Affiliate Marketing Success - Lee-Ann Johnstone Shares Her Journey and Tips

I'm so pleased to have Lee-Ann Johnstone as my guest today.

A little bit of a backstory.

So Lee-Ann and I were both from the same country.

We were talking in the green room earlier.

We established we were actually not that far from each other geographically,

I kept seeing Lee-Ann everywhere, I kept hearing about Lee-Ann Johnstone

everywhere, and I'd never met her.

I'm like, this is weird.

I thought I knew everyone in performance marketing, But I'd never met Lee-Ann.

And lo and behold, I just happened to be in a bar in Las Vegas

when Affiliate Summit was on.

And that's where we actually met for the first time.

So Lee-Ann, welcome to the show.

Thank you, Jim, for having me on your mic.

I'm so excited to be here.

yeah, it was a weird story how we met because I actually found out about you

at a LinkUnite conference in Florida before I came to Affiliate Summit West.

And then, lo and behold, I looked across the bar and there you

were, and that's how we met.

So it was fated and

meant to be.

I'm always amazed at how many.

People from the UK are prepared to jump on that 10 hour flight to Vegas to go to

Affiliate Summit and brutalize themselves for two or three days for work purposes.

so Lee-Ann,

You've been a digital marketer, affiliate marketer for 20 plus years.

So what's your backstory?

How did you get into digital marketing in the first place?

Love that story because, everybody that I've ever spoken to in affiliate marketing

has always landed up here by accident.

And so did I, so about 20 years ago, I was working for an insurance,

a financial services company doing traditional marketing.

So print, Radio, TV, all the usual things.

and I literally sat there and I thought if I do another quarterly

or annual report, I'm going to want to kill myself because it's just

the same all the time, all the time.

And at that time in South Africa, in case people want to know what, where

this accent's from, Online marketing was becoming a bit of a thing.

And so there was like one company in the whole of Cape

town that was doing media buying.

And I thought, I have to go and check out what this is.

And, so I checked in my job, went and interviewed, and they did like a round of

six interviews or something ridiculous.

And, I had to answer every question under the sun, made it through to the

last interview stage and got the job.

And I was like, I can't believe I got the job.

I've got no experience in online marketing whatsoever, but I am a good, Marketing

Practitioner, anyway, they're like, we can teach you all of those things.

and I started at the bottom, like right at the bottom.

I was a junior account executive, with no experience and had to learn the ropes,

but I was so in love with online and the fact that I could make decisions

and see the impact happening immediately with the customers that were seeing

the content that we were creating.

Um, that I soaked it up like a sponge.

And within three months I was one of the senior media buyers

that they had in their team.

And from there, it really just spanned on.

And, and I went into media buying and then I went into performance

marketing, did a little bit of paid, contextual marketing, pay per click,

AdWords, all the usual things that were floating around back in those days.

And just absolutely fell in love with Affiliate because it combined,

people, which, I love being around people and working with

people and building relationships.

And I combined the numbers, the stats behind what's working, what

isn't working, and I found my niche.

And I thought, this is what I'm meant to do.

I woke up every day, and I was happy to go into work.

And I thought, this is That I found my passion, it was like a light bulb moment.

And, fast forward 20 years later, I'm still in this industry.

I'm still having light bulb moments.

I'm still loving every day that I, that I work in performance because

it combines those two things.

It combines people and working with, really innovative, clever affiliates who

are at the forefront of the internet.

And it's also working with brands and, and the data and the analysis that sits

behind all the campaigns that we run.

So for me, it's some people wake up and they know they want

to be a doctor or a lawyer.

I woke up and I knew I wanted to be in marketing, but I didn't really know what.

And then by accident, I found performance and it really

just floated my boat.

And that's how I got into the

industry.

I don't think I'm, speaking out of turn here.

You are by far and away, one of the hardest working people in our industry.

like you're everywhere again, I don't know if that's been by design or what

have you, but you're a, an award winning podcaster, we were talking again, we

were talking beforehand about going to the podcast show and we'll talk about

that in a second, but what I found quite interesting, so you're obviously an

award winning podcaster and I know from my own experience of doing this podcast.

podcast.

How hard that is, How hard it is to create a podcast regularly.

Again, I've missed a couple of weeks because I've been traveling and so on.

but it's tough.

so again, kudos to you for, doing that, but you're also running, AFI

media, And then you've also got your program management company as well.

So how do you juggle all those chainsaws?

I

I gotta, I

think of each

gotta be honest with you, it is not by design, it's accidentally on purpose

again, and it all starts with having one vision and one focus, and that is to

help everybody in the world do affiliate marketing better, so it doesn't matter

where you are in your journey, if you are new to affiliate and starting out

and you have no idea how to get started.

Or if you're experienced and seasoned and you want to get to that next level and

think ahead and be ahead of the trends, we've created a flywheel in our business

that helps you no matter where you are.

And it was, I'd love to say it was by design, but it wasn't, it was due to

economic factors and COVID basically.

So, There's three streams to our business at this point.

the first one is we're obviously an, an agency, so we're actually

an award winning agency as well.

we manage affiliate programs for brands, for clients.

We launch them, scale them, grow them, migrate them, like whatever it

is that you need to have done on an affiliate program, we have a very,

very experienced account management team that can help you with that.

and through the agency, which was the start of our business.

So like any other agency owner, you start as a consultant and then you get

bigger and you start hiring people and you start bringing on more clients.

And then COVID hit.

And so it was a timing issue for me because I was like, Oh, I've got this

agency, but now I can't go to any events.

How do I get new business?

And so the only way I could do that is I pivoted into content marketing.

So we launched the podcast to continue that education process.

And then we started pushing out a whole bunch of content and inviting,

I've got a huge Rolodex of people I've been around a long time, people

like you even, to start coming in and contributing to that conversation.

And we ended up building this community around Affiverse where

we've got this media publication now where everybody wants to be in it

and advertise on it because we speak to affiliates, affiliate managers,

agencies, networks, like people that are practitioners in affiliate marketing.

They're coming to listen and learn with us.

and so we became an accidental media company overnight, not by design and.

Obviously during COVID we wanted to reach our audience and the best way that we

could do that was to host virtual events.

So we started running these educational events and actually just bringing people

together to have conversations about what's changing because as you know in

this industry, like things change daily.

Like you could be doing something this month and in three months time

that strategy doesn't work anymore.

It's been done.

so really just keeping ahead of that curve was, was one of the things that

we wanted to do, which fits back to that vision of helping our customers

to do affiliate marketing better.

And then.

The last stream in our business is the fact that we have a 12 week coaching

program for affiliate program managers.

So it doesn't matter whether you're working agency side, network side, client

side, brand side, like you can come and learn with me, all the frameworks

that I've learned over 25 years.

And it sounds like a long time, but like you have to fail a lot in order to build.

Really successful frameworks.

And we give everybody the edge in terms of thinking about their

program differently and coaching them through some of the changes that are

happening now around them as well.

So it's almost like a supportive program, membership, community, whatever you

want to call it, to just level up and learn with practitioners that have

gone before you because As you know, this industry is so fragmented, there's

no degree in affiliate marketing, you have to learn everything on the job.

And so we just really wanted to invite everybody to come with us, to learn

how to do affiliate marketing better.

and so everything that we've built at Affiverse is really about helping our

community to rise up and to, really get access to people, practitioners, speakers,

whoever it is that I can leverage in my community that I know knows their

things, to just come together and learn.

And so we've attracted an audience by just putting out good content and making

sure that people can get the support that they need in order to do it better

because I really love this industry.

I've been in it for two decades, and I want to see it.

left in a better place than when I started.

And so everything that I'm doing right now is about that next gen of account managers

coming into the system who needs to be supported and who needs to have access

to really like knowledgeable people that they wouldn't know that they need access

to, because when you walk into these huge events and we do have big events

in our industry, it's a bit daunting.

Like, who do you know?

Who, who do you follow?

Who do you go and talk to?

Who, who can you get information from?

And so.

That's kind of what I've got is over the last four years, I've built this

business and that's what we have is this community of people that want to

learn and grow and they just follow and

come along with us.

And I'm very proud of that.

as well.

You should be is, I think it's what you've achieved is, is like I said,

nothing short of amazing, especially as you're also, you have a family.

You were just saying beforehand, you just come back from Spain.

I completely appreciate the, the kind of the time it takes to, uh, to

kind of run one business, nevermind

Kind of three.

Yeah.

Not bad design.

I mean, it just is what it is.

So, you know, and I have to just say, Jim, I have an amazing team.

Like this isn't just me, like I've got an amazing team that sits behind me that has

helped us to pull this vision forward.

And they all believe in what we're doing.

Like they all believe that they all come from the industry.

So they all know that and they have experienced the lack of

knowledge and the lack of, support.

and they really do want to help the world do affiliate marketing better.

And I kind of, I strapline, I'm a really simple person.

Like I only talk about one subject and that's affiliate marketing, but I love it.

I absolutely love it.

And hopefully that shines through in everything that

we do and all the experiences that we've been able to give to

people and, and, support them with.

So, so one of the, I think one of the challenges with the industry, as you said,

it's quite fragmented, It's, again, I think it's got, it's almost got a, like a

language of its own, like there's so much jargon, there's so many different names

that things are called, So affiliates are also known as publishers, Agencies

are sometimes called program managers,

There's there's so many different things, brands are called advertisers.

And it's that there are so many pieces to it.

Affiliate marketing, performance marketing, and is it the same thing?

And how, why do you think we've never been able to arrive at one

set of industry standards to say this is what everything's going to

be called from this point forward.

And all the other stuff doesn't matter.

affiliate marketing is, it's always been affiliate marketing to me.

But I think some brands don't want to be associated with affiliate marketing.

So it's called performance marketing and you think, it's still the same thing,

It's still the same kind of outcome that you're, you're trying to derive.

So how do you think we need to address that as an industry?

I mean, I think we're in another evolution now.

So you and I, in our lifetime in affiliate marketing, we'll identify with affiliate

marketing and know exactly what it means.

The next generation came in and said, it's performance marketing.

So it's pay on performance.

Now we're talking about partnerships.

Everybody is a partner.

And the reason why it's so fragmented is because the internet has changed so much.

Significantly since affiliate marketing first started, where it

was just a website and a single link.

Now you've got sub networks, networks, influencers, different social media

channels where you can push content out, email marketers, bloggers,

paid media arbitrage sellers.

So affiliate marketing is no longer a channel.

It's actually a payment method.

Like if you think about it in the most basic sense of the word.

And so it encompasses everything.

And I.

We'll go on record and say that the hardest job in digital is to be

an account manager in an affiliate program because you have to have

the skills of an SEO, a paid media, Manager, a relationship builder, a

influencer or social media manager.

You need to understand all the different social platforms and how they work.

You need to be able to look outside of web, mobile, and start looking

at things like chat and telegram and all of these other places.

And so as a practitioner, you're probably one of the most experienced people.

And with all of that fragmentation and different terminology that companies

adopt internally within their cultural.

Like tone of voice, it has become super fragmented.

Like there isn't even a standardized title for an Affiliate Account Manager.

Like you can see Head of Partnerships, Head of Growth, Affiliate Account

Executive, Affiliate Account Manager, Affiliate Head of Affiliate

Accounting, like there's so many different words and names and phrases

for what you do, it makes LinkedIn very difficult to find people.

Like if everybody had the same job title, it would be easy, right?

I think it's just, it's the nature of the beast and it's, it's the way

that the industry has grown so fast and so fragmented and everybody's

just adopted their own colloquialisms, um, that it's become complex.

And what we need to do as an industry is rein it back and go, what is this job?

What is this title?

What is the kind of, Function that's associated with that title because it does

actually also impact career development.

if you're starting out as a junior account manager, account exec, what are the

steps to grow forward and what are the sideways moves that you can make after

coming in through affiliate as well?

Um, and there are many.

So if you are here and you're listening to this, there are

many, many ways that you can grow

your career.

So if you've got questions about that, you can ask me.

So one of the, one of the challenges I've always found with job titles

is, is I always used to say to people when, when I employed people in my

original paid search agency, which, which morphed into becoming an affiliate

network, we had a lot of people that work for us and they were like, well,

what's my job title going to be?

And I'm like, well, really your job title is going to be whatever you want it to be.

Right.

Your job expectations will be whatever the job entails.

Again, there's so many kind of.

Components to it.

So I think one of the challenges I found when I certainly when I was

running my affiliate network is when you're working with affiliates, and I

mean, I know you did a show recently with, Harrison and Adam from Ringba,

Yeah.

I've heard

the offer,

Yeah, that was fun.

I watched out thought this is a

wacky interview, But, but again, I love that, that, um,

that's their vibe

got

with the shorts and the seat again.

I don't

really think you should be seeing podcasters feet, but

Yeah.

Works for them.

so, so Harrison used to be one of

our affiliates way, way back.

So again, you've h you've.

Everyone's heard the story of, he started when he was like

really super, super young.

I don't know if he was like 13, 14, But he had a black Amex card, And

he was more proud of being a Google Ads qualified person than he was of

having a black Amex and traveling first class and booking himself into hotels.

But he was a really good affiliate.

But I think one of the challenges when, when you have, Uh, affiliate

managers working in your affiliate network, And they see the sort

of money that the affiliates are earning, There's this temptation

for them to go, maybe I can do that.

Maybe I can make.

50 grand, 100 grand a month,

Half a million a month.

we had some, some crazy payouts to affiliates that we were working

with, How do you keep people kind of on the job at hand when they see

this kind of Shiny object syndrome going on behind the scenes, if you

So I recruit really well.

I recruit, and this has taken me years to kind of identify the raw traits that

make a good affiliate account manager.

And.

Let me tell you now, if you think that you can go out there and make

millions, and, you know, be, be like, Harrison is, like, he's 0.

001 percent of the industry.

Like, let's just set the record straight.

There are some extremely intelligent, successful affiliates out there that

know what they know, and they've spent years honing their craft.

So if you're an affiliate account manager and you're looking on the other side of

the fence, believe me, it's not that easy.

If it was, I would have done it years ago.

Haven't ever been an affiliate, okay, in 25 years.

It is damn hard.

Um, so really, I think you need to know yourself and you

need to know your strengths.

and you need to know what is your future plan.

Like, if you're coming into this industry, you need to have goals and

you need to have incremental growth and you need to understand where

you want to be one day in future.

And if you, if you need help with that, you can talk to anybody in the industry.

They'll mentor you.

You can contact me if you're an affiliate manager and I'll tell you my story.

I went from affiliate account manager to CMO to like vice president of

business development and marketing, and then left and started my own

business and became an entrepreneur.

there's so many different ways that you can grow your career and that you

can move forward, but know who you are first and know what you're good at.

And if you're really, really good at something, stick to what you're good

at and build a career around that.

And that's what I've done.

I'm really good at building relationships with people and I'm really good at

explaining complex things in a simple way.

Simple manner.

And so I've used those skills in order to grow my career in the areas that I enjoy.

Because you might look at that shiny picture and go, wow, living the dream.

I'm working here.

I'm working there.

I'm doing everything else, but it is very hard and it is very

stressful running your own business.

So if, if you think being an entrepreneur is for you, I would say, take the leap.

But if you think, maybe I don't have the skills, All the nuts and bolts that

make a really successful entrepreneur, then stay on the side that you're on

and keep developing your career and your skillset.

I mean, I know that

the, the topic of DEI is on everyone's kind of minds and thoughts and everything.

Again, I, I've, I grew up in Hong Kong, so I've never even thought of, diversity

as kind of like a, I think I mean, really, I was the minority in Hong Kong, right.

And clearly, that's not the case.

Now I'm here in the UK.

Again, I've got, stepdaughters that work in the industry have done for donkey's

years, So again, I've never ever thought of the whole, equality side of things.

It's always been I've always paid as well as I can, right.

you know, regardless of whether somebody's like a woman or a man, it doesn't matter

to me, the kind of most important thing is, are they capable of doing the job?

Where do you think we are as an industry?

Because I mean, you're, you're a, a, a, a staunch fan of, you know,

as, as am I, even though I'm a man supporting a women's initiative, right?

And I'm, again, I'm fully supportive of any woman that, that runs a

business in addition to obviously a family and everything else.

I know how hard it is from, from my perspective, to kind of like

try to be involved in the family.

where do you think we are as an industry in that respect

I think we've come a long way.

I think we've come a very long way because back in the day when I was

joining the industry, women were few and far between, but it was because this

industry was traditionally like a sales and business development and sales role.

And that has traditionally always been a man's, Kind of domain, so, um,

20 odd years ago, I mean, you know, I don't know what the average age

of your audience is, but like, the world was a very different place back

then when we, when we first started.

So there is still very few female, like senior female CEOs I mean, a

lot of the big agencies are run by like really successful female CEOs.

Um, but I think that we've come a very long way and I think that the

equality is, to my mind, what I see, and I can only judge it by the events

that I go to and how many people are in the room, it seems to be quite

equal compared to other industries.

Um, and I'm happy to see that because it is a career that

you can have with a family.

It is a career that, that you can have flexible working if you find

the right companies that offer that.

I mean, I know of some networks that even work four day work weeks now.

Um, so, you know, there's the, the internet allows you to work

remotely, to work flexible hours.

to be online at different times in the world.

And, you know, I think that we've leveraged that.

So I'm, I'm quite happy with what I'm seeing.

Um, you know, there's always room for improvement, but you know, I think

we've come a long way as, as a, as an industry and we're very aware

of it in our industry compared to others, I think.

Yeah.

I mean, like, like I said, I think the, um, we, we just need to kind

of be constantly aware of it.

I don't, I don't think people should just be paying lip service to it.

It's something you should be thinking about all the time,

Always think in that regard.

I mean, again, you're an event organizer,

And I'm speaking at your event in September, which I'm, I'm absolutely

delighted to be able to do.

Do you want to tell us a little bit about that

Yeah, so, um, it's the first time that we're actually going to run an in person

event because we've never done it before.

But we get about 2, 000 people coming to our virtual events and the reason why

I'm running it in person in London in September is because it's right about the

time when people start planning for 2025.

So, So it's really good, good timing, but also we're running

it for small, medium advertisers.

So, you know, the guys that don't get to go to some of the bigger industry

events, they maybe don't have budgets to go to those events, but they

also want to learn what's changing.

And this year, particularly the theme behind Elevate, obviously

the word Elevate is kind of grow.

Um, but the theme behind it is how do you figure out?

What's going to happen in 2025 when cookies finally deprecate?

Because a lot of these smaller advertisers, these Shopify, stores,

storefronts, they're all relying on kind of Facebook Ads and retargeting.

And if they can't retarget on third party cookies, how are they

going to grow their business?

And where are they going to spend their budget?

So we really want to bring people together to understand what the next step is.

How do they diversify from all of these channels that have been

easy to to gain access to and to grow their businesses from.

And what strategies do they need to be putting in place?

And so we're holding it, um, in conjunction with Lead Generation World.

So, um, they're coming from the U S to, to, uh, to the UK to support it.

Um, and we've got some amazing speakers.

I mean, yourself included, but really we've got like some really,

I don't know if I can say this, but shit hot, like, Practitioners

that know their stuff.

want.

Yeah.

Um, and they really are there to come and teach like the whole premise of, of

everybody that I've asked to come to this event and, and to be there in person on

the day is to teach the nuts and bolts of what you need to do to grow your business.

So if you're a small advertiser.

You're maybe running your business in house with three to four delegates

or people, like one of them being a marketer, like get that marketer

to this event, because one, they're going to get knowledge about what's

happening and the changes that are coming in 2025 and where and how to

diversify their marketing budgets.

They're going to get.

a chance to speak to industry experts that have been around for, you know, two

decades who can help them to navigate the changes that are coming ahead and

really just give them the support so that they don't need to be fearful

because a lot of people are fearful.

How am I going to keep my job?

How am I going to keep my business running?

Am I going to be able to grow against some of the bigger brands that have

got massive budgets and in house teams?

And the answer to all of that is yes, but get yourself organized

and get yourself into the room.

So that you can talk to these people and actually get the advice that you need.

So again, everything that we do tracks back to helping the world

do affiliate marketing better.

If you want to do affiliate marketing better next year, come to this conference

and actually learn from the people that are contributing their time, their

knowledge, their years of experience, and helping brands to actually grow.

Um, so it's, you know, this, it's not just for advertisers, obviously, it's,

it's for agencies for, and a, and a lot of agencies are talking to me right

now about how do they actually increase their revenue by doing performance.

So if you are a paid agency or an SEO agency, and you're thinking about doing

performance management for some of your clients as an existing revenue stream,

Get to this conference because you're going to get to find out the nuts and

bolts of what, what you need to know.

You might even be able to educate your people as, you know, post

event, and you might come away with some really great ideas of how to

monetize your business and actually get extra revenue streams in there.

So agencies, networks, brands, publishers, we've got some really

great publishers signed up already.

They're all coming to learn from the people that we're bringing together.

And I'm very, You'll know me.

I mean, you do know me.

I'm very, very like cutthroat about content.

Like the content that we put out has to be educational, practical,

tactical, and none of the fluff.

Like I want to, when I leave this conference, I want to know I have

to spend here, here, and here.

I need to get this kind of agency in to help me with X, Y, Z.

I've got these resources.

Um, you know, positions that I'm going to need to fill and I've got a tactical plan

about how I can move my business forward.

So it's all about the

nuts and bolts.

Like that's really what we're doing at Elevate this year.

I'm really excited to, um, to take myself back on stage.

at one point in time, I spoke at lots of conferences and then I didn't take a, it

wasn't a sort of like a forced sabbatical.

I just took myself off the stage because I kept saying I was too

white, too old and too male.

Uh, I just wanted to give more people an opportunity to get on stage, but

I realized that there's still things that I'm, things that I know things

that I'm doing that have not been talked about because people are not

doing the things that I'm doing.

And I've, again, I don't want to, to kind of eventually get to

the point where I stop working and leave the knowledge behind.

I'd like to leave the knowledge so that people can can continue the industry.

Again, I'm, I'm like you.

I'm.

Super passionate about ensuring that our industry continues to evolve

and grow, It's grown pretty well.

When I first started, there was less than a thousand people in

the whole of the UK that probably did digital marketing, right?

I think recently, um, I heard that there's over a million people in the

UK that are doing digital marketing and far more than that in, in, in,

Other parts

The world, right?

so it's become a huge industry.

It's very much in demand.

A lot of people are switching from, maybe an industry that

they've been in for a long time.

I mean, I started in financial services, um, and I made good money,

but I hated the job, It was just, it just drowned me with just dread.

I hated every second of that last few years of being in it.

And then when I got into this industry, It was so refreshing, new, challenging.

It was a goldmine, an opportunity.

and again, even 25 years later, it's still that, I still think

there are massive opportunities because it keeps reinventing itself.

Something new will come along again at the moment.

I think pay per call is a huge opportunity,

here in the UK.

I

Massive.

it's gonna, it's gonna hit our shores.

We're probably like five years behind the U S in terms of pay per call, but

if you think about how we are going to have to capture data and all of the

things that are happening with consent, especially here in Europe, pay per

call is the next evolution, I think.

And in actual fact, the next is going to be at our, at our event,

they're a sponsor of our event.

And.

We need to educate people on how to leverage all of these

ways to find first party data.

The theme of Elevate is where lead gen and performance will finally

collide, because we have kept lead generation separate to performance

or to affiliate marketing, because we thought it was a different channel.

And remember, I don't believe that there's a channel anymore.

There's no digital channel called affiliate.

It's now a payment mechanism.

Like, if you're paying on CPA or you're paying on revenue

share, that is performance.

It's paid on performance.

And so, you should, you know, pay per call is just yet another string to your bow

of social, paid, you know, pay per call.

content, all the rest of the stuff that you work with and

partnerships and everything else.

And we need to get ahead of that stuff and learn how to leverage it

because the times they are changing.

And you and I know this, and we're comfortable with the changes that are

coming because we've been through multiple iterations of it before in our history.

But new people coming into the industry don't have access to that history.

They don't have access to the times when we had to work through

recessions and had to learn new things.

They don't have time, access to when, um, social media channels launched and

everybody was like, What the heck is this?

How do we integrate it into our program strategy?

What, now you've got huge influencer networks that you're working with and

it's like par for the course every day.

But we're heading into this new, this next changeover again in

2025 when cookies deprecate.

And the way that consumers are, Searching for products on the internet

means that your strategies have to change and the channels that you're

using might have to change and you might have to implement new technology.

And that's what Elevate is all about.

It's about understanding what

is coming and what's changing and learning from people that have gone before you.

Yeah, it's interesting.

You talked about influencer marketing.

it was really quite interesting because I remember way back in probably

2006 or seven, something like that.

Like the first sort of idea of influencer marketing came out, I think I was

working with a company, and we got Kim Kardashian at the time, because she

wasn't that well known as she is now.

But we got her to endorse and put out some, some posts about a lip gloss.

And again, we paid a ton of money for the product.

privilege of putting the ads out, right?

And, you couldn't track it 100%, But we reckon that there was probably like a 10x

uplift in the value of what she delivered in sales, incremental sales, based

on the points that she put out there.

I think the challenge became that there was this, you know, influencers

were great for a period of time.

Now, all of a sudden, the influencers are becoming the brands, They're

the ones that they don't, they go, I don't need to go and work with.

you and you pay me a commission on whatever, I can just have the brand,

And you know, if you look at sort of the Paul brothers with their, their

kind of, uh, their energy drinks, and there's so many people that have got

their own products now, So they've almost like cut that piece of the puzzle

out of the equation altogether, right?

And again, I think that's going to continue to evolve and change,

But that doesn't mean that there isn't still an opportunity to do

collaborations with people that fit.

nicely with the audience that you have, For, for that purpose, For, for the

purposes of, trying to get their influence to rub off onto to your customer base.

I mean, if I look at the way that I've

Like everything that we've done has always been about putting the customer

at the heart of what we do, so helping the world do affiliate marketing better.

So everything that we do has to help whoever is coming, listening, tuning

in, subscribing, whatever it is, has to help them do affiliate marketing better.

And if you think about the future, the next evolution of what we do.

How brands need to be engaging with their consumers and also the next generation.

So Gen X, they're not the same as millennials.

they use the internet differently, community based marketing.

Okay.

It's going to become one of the most powerful marketing methods that you have.

And even to this day, word of mouth marketing is still

the best form of advertising.

Okay.

So how do you leverage all of these influences, these content creators,

and work with them in a capacity that is unique and individual to them?

The one size fits all affiliate program is like long gone, like anybody that's

paying a standard CPA or standard revenue share and expecting every affiliate in the

world to conform to that, you are sorely misguided if you think that your program

is going to scale, because it cannot.

So finding tech solutions, finding different ways of collaborating with

partners, and This industry is still very much built on relationships, like

I can't force you to do something.

I have to build a relationship with you and make you trust me,

and then you can actually promote my product and look at things.

So we have to flip everything on its head.

It's not about he who pays the most gets the most affiliates anymore,

because affiliates are wise to that.

They don't want to work with brands that they don't identify with, brands

that don't treat them like an extension of their business, brands that treat

them like suppliers and just like Pay them at the end of the month.

Like they're too busy for that.

They're building a brand themselves.

So really thinking about what your future strategy is.

And again, reason why we're running Elevate is getting you to the table

to actually have these conversations with people that have gone before you

and people that can advise you about how things are changing because they

know what has happened in the past.

And it's almost like being a.

Like a trader, how to read the market and you know, when things happen, how

that impacts of what the leverage is going to be three months down the line,

because you've got the past history.

And that's the bit that we're trying to share that isn't written down in books.

It's not.

It's not available anywhere online, it's only going to happen at this event because

we're curating all the people that need to be there to have this conversation.

So it's like a one time only drill, like if you don't get there, you're

not going to get the information.

Um, and I think hopefully it'll help people, it'll help people to get over

the fear because the fear can be really stopping you from actually innovating

and changing and doing new things.

But it can also help you to think about what your strategy is for moving forward.

Yeah, I think I mean, I've always kind of maintained that, if you're going to

hire somebody to help, you should be hiring them for their expertise, not

for utility, Just don't hire them as a kind of like a, I just need an agency.

I just want you to do all this stuff that I don't want to do.

You're hiring somebody for their expertise.

again, if you're running a program, like a program manager, like yourselves,

It's a case of you, you can bring expertise to the table, A different

view in terms of how you can acquire new sales, for their business that may

be outside of the kind of current scope of what they're doing as a business,

And again, you, if you work with people that are, you know, Email

marketers or PPC specialists or SEO specialists or chatbot specialists.

I mean, there's so many different ways people can drive traffic incrementally

to your brand, To help boost your sales, And some of those will be things that.

would be far more difficult and expensive for you to try and implement on your own.

It's much better to kind of part with somebody who is an expert

in that particular discipline and actually get them to be the person

that delivers that piece from it, So it's not cannibalizing anything that

you've got going on at the moment,

So again, I think it's usually there's the silos within the business.

There's usually a somebody that maybe runs their current PPCs.

threatened by the thought of other PPC people coming in to run traffic

to, for that particular program.

And I, I've always maintained if you're a brand, I'd rather have me and seven

of my affiliates promoting my product than Google choosing, you Me and seven

of my competitors, 'cause they're not gonna just leave the ad spaces blank.

They're gonna fill 'em up with other stuff.

And I would much rather the spaces were filled with my products and my

affiliates rather than somebody else's.

and any brands that kind of like run a program that, that, that do that, I

mean, that's where, that consultation with a program manager like, Lee-Ann

can actually explain why that's a beneficial strategy to employ.

Yeah, totally agree.

I mean, time for money and time for expertise, like the

two very different things.

Like we, we work with some clients where we just give them the insights.

We take a fresh look and I can't express the value that a fresh set of eyes

can have on looking over your program.

And it's not, It's simply because, as marketers, we get into blinker

mode, we do things that always work.

We want to continue the iteration of everything that we're doing.

And sometimes getting an outside perspective in can really open up your

eyes to thinking about things differently.

And that's another reason why I always tell people get out to every single

event that you can get to, whether it's online, virtual, in person, whatever.

Like if your budget can afford you to get to every single event, get to them

because it's not only the speakers that you're going to be learning from,

it's your industry peers as well.

Like everybody is going through the same journey you are.

They all have different perspectives of the entire

marketplace that we're working in and leverage all of those

conversations to learn.

Yeah.

As much, as much as you can learn

from.

online education, You gain so much more by actually being in person at an event.

Um, and again, I'm, I'm glad that we're, we're getting back

to some sort of normality.

Uh, funny enough talking about that.

Um, again, Lee-Ann and I were talking beforehand.

Um, we both went to the podcast show, but didn't actually meet.

had we known that we were going to be there, I'm pretty sure we could

have met up and had a drink and maybe grabbed a bite to eat or something.

But, uh, I, I was, Curious.

I mean, I had my own thoughts about that particular show.

I was curious to know what your thoughts were, uh, as a

more well established podcast.

I mean, my podcast is pretty new, but yours is far more established.

What did you

first of all, I didn't know that I had an established podcast because I just

assumed that we were ticking along tickety boo, like really nice, nice

little community that we've got there and some interesting people that come on.

But it turns out that we actually have something pretty big.

So the numbers in podcasting are way different to the numbers that

you'd expect in like web, okay?

So, you know, if you've got like, we have a quarter of a million

people downloading our podcasts.

Podcasts, which I thought was tiny if you think about Joe Rogan and Stephen Bartlett

and all of these big huge podcasters But apparently we're quite big And that's

great because it means that we're reaching lots of people and we're giving valuable

information again Everything that we do centered around the customer that that

we're trying to talk to um But it's not something that you, the podcast, isn't

something that you make money from.

It's something that you use to actually leverage and grow your brand and

build your audience around you, around what it is that you're trying to do.

So for me, it was interesting.

There was a lot of AI, a lot of tech there, which was also quite interesting.

Um, but a lot of people that also didn't really know what they were talking about.

So, um, seems to be, it's an industry that's, Fashionable, because there was

a lot of people there, but everybody, but fragmented, so very similar to how

affiliate marketing is and everybody's still trying to find their feet.

One thing I can say though, is that, um, it's quite easy.

to build your podcast listenership and ad revenues.

Cause I was, I was talking to some of the ad networks that were there.

Um, the, the value for money that you get off of podcasting and advertising

on podcasts is phenomenal because the retention rate of people listening

to what you're selling instead of visually, we're so like sight blind

now, because we've been bombarded for years with visual stuff, that audio

actually has a much like ROI rate.

So yeah, if you want to get your business seen and heard and you want

to get in front of practitioners that can use your tools, get yourself into

podcasts and, and advertise and sponsor them because it's very good value for

money compared to other digital channels.

And it's evergreen.

Yeah.

And I, and I thought it was quite interesting that,

that sort of, I think a lot of the events were sponsored by YouTube, right.

And again, I, I sat on, on some of the panels where people

were talking about, YouTube.

coming into podcasting.

they're replacing, say replacing their, using YouTube Music as being their

sort of podcast platform of choice.

Um, and I think there was somebody from YouTube there and they came up

with a really great, um, terminology.

I think it was eyes optional.

So in other words, Create a video, right, but it's got to stand on its

own as an audio only, So again, don't say, and what I'm showing you on here

is this, and what I'm showing you on here is that, because that won't fly if

somebody's just listening to the audio,

So it's got to be, the video will enhance it, Make it a better experience

for those people that watch video.

Right.

And it's, it's quite interesting.

I think that there was some stats that came out that basically said that Gen Z,

about 40 percent of them prefer to watch videos rather than listen to videos.

and I think it was like 50 percent of people watch a podcast episode.

on a TV, So again, so it's got to be, it's almost like you've got to think,

well, maybe in that case, instead of me just shooting on a phone or something

like that, maybe I need to kind of invest in higher quality audio and video,

because then that way, if somebody is watching it on a 85 inch TV, you don't

really want it to be like a 360p kind of grainy experience because that's

not really going to fly, again, I think that's probably where, you'd look at

the Joe Rogans and Stephen Bartlers.

They've kind of obviously

Well, they've got their own studios.

Yeah.

I mean,

on studios, but they've also gone heavy on, on kind of video as well.

because it helps to kind of really sort of put that, that

sort of a different feel on it.

I think, uh, I think Stephen Bartlett's, uh, editor was talking

about, they've gone from, uh, I think a million subscribers on YouTube.

They've now got six million on YouTube, And it's virtually every episode that

he puts out is a podcast, So it's almost like his, his entire presence on YouTube.

YouTube has become podcast related.

you mentioned about not making money.

I'm pretty sure he's probably not covering the overheads of the number of people

he's got running the business, But I'm pretty sure he's making decent money on

the back of, the stuff that he's doing.

And again, a lot of the advertising for his podcast is

actually embedded in the content,

So it's almost like become the content is in the podcast rather than it being,

the pre roll, mid roll, post roll, It's actually in embedded in there, And again,

I think, the kind of the, there was a lot of conversations on at the podcast

show about, whether host read is the best format for the ads to appear in, in the

sponsorships to appear in, in podcasts.

And again, I think a lot of it is, if you have a podcast host, they know

their audience, So they know what what the ads should be like, and they

shouldn't prostitute themselves by selling their soul by having sponsors

on that aren't going to be a good fit for that particular audience,

Because it'll switch the audience off pretty quickly, and they'll

just bail off and go somewhere else.

And consistency, like that's the one thing that we found has

worked for us, is consistency.

Consistency on the format, consistency on what you get when you listen to it.

So tactical, practical advice, like everything that we've done has

always been about, like if I'm going to have a conversation and we're a

vertical agnostic, like as a business, we're vertical agnostic because

affiliate marketing is like shoes.

You can wear trainers, you can wear high heels, you can wear flip

flops, you can, but it's still, fits on your foot, basically.

So, so we don't like focus on any vertical, but even the verticals,

and we've got like a 50 50 split of, you know, iGaming and non,

non iGaming, everything else.

Um, but even the iGaming episodes get as much downloads as the non iGaming

episodes, because every single episode is always about learning something new,

whether it's in your vertical or not.

And so the perspectives of people that we interview is what's actually

become interesting on our podcast.

And.

I suppose because the podcast is hosted by a practitioner.

So I'm not just like a host.

I'm not a content creator.

I'm actually a practitioner.

I know what questions to ask.

Um, I suppose that's what makes it more interesting.

So yeah, I think it's quality over quantity, basically, because

we only do one podcast a week.

Like every week we have a podcast.

Um, and it's always somebody that I've either found or has contacted

me that I think is interesting.

And it's even people that are like totally off the radar that have never

been to an affiliate event, but have like.

25 million followers.

Like, we did an amazing interview with Sharon Rechter, um, from First Media.

And she, her PR company actually contacted us and, and said, you know,

she'd like, love to get on your podcast.

And I was like, well, who is she?

I've never met this woman.

25 years in to the industry.

And she's just super phenomenal.

So if you haven't listened to that podcast,

sorry to listen to Jim's and then go listen to that one.

Cause it was super

interesting.

Again, that's one thing that came across to me loud and clear at the podcast show

is, it's the collaboration, it's being a guest on other people's podcasts, and

you were very kind to invite me to be a guest on yours, um, and again, for

me, it was a no brainer to kind of have you as a guest on mine, um, you know,

and, yeah, I mean, like, for me, I've become a big podcast fan on the back of

creating a podcast, and I, again, I've got so much more admiration for the people

that, that, Make good podcasts, right?

Because I know how hard it's been for me to try and get to that point.

Right.

And

But keep doing it!

Perseverance pays

off.

really, that's always been the kind of the mantra.

I mean, my 25 years in digital marketing, I mean, when I first started buying

traffic in a particular vertical or particular offer, right, sometimes I might

lose a ton of money to begin with, but I'd eventually work out how to make it work.

And Recoup the losses and then make a good profit, But equally, I think

you can't rest on your laurels.

You can't expect it to just be like that forever, There's usually

a limited window of opportunity.

You've got to try and capitalize on it and then learn from it and try and make

sure that, when it does eventually start going south, that you're ready to pivot

on to, to Try either, try some, some alternative method of traffic generation

or whatever it might be, don't just sit there and let it just wilt on the vine.

It'll just, it'll die eventually because that's just the

natural evolution of things.

I love that piece of advice for affiliate programs too.

Like, if you take exactly that clip and apply it to your

affiliate program, you'll probably,

uh, inject some new life into it over the next couple of weeks.

So it's

Yeah, it is.

It's just literally constantly

keeping an eye on what's working great if it's working, but constantly

looking for the next thing that's going to come to either complement

that or replace it if if the kind of the original idea goes by the wayside.

I did some gambling offers way back in the day, I woke up one day to find

that Google had basically said, We're not taking gambling ads anymore.

And I'm like, fuck, what the hell do I do now?

I've got like a whole site that was generating a ton of money.

And I'm thinking I do now.

So basically I created a website, Because I was running, I think it was

like Bingo and Tombola and I'd done some kind of audience analysis and it was

primarily, Housewives sitting at home.

with small children, children had gone to bed and they'd have a game of

Tombola because it was good for them.

They would go on and just play.

And I was getting paid decent money for each, new player I got signed up.

And I'm like, what do I do now?

So I created a recipe site, and all the ads on there were for.

But basically Tombola and Bingo, So I had banner ads all over the place, not,

so outlandish that it became crazy.

Like you've got on some of the sites

Eyes splitting.

It's horrible.

Horrendous.

but it

was certainly enough to, give me decent numbers of impressions that I could

then potentially try and monetize.

And my keywords that I was buying, instead of buying, Tombola, Bingo,

stuff like that, I was buying like.

ham and cheese sandwich recipe

Yeah.

banana, avocado, onion, people would type in onion for me.

And obviously the cost of that traffic was like pennies,

the pound.

Yeah.

but, and I had to, I think I worked it out.

I had to convert something like one in 6, 000 clicks into a paying

customer to break even on my sort of.

I think it was like 200 I was getting paid for a new player.

I was buying traffic for 4 or 5 cents, Literally, I just had to convert,

1 in 000 people to make profit, And then eventually Google said, we'll

take money for ads again for gambling.

And I'm like, okay, great.

I don't need to have the recipe site now.

Back to it,

But it's,

But that's the pivot.

I mean, that's the pivot that needs to happen

have just left it.

I could have just left it and said, well, I'm not going to do gambling anymore.

But there's always a way.

There's always a way around a solution.

And that's where, again, I think a good program manager can help find those

solutions to problems that, you know, everyone else is struggling with, right?

But there's always a solution.

There's always a way to kind of get around it.

Cool.

But anyway, Lee-Ann, we, like I said, we could talk forever.

And I'm sure when we, when we see each other in September, we will talk

Mm hmm.

And I'm so excited to come to the show.

All of the

answers, as I mentioned at the beginning.

All of Lee-Ann's contact details and information is available in

the show notes, which will be available when we post the episode.

It only remains for me to say you've been a fantastic guest.

I've loved having you on the show and look forward to seeing

you at some point in time soon.

Thank

you so much for having me on Jo, but it's really nice to be on the other side of

the mic for a change.

And you know what?

I mean, my, my podcast is called Bad Decisions with Jim Banks.

I think this is one of the best decisions I've made having you on as a guest.

It's been, been phenomenal.

Thank you so much.

Really appreciate it.