them develop an image? Or what does that mean when you’re consulting and not doing? You’re doing the fun stuff, not the the dirty work?
David:
How to sell more. So all the above I would say how to how to sell more out everything outside logistics. So they were pretty set up logistically. They had a designated person on team for inventory management making sure that all the stock was there and consistently refilled and whatnot, and it was the dedicated person on the team really just specifically to open cases and make sure listings are up and not getting pulled down and whatnot. And they were at a point where it was they had the budget and they were ready to spend it.
David:
It was how do we get our sales rank increased consistently month over month? How do we launch our new products properly and effectively? That was pretty much my focus and that included PPC listing work, making sure listings were converting properly, setting and scheduling deals and those types of campaigns deal the day, top deal all that and eventually it kind of organically, almost sexually and pretty cool story organically turned into this role where we had had taken a chunk at some points. It was most of our Amazon marketing budget and really focused on gathering traffic and customers and sales from off of Amazon. What made you?
Kevin King:
qualified to do that. You said you’re a consultant. Were you learning on the fly and you’re a sharp? I mean, I know you’re a sharp guy. Were you learning on the fly? Or was it something that you did, you know, you went to school for, or you were playing around with, or you just just kind of got it and they didn’t get it. You know they’re old guys and they don’t understand the internet and you do. What was it that made you that? They said, hey, we want this guy making some big decisions on how we’re going to boost this brand.
David:
It’s a good question. I guess I kind of got pretty lucky, I don’t know. I don’t know, but I have a great enough answer for you as great of the question that is. At the time, I mean, a lot of my salary, I guess, was pretty based on performance, so it was like really a percentage of growth. So it was, you know, I told them I can do certain things and they said, all right, put your money where your mouth is. And there is, you know, good opportunity and that, just based over the commissions they were offering on their growth, they really, they really value your growth more than just profitability at the time, for better or worse. I know it doesn’t work for every seller and every brand, so there’s probably a lot of luck, met the right people and was willing to take risks. I guess.
Kevin King:
So were you learning on the fly or did you have? A little bit of experience in that first company when you were interning.
David:
Oh, probably both. I think mostly learning on the fly, absolutely I mean consistently Amazon is, even in the short period compared to someone like yourself that’s been in the game, I mean so much changes so quickly. What’s relevant now is nothing to do with what’s relevant six months ago and is nothing to do with what’s going to be relevant within six months. I shouldn’t say nothing, but it’s not. It’s very different than what’s you know what it was six months ago and what it will be in six months. And even for a master seller, as I’ve learned, or, you know, a very established seller, it’s consistently testing new strategies, new stuff and seeing what works and taking risks and learning on the fly, and I personally think that most, I should say, amazon courses are not relevant for that reason. I mean, there’s basics that you have to understand, you have to know what a PPC campaign is and all that sort of stuff. But it’s even for myself for sure, was learning on the fly, and I think for most established Amazon sellers that I speak to, it’s consistently learning on the fly, testing stuff, seeing what works, taking with it and trying new stuff.
Kevin King:
Yeah, yeah, I agree with you. There’s a lot of people that get complacent in their ways, and those are the people that typically get left behind. It’s not so much all about you know the latest hacks. People love hacks, they love little tricks, but it’s mastering those fundamentals and then adapting, and that’s where a lot of people they fail, and someone that can stay on top of that and help guide them is an important person in the cog.
David:
Certainly, Certainly. It is interesting. I just had this conversation actually today with my partner. It’s a tough balance, I think, in general not even related to Amazon for us to reconsider ourselves as a startup and for us it’s very important and I think in a lot of businesses it’s. You know, you always want to stay innovative and implement the new thing and test as much stuff as possible. At the same time, you know, in a certain sense, stay grounded to what works and understand what works and really push deep and maximize what does work. And it’s, I think, everybody’s kind of has to find that balance and sticking with what works, making sure you have that established and making sure you’re maximizing that and, at the same time, testing new stuff and taking as many risks as possible and, you know, identifying new strategies and staying on top of the game. I mean, especially on Amazon, where a lot of the spaces are dominated by, specifically when it comes to PPC, there’s a lot of the spaces are just dominated by massive brands with endless budgets. I mean, how’s a small seller going to go up against a massive CPG brand paying $17 a click on a $15 item? It’s, it’s not practical and it’s it’s not possible. You have to adapt and find new strategies. So it’s, it’s kind of the balance and, like I said before, it’s for me personally. It’s probably taking a decent amount of chances, sticking with what works, trusting my gut and getting kind of lucky.
Kevin King:
So a lot of people I mean one of the big things is people are like how do I launch a product on Amazon? That’s the number one thing you see on social media is how can I launch? And for a while there you know people there’s been a whole variety of tactics and the most recent one that most people are using was the search, find, buy you know issue rebates to find a group of people or a company, get them to buy your product, reimburse them in full for the product and pay a fee to the company for managing that, and Amazon kind of started frowning on that. So that’s, it still happens some out there, but it’s not nearly as prevalent as what it once was. And then the big thing came oh, you got to go to influencers and all the social media and get people on TikTok to promote your product, and a lot of people have tried that user generate content and it seems to be hit or miss for some people.
Kevin King:
Some people have mastered it, but the vast majority have tried it and it didn’t work for them, probably because they weren’t doing it right or they were targeting the wrong people. But then there’s a whole nother side of this that most people ignore, and that’s what I think you’re specializing in now, and that’s the. There’s a lot of sites out there that already have massive traffic blog sites and news sites and review sites and stuff that have this massive traffic already come into their masters at SEO, rather than you setting up your own blog and trying to figure out how can I get eyeballs on my blog that can then turn into eyeballs on my listing. These guys have already got that part mastered. So you partner with those people and then they become the top of your funnel. That funnel you in and for a cut, and that’s kind of what you migrated into right From managing all these big accounts for this brand and now you and some partners have started a company that’s doing this right.
David:
Exactly. So yeah, I mean the way it kind of started is. A pretty cool story In this hair product brand, which I spoke about a second ago, was we one day had woken up and it was decent sized hair product brand telling hairsprays, and we saw a huge spike on sales. It was 10X and it was only 9am Eastern time, so we’re still three hours behind on the Western time, which is when Amazon reports, and it was already 10X sales that day. After some brief research and some searching around, we recognized that there was an article that had been published on a bunch of actually not a single beauty publication, but a few beauty publications, stating that some celebrity had used our products in a video she did showing her beauty routine. And a bunch of these beauty publications kind of picked it up, said hey, check out the celebrity, she was using this product and that went, we went all over. It was picking up a lot of steam, just generating a tremendous amount of sales on Amazon. The publishers had linked to the product on Amazon and that’s kind of where I recognize there’s this huge opportunity with bringing off Amazon traffic. There’s this massive amount of audience that’s off making their purchasing decisions, not necessarily yet on Amazon. They’re making it, you know, with influencers, media publishers like we like you kind of just touched on and bloggers all these different places, but as an Amazon seller, we never have a way of tapping into that. All our marketing was focused on paperclip. How do we target a consumer that’s already on the Amazon app, looking for a specific product, making sure my product ranks really high on those terms, making sure my listing converts which is all super important, obviously still is important, probably will always be important, but there was never a way of capturing this massive portion of Amazon traffic and sales that were initiated from off of Amazon with that marketing budget, and that’s where this idea and concept came from.
David:
Archer affiliates, the company I created, is in what’s called an affiliate marketing network specifically designed for Amazon sellers. So similar to I don’t know if some of the listeners are familiar with, like share, sale or impact or CJ, which is, these two sided networks built based around a list of what’s called affiliates, which can be anyone from influencers, media publishers, product comparison sites, bloggers, youtubers, people that have audiences that look to them for purchasing recommendations and purchasing this, and they’re purchasing decisions. Specifically, in this case, it’s Amazon purchasing recommendations and Amazon purchasing decisions and we connect those affiliates directly with our Amazon sellers. Currently, the space and the landscape is that these affiliates are earning a very small fraction commission from Amazon. It averages just under 4% actually. So a standard influencer they promote an Amazon product. They earn about a three and a half to four and a half percent payout for directly from Amazon.
David:
What we’ve done, all via Amazon attribution links in our portal, is given affiliates the ability to actually earn that commission from the brand out of the brand’s pocket. What this does is it gives sellers the ability to further incentivize affiliates to not only promote products but make sure they’re promoting their products, their brand’s products, not competitors, not other products. Kind of lets them get some skin in the game. Throw in the added value of the brand referral bonus that Amazon pays out, an Amazon attribution and all of that. It’s a huge value proposition. But essentially we’re one of the first, if not the first, centralized platform and program that gives sellers the ability to focus on converting traffic and generating Amazon product interest from off of Amazon. Not just targeting again a consumer who’s coming onto the Amazon app already searching for your product and ensuring that your product ranks and displays in front of the competitor, but actually targeting the customer at a whole different stage and a whole earlier stage technically in the Amazon purchasing journey.
Kevin King:
So just to make sure that everybody listening understands. So correct me if I’m wrong, but it works something like this If I’ve got, in your case, the hairspray, you guys got naturally into this. But let’s say you didn’t get naturally into this and you wanted to go tap into this. You have this hairspray product. You connect with someone like yourself who’s got a list of people who have beauty blogs or beauty sites or whatever. They partner with you and say I’ll agree to promote Kevin’s hairspray product over to Amazon. Amazon’s gonna pay them three and a half to four and a half percent as a commission, but you’re gonna have them use your brand referral link that has that extra ten percent that amazon gives you back. And you can bump that commission up and say hey look, mr R misses a beauty site. I’ll give you. I’ll give you that ten percent, or I’ll give you five percent of it or whatever, whatever you want to do. And so now, instead of making four and a half percent potentially, they’re making potentially fourteen and a half percent, and you can even juice a little bit more if you really want to, and then as a result, you’re not, you’re basically lower. It’s like your a cost on that is actually lower, and so, even though you may be paying them out fifteen percent, amazon’s in fact giving you ten percent of that back, and so it’s a win, win for both of you. And then you guys are in the middle, coordinate that new. You take a small fee or percentage or something for doing that is that? Is that basically the way it works spot on?
David:
Absolutely so. The cool part about our feel so just throw in is that we’re not charging any up from fees, not charging any monthly fees, in fact, you don’t even charge it the on top of whatever the commission payout is.
Kevin King:
we take a cut over whatever commissions already set by the brand or seller, which is really cool, as you know, essentially, invoice me for that, because amazon’s paying the influencer or the person directly there four and a half percent than that ten percent. I have to do that. Pay that then to you exactly, and then you, you take a, you take your, your scooby snack as steve summons and would say out of that, and then you pass the rest on to the influencer.
David:
Nailed it spot on. We build twice a month so we build on the first and fourteenth of every month for the previous day range of reporting sales I’m and then we take our snack past the rest back to the affiliate and again, it’s essentially the cool part in the most. I would say not the most, but one of the most exciting parts about our program is I don’t know another fully performance based marketing program it exists today, especially Amazon’s basis essentially takes no risk. There’s no risk involved for a seller to sign up in terms of financial risk.
Kevin King:
You know there’s some other companies out there, but they, they, they have that recurring revenue that you have to pay a membership fee per month and then you pay on top of it. But you guys at at our affiliates are not doing that, you’re just. It’s just a straight up piece of the action of. It doesn’t work, you don’t get paid.
David:
Exactly, exactly.
Kevin King:
And back to you finding these? How are you guys building your? How many people number one? How many people are in your network that are affiliates? Are you partnered with the second CJ convention junction? Are you partnered with a share sale? Are you going out and you got a team that’s been the payment looking for these people or are they coming to you? How are you Find my hair hair spray brand? How am I? When I come to you with my hair spray, you do you tell me I’ve got thirty six people that can potentially do this. Let me reach out to them. Do I reach out to them personally, like I want the other tools? You can do that. Or do I come to someone say, hey, I know this guy, I you just manage it for me. I want to screw with them, I want to deal with them. How does that process work?
David:
I’m, in a certain sense, only about. So we are. We have a network of just over five hundred affiliates today, at the time this project is Launches, probably going to be way higher, but currently, at the data reporting, it’s about five hundred affiliates and rapidly increasing month over month. We are also going to be connecting with very soon, going to be connecting with some larger networks such as the ones you mentioned, which is gonna give us the opportunity to tap into their existing networks and just be able to promote the network of amazon products that we have in a really substantial way. I’m we do have a brand that kind of come with their own lists of affiliates and say, hey, we’re already working with these. A hundred influencers were sitting here creating manually, creating attribution tags for them every month so they can put about the products we are sending them reporting manually. It’s really we process. There’s no transparency, it’s Very efficient and they kind of just bring in their network of influencers. So for the most part, people are utilizing us for our network. So you know the other products out of commission offer and our network of affiliates has the ability to browse through all the products that are in our program and decide which ones they want to work with, decide which ones will be a good fit for the audience and instantly create an attribution link to start promoting them. And then additionally, like I mentioned, there are some brands, mostly on this more established side, who are already have some sort of influencer programs and sort of affiliate program and they’re bringing in their their own affiliates. So I would say either or.
Kevin King:
How many of these five hundred or so that you have right now I know that’s growing Are actually like blog sites, or are these tick tock influencers or Instagram people are pinned to rest, or what’s the? What’s the breakdown?
David:
A good question. We break it down into three top level areas and then from there we break it down more. So Number one is we break it down three top level areas are influencers, media publishers and deal sites. Influencers could be anywhere from tiktok, youtube, instagram, mostly content based Tiktok specifically. Actually, we found a lot of problems with the linking, the severe technical issue that happens with tiktok, where if a user cooks on a link in the tiktok, it actually opens up that link In the tiktok app. So it doesn’t let you say it’s an Amazon link. It won’t direct that that consumer or that user back to the Amazon app or even Amazon dot com. It will open Amazon dot com in the tiktok app and the problem with that is that most consumers and users are not signed into their Amazon from that app. We’ve seen very, very that’s one of the reasons that we’ve seen very, very bad tracking when it comes to tiktok specifically. So we haven’t really focused much in tiktok simply for that reason. Even with deep linking and different technology that we’ve tested it’s, it’s been not great tracking. Where we focused a lot on the influencer space specifically is YouTube seen a lot of success there, as well as Twitter and Facebook, a lot of Facebook groups where they promote Amazon products that fit their audience, whether it’s deals, beauty, kids, a lot of like baby products and baby groups that post you know trending Amazon baby products. So we’ve leaned into those three. I think on the influencer side I’m.
David:
Deal sites have actually been our biggest niche of affiliates just in terms of revenue growth. So it obviously doesn’t apply to a lot of brands that are in our network or a certain portion of brands that are in our network. They’re just simply don’t have the capacity or not willing to provide two ponds deals and discounts promotions. Whether that’s For a branding reason, they don’t want to, kind of, you know, sacrifice their brand image if they’re a luxury item or it’s simply just a profitability issues, it’s not relevant for every brand. Where we’ve seen the most traction for sure, in terms of revenue and you Revenue generated in units sold has been in that deal site space. They convert really well the traffic that they send to Amazon. A lot of times comfort better than PPC traffic. It’s high intent buyers, people that go to these websites, such as slick deals, hip, to see deal news these types of deal blogs are very high intent. If they click on a deal it’s because it’s a good deal and they’re probably gonna post it Again, not forever brand, just really we’ve seen a lot of traction in terms of affiliate sign up, in terms of generating sales, and then the final piece is probably at this point are Smallest of the three.
David:
Honestly, we just are building out some specific tech to really tap into to that niche, which is the media publishers. So more bloggers, mass media, which is probably the most exciting of the three. When we do, you know, kind of jump into that space and really start to tackle that, it’s gonna have a huge impact in just the sales velocity that we’re able to generate for our sellers. But we do still have a few larger publishers signed up and some minor ones and bloggers, and I see a focus publishers will target different types of Google searches related to Amazon products and push out SEO based content to promote those those Amazon products. Even within these three spaces, like I mentioned, there’s kind of a lot of different niche and specific affiliates in different ways that they pushed their products. That’s kind of the general keeping it somewhat top level a general breakdown of the different types of affiliates that we work with and that we have.
Kevin King:
What about these deal sites, though, and why do I need you to apply to a deal site? I can just go to slick deals myself, and they’ve got some criteria there. Where you I don’t know I haven’t used them in a little while, but used to be you had to have so many such and such user feedbacks on Amazon before they feature your so many reviews, or there’s some criteria before they would feature their product. Number one do they still have that? And number two is do you have special relationships with them that lets you get more deals in there than what I could maybe do on my own, or they might turn me down, or what’s the advantage there? Yeah, I don’t know names, specific deals, that’s just for privacy reasons.
David:
But keeping it general, I would say, is absolutely. Each one’s got their own unique set of requirements that either is on the seller feedback or the product feedback, or what types of products, or A lot of them won’t post every single deal. That has to be a deal of a certain magnitude and strength that will attract our audience to actually purchase. We definitely do have Very unique relationships with these deal sites where a lot of them are willing to post on a commission basis, which they won’t do for a standard seller that reaches out, and I would say we have just a large network of them instead of. You know, the advantage to a seller would be that, instead of having to reach out to you know the top, to reach out to every single one of the hundred ones, hundred plus or few hundred plus ones that we have in our network, is that we, you know, with a few clicks about you get your product up and gain exposure to that massive world of deal sites.
Kevin King:
So one of the big issues that a lot of people have on on tracking right now is deep links. When you’re promoting on tick tock, like what you said, it wasn’t working too good and where it opens up, you want to open up in the actually app the Amazon seller by our app, versus going to a website, and when that doesn’t happen, a lot of times that brand referral tracking gets lost and doesn’t get referred back, and that’s been a big issue. One way to avoid that just you just don’t use a tick tock or something like that. But what? How were you all doing? Do you have a deep linking system in place for everything that sent over, so that If someone is looking at Instagram or Pinterest or something on their mobile and they click, it actually will open up in the app on the phone? Do you have that involved in your linking system?
David:
Yeah, absolutely, it’s. Really we have a few different. I don’t want to get too into the technical side because it is pretty complex, but it’s kind of up to the affiliate. A lot of these affiliates are the ones that are pretty aware of this because in order for them to earn Revenue and earnings, they actually make sure these sales not only happen but that they’re trackable or else they don’t credit for it. So we have a few integration set up with different tools specifically that the affiliates use, as well as our own setup that they kind of use and it’s we kind of leave the options up to them as to which type of deep linking different ones of different pros and different kinds and which type of Link and what style link they want to use in their content, and we we adapt to fit their needs. There, the ones promoting the product, we need to make sure that they’re they’re, you know, happy and that their content is working and their links are working, and that’s kind of we leave that decision up to. That makes sense.
Kevin King:
Cool. What about stacking of these links? Can you actually? There’s some debate whether can you stack an affiliate link with a brand referral link in the same link, or is that some sort of technical wizardry that you have to do so that you get both of those applied?
David:
Really good question. This has been the talk back and forth probably since we’ve launched our, launched our program here. Our approach and this kind of differentiates between different programs and you know different people that work with Amazon affiliates. Our approach as we’ve Never pushed affiliates to do that, we don’t think it’s really sustainable from an Amazon perspective and doesn’t kind of doesn’t make sense. The Technically speaking it is allowed and it does seem to work, but we just it’s not something we’ve pushed our affiliates to do, simply because it just it just doesn’t make sense. You know we’ve told them we have this really strong and exciting opportunity for you to earn a massive commission payout directly from the seller and from the brand, and that’s really what we’ve promoted to them and that’s what we’ve pushed them to to work with.
Kevin King:
So they’re not using the affiliate link? Then they’re just using the brand referral link the attribution they can. Yeah, that’s, yeah, the attribution like. So they’re just using the attribution link, not the brand referral link. So in my example earlier, where I said Amazon’s paying them out a little bit, that Amazon’s not paying them anything, the all the payments are going basically through through you guys, right?
David:
It would depend on the affiliate. I’m not gonna say every affiliate is set up like that. For the most part though yeah, the most part, most of the affiliates we’re working with we try to avoid double tagging is what we call it internally and 95% of our affiliates of working with are solely using attribution links it. I will say that well, in our testing and our extensive testing that we’ve seen there’s been weird discrepancies between attribution and associates when using both tags, and we do suspect that it kind of interferes. It’s not always like that it’s, and sometimes it really, depending on the product category, depending on what the purchase path is and different things like that. But the reporting definitely has been a little shoddy when when you do use both tags. So we’ve really pushed affiliates to stick with our attribution tag as much as possible.
Kevin King:
So we so if I, if I’m on a brand with my, my hairspray, and I’m like I’m willing to take a tacos of 20%, that’s that. You know. I’m running PPC on Amazon, like you said earlier. It’s been in $15 to generate $17 sale, that’s just crazy tacos. That’s like 90 something percent tacos. But I’m like I really want to be at this 20%. So if I’m at 20% tacos, well, I’m willing to accept that and I’m using the brand referral link and I can get 10% of that back. That means I can really go up to 30% as a commission to one of these affiliates and still be at my my target. Is that correct?
David:
Yeah, and it gets even crazier a lot of times when we’re working with sellers who are focusing on on newly launched product or Also really inventory reduction campaigns. You know, newly launched products, like you mentioned before, in the past a lot of sellers were giving, technically speaking, a hundred percent plus commission In terms of a rebate program. So they were, you know, having consumers purchased a product and then selling them a full rebate for the product Just to kind of, you know, build that initial sales momentum and increase that sales rank. And we’re seeing a lot of that carryover each our commission Based campaign or a very smart.
Kevin King:
So they’re, they’re they’re getting using, instead of the search fund by, they’re using legitimate channels and just Juicing these affiliates with some pretty sweet deals.
David:
We have products in their newly launched at 70, 80% commissions, exactly it’s. It’s honestly cost wise a bit more effective than then a Full rebate campaign. It’s like, oh that’s smart.
Kevin King:
That’s, that’s really smart. All right, I know this is Okay. Now we’re getting into the real weeds of this, into the, into the still BS the way this stuff actually works.
David:
All right, so you’re using.
Kevin King:
The All right, so now everybody just woke up, so so okay, so.
David:
I will say, Kevin, as a caveat to this, is the one disadvantage when using this as a as a Rebate campaign is the product needs to be legitimate. You know the advantage that you have course their full rebate campaign is that you control everything. You know everybody’s gonna purchase free product. I don’t care how crappy that product is. You send them a full rebate, they’ll purchase it. With something like this, you know, you do still need to make sure that the product is legitimate enough and good enough to where a publisher is putting their reputation On the line. They don’t want to be promoting garbage products, so. But if a product is legitimate, if it does have, I would say, some level of reviews at least 10, 15, 20 reviews. Most of the time even honestly, we’ve seen price with even less than that being published when I haven’t yet that high. But it is a huge way where sellers and a huge opportunity, I would say, where sellers are. We’re starting to see them pop up and, you know, promote these newly launched products at a crazy commission.
Kevin King:
And so do they do that. So if I, if I want to launch my new product and it’s a good product, it’s not some piece of crap, it’s my some really good product that I, I know is great, I’ve got some good reviews on it already I go out and you, I could probably even do this without reviews, because if the affiliates pushing and he’s vouching for it, that’s basically he’s vouching as the review person. So it’s a great way to launch without very many reviews. He, he goes out, he pushes it to his audience, who already trust him or her, and they go and they buy it. Then, by default, some of them are gonna leave reviews and hopefully you got a decent product and that doesn’t come back and bite you.
Kevin King:
If I give him, let’s say, 80% commission, he’s like super motivated, like heck. Yeah, I mean, if it’s a $30 item, he’s like. So he’s like super motivated to get that out there and to post it a few times and not just wants and and Really motivated talk about how cool it is. Then I get my launch and I get my, my, my Ranking going. Then what do you do? Have deals with these affiliates, where then you come back and you say alright, now it’s launched, I’m only gonna pay you this 80% for the first 30 days, but after the next, after that, it’s gonna go to I don’t know, 25% or something like that. We’re more of a maintenance level and a sustained level, or or does it stay at that 80% the whole time, until you like Shut this guy’s link down, because you know if he just you could get, this could get carried away, you could get wiped out. Yeah on something like this so how do you, how do? You put in those safeguards?
David:
The safeguard is is that the seller, technically speaking, can change their commission at any time and that includes for live links. There is Important to note in this case is a good thing, you’re pointing it out is there is a 30 day delay. So for live links so the way that works is technically in our marketplace, for a link that’s not you created, a seller can come in. They have an 80% commission set up. They can come and change it down to 20, 30%, more sustainable rate Once they have, you know, reach whatever level of sales velocity that you know trying to reach on a newly launched product. If there is an active link with that 80% commission, it is important to note that that commission Will stay active at that rate for 30 days from the date that that commission was changed. So it is important to keep that amount one launching these campaigns, especially if it’s at such a high volume and there’s there’s really no guarantee that a that an affiliate will or will be interested or not be interested, or how and where and when they will promote that once you do change that original, before you change that it’s it’s really important to note and this comes Plays a lot of relevance when it comes to product, sending product samples.
David:
A lot of these publishers, affiliates, like you mentioned before, deal sites, certainly they are very used to being paid a Decent chunk of change for an upfront placement and in which case then a brand has, you know, is guaranteed a certain amount of content. They’re guaranteed a certain amount of reach, a certain amount of impressions, whatever it is, and they have you know, they know when the content is going to be posted. All of that, when it comes to our affiliate program, nothing is guaranteed. We’re not paying upfront for the content. We’re essentially purchasing sales.
David:
But what that means and we really stress this to brands a lot of times, like I said, when it comes to product sampling, just because you send an influencer a product sample, just because the influencer creates a link, it’s no guarantee as to when they’ll post, where they’re post, how they post, which platform they’ll post on. It could be just a quick feature and their Instagram story. It could be a whole independent YouTube video just dedicated to your product. It’s really out of your hands. It’s important to understand that. You know you’re kind of paying them for the sale. You’re purchasing sales here, which is unique and and exciting, but at the same time it doesn’t guarantee anything. It doesn’t guarantee any input or work from from the affiliate.
Kevin King:
So if I’m not, if I’m launching next week my product and I go through you guys and I line up to, say, five affiliates that all agreed to Push it for 80% of my 80% commission or something, as soon as I go live in, my honeymoon period is started on my product. There’s no guarantee that, unlike a search fund, buy or something else, that that day they’re gonna actually start pushing it. They might do it that day. You could, you could, I can correspond with them and beg with them and get on my knees and say please, please, please. But there’s, there’s no guarantee and it may be a week later, two weeks, there’s, you may be sitting there twiddling your thumbs until something happens. Yeah and then there’s no guarantee once they do it, if their audience is even gonna like it or not. So they might get two sales, you might get 500 sales.
David:
Exactly that’s the disadvantage, I would say not paying upfront for replacement. So it does kind of protect you from a certain element of financial risk which I keep talking about. But on the flip side, if you are Really trying to go deep and aggressive, I would say an affiliate program is probably a supplement to a standard external traffic and off Amazon Marketing campaign.
Kevin King:
I would just do a contest. I would just get those five affiliates, or ten, or however many, from you guys and I would tell them all look, I’m having a contest in this two-week period. Whoever’s, whoever sends the most traffic, I’m gonna double. I’m giving you, I’m gonna give you 160% that’s cool. Or what or whatever, as anybody ever done that we are not yet.
David:
We are implementing, we’re testing it on our end, just out of our own pocket, and we’re gonna be rolling this out for brands the ability to include bonuses. So exactly kind of like you’re saying, where, if they hit certain thresholds or certain you know units old or some level of A tier to the next year within a brand, they do get like a certain just cash bonus, which has been really exciting. A lot of affiliates or have been super motivated to, you know, give that a product like an initial push, the after First postal, you know, give it a second post just to hit that tier, and it gives like a nice kind of boost. We haven’t done anything like you’re saying yet, though that’s, that’s a cool little thing. We’ve got like some sort of competition going and create some competitiveness. That sounds awesome.
Kevin King:
Yeah, and then they could shoot into a window of actually a launch or a promotion or something because they all got to push it within a Certain amount of time that that could work. So what about on the? I know a lot? You said you know there’s no up front. But I know I know several influencers. I know when one influencer in our space that she Makes about seventy thousand dollars a month just as an influencer no-transcript, she doesn’t do very many commission based things anymore because she what she found is that that was totally hit or miss. So now it’s more of. She wants an upfront fee. So she’s like you pay me, I’ll promote it. You want to give me a little bonus on the backside of commission? That’s great. But I’m not gonna base my work on getting commission because you might have a Crappy product or you might not convert Well or you might. Whatever the reason is, how are you overcoming that when everything is no upfront payments, commission based? Great question Are these your affiliates are your affiliates being very selective.
David:
Oh yeah, that’s exactly my hair, my hair, my hairspray.
Kevin King:
They’re like nah, I don’t think so.
David:
That’s exactly it we give them, since they’re they’re the ones that control her. So they, most of the time, they really have a good feel for the audience. They really know what’s gonna work and they can, they can be pretty sure. And about that, if it’s a deal site, they’ll tell you. I can send them a product. They’ll say this is not gonna work. Or I can send them a product and say, and they’ll say we need a 40% discount, 20% is not gonna work. Publishers and affiliates really know their audience. Well, that’s their business and if you kind of what we’ve seen is you give them that the all the data, you give them the tools and the the opportunities They’ll, they’ll make it work. And you know we’ve, we’ve Part of our value to them is just our rapidly expanding and massive catalog of almost 30,000 plus Amazon products now and it’s gonna be increasing tremendously over the coming months. And you know, since just I would say the value to them is our massive catalog of products that they’re able to choose from, so it’s not a singular brand reaching out to them and saying you know, hey, we need to, we’ll give you 20% commission and here’s our product. They have an opportunity to Almost everyone can find something with their catalog that will probably work for their audience.
Kevin King:
So there’s probably quite a few. I mean, there’s sites out there like Harold Harrow helpful reporter out, and some others when I know every you know, like we’re. We’re right now at towards the end of Q4, but back in in October and September and August there’s a lot of influencers or blog people influencers going hey, I need to make a holiday list of the five best Gifts for beauty, stocking stuffers for beauty or whatever and put that out there. What should I promote? Instead of them actually choosing what might actually be the five best, they go and they look to a service like you or Harrow or something else and they, they, they go who can I make the most money from? And and so they’re looking through your 30,000 products going, okay, this makeup brush, this hairspray, this curler, this eyelash thing, because this guy’s giving me a hundred percent Commission, this one’s giving me 50 and that’s what becomes the five best of the 2023 season. Kind of works like that, don’t it?
David:
just to certain extent. I wouldn’t throw their, their entire credibility at the window, and they’re honestly, honestly speaking, there there’s especially as you get a move up to that, or there’s some publishers that really take their credibility seriously and it really doesn’t play as yeah, there are as you think. It obviously plays some sort of a role and it really depends on the publisher. I would say where. Where it matters most and what I’ve seen is is If a brand is going to be willing to put a decent amount of budget behind it, an affiliate is going to be willing to put a lot more work and potentially their own budget behind it in terms of promoting that specific Article, pushing that specific article with specific placements on their pages that they give that specific article. So you know it. Let’s just say it plays some level of a role in what specific products they choose. But once they have those products locked in, whether you know if they have an article where they’re earning X amount of $100,000 of revenue from is supposed to because of these high commissions, it’s supposed to an article where they’re earning $10,000 of revenue from you best believe they’re gonna push that $100,000 you know article because it has those higher commissions and whatnot. So I would say that’s kind of probably more work. Where it plays a role, the choosing of the products. It does play a role. I’m not gonna say it doesn’t at all, but it’s Honestly, especially the bigger publishers, not as much as I personally would have thought Meaning you can have. You can have. If you ever crap product, you can give them a 200% commission. There’s just they’re not gonna put it.
Kevin King:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. What? What are some of the products that work best that you see? Are there certain categories that, man, we try to get this, it just doesn’t really work in this model and there’s other categories that just crush it? Or are you seeing what were the good ones and the bad ones?
David:
bad ones. The supplements is really hard, just a lot of, specifically in different social platforms. There’s a lot of Gray areas to what you can post and claims and all of that, and we do have a lot of supplements in our network, so it is tends to be really hard. The good areas innovative products, tech products. You know stuff that just looks exciting. We have like a robotic pool cleaning vacuum. It’s stuff that have a high price point is also a really good spot. You know a $400 $500 product. If a seller is offering a 15-20% commission on that, it’s a lot more incentivizing than a $10 $15 product with a 20% commission.And then universal products kitchen knives, kitchen products, stuff that everybody needs, no matter age, gender, where you live. Everybody needs a good kitchen knife. And the final spot would be products where sellers are able to go deep on promotions, whether that’s because of an immature reduction or new product launch or Just the brand is has evergreen. You know good promotions on subscribing, safe stuff. Like I said, a nice chunk of our affiliate network is deal sites and that’s specifically what they’re looking for and what we help them find. So for products they offer, you know, 30% subscribe and see if you find Affiliates will run through that a lot of times.
Kevin King:
So there’s basically three areas where the sellers should be considering using something like, like archer affiliates is a new launch to get the ball rolling, something to clear out some inventory that just ain’t moving. And then third is something just a supplement and maintain rank, something that can just get you that little supplement to keep you boosted up a little bit in rank, or those pretty much the three different. So the launch might be heavy, heavy discounts, like I mean not heavy discount, sorry, heavy commissions. So like 80 and 100% commissions. It’s get that, get that fire started. The, the clearance might be just at a commission base. That’s just to get rid of the stuff and hopefully break even. So you might not be doing 80%. Maybe you are because you just want the stuff gone. But Most people would probably be doing that more a break even type of level, or slightly above, break below, break even, if they’re probably doing that Break below break even if they’re paying storage fees or something on it. And then maintenance, one would be more like I want just a reasonable tacos, a reasonable ROAS or whatever. Those are three basic areas that you’re seeing that the biggest use cases are.
David:
Yep, absolutely. Now that the cool part about a program is you can set the commission on a product level, so you’re absolutely spot on. Sellers will set their newly launched product ridiculously high, set their inventory reduction campaigns. It really depends on the circumstances. Sometimes they’re like avoiding Q4 storage fees, in which case it’s a little bit different than if they’re it’s a discontinued, that product that they’re just trying to, you know, move out and essentially throw out, so that even that specific strategy kind of differs. But that would be the second one and the third one would be kind of just maintenance. So yeah, essentially, if you’re running a, you know your your catalog at a 20 30% Acos and, on branded terms, definitely set a 20 30% commission. It’s supplemental sales, the same profit margins that you’re currently running your PPC campaigns at.
Kevin King:
I know you can’t say names, but can you give me an example of someone that’s just crush it? They did a million dollars in sales or something from. Your affiliate network and on the flip side that, can you give me an affiliate? So there might be people listening to this that aren’t sellers but they’re affiliates and like, yeah, we have this one dude that he made like half a million bucks last month. You know is pushing stuff. Or can you give me a couple like just crazy real life examples of people that have just knocked it out of the park?
David:
Yes, On the affiliate side. Like I said, it’s been deal sites for when. This wasn’t the the Kind of Mindset from the outset when we when we created this. But not I think deal sites have succeeded, not specifically because it’s just the commission opportunity. One area where deal sites have lacked is on the communication side. They’ve never been able to Communicate with the brand to simply ask them to create a promo code for them, which is a little ridiculous. If they wanted to promote a product or they had to find either the promo code online or somebody from the brand had to directly reach out to them. With our program, we kind of give that layer of communication so they’re essentially able to browse through all the products in our network, identify a product that looks cool to them and then request a promo code from that seller.
Kevin King:
Which is brilliant. So they know their data that we did something like this in the past Exactly. This one looks pretty cool, so we know we can do a good. Hey, mr Seller, if you’ll give me an extra, you’ll give me 50% instead of 40%. I’ll run this for you, that kind of thing.
David:
Exactly. So simply because of that feature, outside of just the commission thing, deal sites have loved us. That’s kind of been taken off. So I would say as a general thing that space has really popped off for us. What?
Kevin King:
kind of numbers though on that, like someone done a million dollars in sales or half a million dollars in sales or what’s a number that is blasted through that.
David:
Our top one is probably doing half a million monthly touching on that. Okay cool or in that range it does. It is pretty inconsistent, honestly. So, like months where there’s a prime day, involved a prime day, within two days they’ll hit a general two months trailing revenue on a deal site. Q4, black Friday, they have these events that their revenue growth is insane because Black Friday everybody’s looking for a deal site. Their traffic is 20, 50x insane. So it is somewhat inconsistent considering those types of events. But yeah, I will say that that’s probably our better motor On the brand side. I would say this probably doesn’t apply so much to your audience here. I was listening to this podcast, but one area where we’ve killed it again, I can’t really name specific brands, but one area we’ve killed it is a lot of larger, higher priced items in, specifically, the furniture space. For some reason it seems to be an area where a lot of consumers are making quick impulse purchasing decisions, which is very important for affiliates. So a product where there’s some level of a lot of research, like the supplement, probably falls into this category. It’s a very competitive space. They’re looking at different supplements, they’re looking at the nutritional facts before they make that decision and just because they see something in TikTok they’re probably not going to necessarily purchase it, as opposed to you see a cool couch that’s retailing at a good promo code or a good pool cleaner vacuum with a good promo code and a good deal and you know you need that.
David:
It seems to me to be a little bit more of a quick impulse decision. And that’s what we’ve seen is those tech higher price point with a promo code outdoor. Maybe that’s just because the summer just passed, but outdoor home furniture products have really done well, as well as beauty and personal care. Beauty seems to be a good space where these publishers play a pretty important role. A lot of people do make impulse decisions in that area, so I would say those two off the top of my head.
Kevin King:
This is cool stuff, David. So if people want to reach out or find more or see what you guys can do for them, how would they go about doing that?
David:
Everything’s on our website. It takes a few minutes to sign up, add your products, we pull in all your reasons from your brand store and you’re just able to set commissions on those. Sign up link is directly on our website. If you want a schedule, we’ll call with myself or somebody from our team. It’s calendar link is on the website. Pretty straightforward sign up process. Everything is pretty much there. We love consistently communicating with all our sellers and new sellers and existing sellers and all that.
Kevin King:
That’s archer like Archer Affiliates with an s dot com right?
David:
Nailed it. archeraffiliates.com. I can verify myself on awesome David Katz as well.
Kevin King:
K A T Z, David Katz on LinkedIn.
David:
That’s me.
Kevin King:
There we go, man, hey, I always remember. I always remember that name because we used to. I live here in Austin. We used to have a place called cats is Delhi never closes? Is a 24 hour deli that was right in the heart of downtown and about I don’t know. It’s 10 years ago or so. It just suddenly closed but it was like a go to place at like three o’clock in the morning after hitting the bars or something that everybody would go and get a nice pastrami sandwich or something. So that name cats always is in the back of my mind.
David:
I’ll take it so now my name synonymous with pastrami sandwiches, then sounds pretty spot on.
Kevin King:
There you go, man. Hey well, I appreciate you coming on and spend some time with us today, man, it’s been great. Looking forward to seeing you at upcoming event somewhere.
David:
Likewise, Kevin, been an absolute pleasure and thank you so much for having me.
Kevin King:
Some great information there from David. You know there’s several companies that do similar things, but he’s got a kind of unique take on it. So if you haven’t go over to Archer archeraffiliates.com and especially what we got talking about there towards the end about how you can use this to potentially launch products Now, you don’t have total control, so that’s one downside, but it sounds like there’s some ways you can do that. And after we got off, he actually even said you know, my little idea there of having a contest within a short period of time actually might work. So who knows, they might build that into their tool. But great stuff. Be sure you’ve signed up for the billion dollar sellers newsletter, billiondollarsellerscom, and coming up in February I have a virtual summit as well where we’re going to have some amazing, amazing speakers delivering next level stuff, so you don’t want to miss that. It’s going to be the virtual Billion Dollar Seller Summit at billiondollarsellerssummit.com you can get all the information and it’s coming up in February. Before I leave you today, I hope you have a happy holidays and everything is going great. Have a very safe celebration and remember these words of wisdom, especially when it applies to what David talked about today. People connect with people, not products. People connect with people, not products. See you again next week. Have a great one.
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