What The Top Affiliates Are Doing in 2022 According to Award-Winning Affiliate Manager Jamie Birch

What are the top affiliates doing in 2022 to stand out, boost their commissions, and grow their businesses? Today, I invite one of the top affiliate managers in the world to share what he’s seeing in the affiliate marketing world right now and what he shares is absolutely EPIC!

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Affiliate Fraud: How to Spot it and What to do About It

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What are the top affiliates doing this year to stand out, boost their commissions and grow their businesses?

Today, I invite one of the top affiliate managers in the world to share what he’s seeing in the affiliate marketing world right now and what he shares is absolutely epic.

So if you’ve ever wondered what thousands of successful affiliates are up to in 2022, this episode is for you.

I’m so excited because today’s episode I’m actually joined by award winning affiliate manager Jamie Birch of Jeb Commerce.

Earlier this year, I invited Jamie over to share with our members what he’s seeing top affiliates doing this year.

And here’s some exciting new opportunities in marketing and he absolutely over delivered.

I mean, he crushed in this shared five strategies that are really working for affiliates this year that you can implement almost immediately in your business.

Jamie and I go way back. We basically alternated who won affiliate manager of the year for a while there.

One year I think I beat him. We were both finalists. Who are the top three?

And then another year he beat me. And then I don’t even remember, but it was basically like we just went back and forth who was winning that award?

So we’ve been around for a long time in this world, but he’s sharing specifically what’s working right now.

So my advice, listen, learn, and pick one strategy. Just go ahead and play it put one strategy to put to use right now.

So here is my interview with Jamie Birch.

Matt: Hey, what’s up, insiders? And welcome to another insider profile.

Guys, I am stoked about this one. This one is so different from any other insider profile that we’ve ever done and you guys are in for a treat today.

I’ve got my friend here, Jamie Birch, probably one of the people that I’ve known the longest in the affiliate marketing world.

And if we go back a solid eleven years or so, and I’m excited to talk with him today, guys, Jamie is one of the world’s best affiliate managers, runs one of the best affiliate management agencies out there, Jeb Commerce.

Got to make sure I get that right. I always want to leave out the B and just call it J E Commerce.

And guys, he’s worked with, probably without exaggeration, well into the hundreds of thousands of affiliates at this point in his career, he has some insights to share today with you guys are going to blow your mind, and we’re going to talk about what’s working for affiliates today.

Here we are in 2022, if you can believe it or not and we’re going to talk about what’s working for affiliates today.

So Jamie. Welcome, my friend.

Jamie: Hey, thank you. That’s a great introduction, Matt. Always happy to be on any podcast or anything with you. So glad to be here.

Matt: So you have some sunlight coming in there. You’re over in Corderlane, Idaho, right?

Jamie: I am. And we don’t have a whole lot of sun today. I’m just fortunate to have plenty of windows to bring in. What fun we do have.

It is actually right now snowing as I look out the window.

Matt: Oh, wow. I will not talk about actually how beautiful it is here in Fort Wayne today because I got to go for a walk in shorts. Oh, wait, I just did talk about it.

Jamie: Yeah, you did. We’re headed down to Arizona for spring break, so I’ll be getting some warmer weather here and not too many weeks.

Matt: Nice. Yeah. I’m still bummed.

Like, we went down to Florida and ended up being, like, one of the coldest weeks they’ve had in Orlando in years, which still meant that four of the days, it was over 75.

But it was like, the last day, it was like 58 and I never left the hot tub because I was so cold. That’s cold.

Jamie: Yes.

Matt: 58 for a high. That’s not supposed to be a thing. Well, man, I’m excited to have you.

I mentioned Coeur d’alene because that’s where one of our still team members, even though he’s not full time anymore, Robby Miles is there in Corderlane more than about ten minutes from you if you’re in Corderlane.

Jamie: I think I know Robby’s dad.

Matt: You probably do. He’s kind of he’s somewhat, I guess, well known in the area, maybe. Well, good to have you on.

Jamie: So you’ve got some stuff to share with us. We’ll just kind of see where this conversation goes.

The affiliate marketing world is changing, but there are principles and there are tactics, and there are also strategies that evolve.

I think if in 2015, somebody had talked about something called TikTok in affiliates would have been like..

Jamie: What is that?

Matt: Even instagram circle. 2015 would have kind of been like, really? You’re going to do Instagram?

This was really coming along, and it feels like Instagram is like an icon.

Like, it’s been around for decades, and no, guys, it’s really been around for not very long.

Yeah, there’s a lot changing. So let’s talk about what’s working. What’s working today? What are you seeing in the affiliate world?

Jamie: Yes, I wrote a couple of things down and prep for this. One of the big things is live shopping events.

I’m not a personal consumer of live shopping events, but we’re seeing a lot of that happening where they’re doing it on Facebook and they’re doing or YouTube.

They’re doing a live event, and they’re showcasing product, and they may have the manufacturer or the brand rep there with them, and they’re talking about those products.

I think it’s kind of a holdover or something carried over from, like, the Mary kay and Avon, sort of. Or there’s a cooking one that I love.

Matt: Like Home Shopping Network QVC.

Jamie: Yeah, it’s kind of like Home Shopping Network. Yeah QVC.

So that’s happening now that’s like many things on the Internet, right?

It’s distributed and democratized, so now everyone can do all of these kinds of things.

So that’s one of the most unique things that the technologies and platforms are allowing to do.

One of the other things that really, I think, driving that particular strategy is the idea that traditional digital marketing is finally taking the affiliate channel way more seriously.

So you’re seeing that happen from a lot of acquisitions in the agency world, in the affiliate world, a lot of acquisition and consolidation.

There’s more budget and money coming in from equity firms, PR firms and things like that.

But what happened with the Pandemic that’s driving this too is budgets plummeted.

So in any time of uncertainty, and you and I have definitely been through a couple of those periods in our career where there’s just uncertainty in the economy, budgets shift, and the Pandemic was no different.

So instead of going to channels that are hard cost and you have to put those up front before you see results.

Those things get shifted away from things like sponsored activities and they go to performance marketing initiatives.

So many of the brands are shifting that budget and so then they’re way more open to these collaborations like live shopping events.

So they’re looking to diversify their customer acquisition channels so they’re more willing to work with not just big publishers, big influencers, but micro-influencers and smaller pubs.

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Anytime you see uncertainty macroeconomically, I think people tend to dive deeper into who they want to work with and they get a little more creative and a little more broader in scope of what they want to work with.

Matt: Yeah, I think it’s a safer bet. It’s one of the big selling points about starting an affiliate program.

I’ve shared the story many times, I’m sure you’ve heard it, where it’s like, the only reason I started my first affiliate program is because we didn’t have any money to spend it all.

And we needed a way where we could make money without spending it, at least effectively.

Running an affiliate program you’re floating the money for some number of days. In our case, it’s about 30 days.

And I’m not recommending anybody do what we did, but we actually paid payroll with some of the money that we were going to owe to affiliates, really hoping that our affiliates would grow in the next two weeks, and thankfully they did and we were financing.

Jamie: Yeah.

Matt: Do not endorse that or condone our behavior.

Jamie: But you’re not the first entrepreneur to do something like that, for sure.

Matt: Yeah. Very risky. That work would have had us going into some massive debt to cover our butts.

But that’s true. There was so much uncertainty in 2000. It’s funny, we were just thinking back.

So two years ago to the day, I was at an event in Florida with some of the biggest rock stars in the online marketing world Russell Brunson Dean Graziosi Jeff Walker.

It was only like, two and a half weeks later that the whole thing hit. And we were just reminiscing, a group of us, like,

Can you imagine if that event had been scheduled for when we originally wanted to do it, which was March 17 and the 18th? Like, we wouldn’t have been able to do it. The whole world was shut down.

Jamie: Yeah, shut down hard and fast.

Matt: Yeah. Those early days, if you can remember that level of uncertainty, economically, that uncertainty is played out for over a year.

And to your point, when we’re in uncertainty, we are looking for safety, just like we were personally looking for safety.

And affiliate marketing is a pretty safe bet for companies that are used to rolling the dice with hopefully my Facebook ads work, you know?

Real quick, let’s talk about the live shopping events, because that’s a new I’m with you.

It’s not how I buy. I’ve never bought anything off with QVC or HSN. I do love watching the blooper reels.

Jamie: Yeah, those are fun.

Matt: The guy I don’t know if you don’t want to come up with the latter.

Jamie: That hurts thinking about it.

Matt: We’ll put that link below, guys, where he’s like, now it’s locked in place.

She’s like, Are you sure?

He’s like, no, it’s the safest Gloom.

Jamie: Yeah, that’s the old giant ladder.

Matt: I think I used to use one. They go back to the blank screen, he goes, Still, I recommend this.

Jamie: I think he even heard him groan once he hit the floor.

Matt: So how do we do this? I mean, the technology is there, so anybody can do these. Now, if you got you can do this with a phone.

Jamie: They’re filming full-feature movies with phones. Well, it looks like any live feed you do on Facebook is pretty standard, right? And again, I’m not an expert on this, but we’re seeing this happen.

So each of these content creators have their audience and they have the way that they talk to them, and they’re just real authentic in what they’re doing.

You see a lot of it in health and beauty that they’re doing these events and so they are able to bring on a guest onto that live show as it were.

And they talk about their products. Or they talk about their course. Or they talk about the topic of the day.

And then we’ve in the product that they want to talk to. And then they direct them.

One of the cool things that’s happened over the last, I’d say, five years is the technology to track affiliate transactions that has expanded greatly.

So we used to back when you and I started, it was pixel. That was it. Link sharing.

That racquet and came out with some API and some batch upload sort of processes. That was different, but it was really basic. You had to get a link.

Like there was nothing around it at the time that you couldn’t you really had to get a link and you had to get the consumer to go through a link.

But now there’s companies like Link Connector and a bunch of others that provide a way to track with a coupon code and a mention.

So a lot of these are going just like the radio shows.

If you listen to talk radio at all, you’ll hear an ad for a mattress company or someone, and they’ll say, just use whatever the radio host name at Checkout, you’ll get 10% off.

And that’s how it’s tracked and so that’s allowing them to freely talk about it.

I think what’s happened in the past, and I know this with Instagram and Pinterest, is you really couldn’t use affiliate links.

And I think maybe that’s changed a little bit now, but you couldn’t use affiliate links and posts.

So they would try to be creative to get around it but a lot of times the affiliate channel, we just walked away from it because there wasn’t a whole lot of ways you could market, but it was tough to track.

And if affiliate marketing is anything, it’s a model to track referral sources and to pay on those.

So with a lot of this new technology I know Ascend and Impact and Link Connector ShareAsale, I think, has some with all these networks having a bunch of different technologies that you can use to get out of the click here kind of method that’s allowed this type of thing to happen.

It’s allowed TikTokers to make money. It’s allowed people to do that on Instagram and people to do that in podcasts and sort of any content.

To be able to freely weave in the conversation and create content around it, knowing that there’s another way that these things are tracked.

So they may bring guests on their live feed and they may just showcase how they use it.

I think a lot of makeup influencers will use. They’ll show how to use it and then talk about it, and then you can go from there, go to the site.

Matt: Yeah, we’re taking an old medium, interviews, things like that, and just applying new technology, which is great, as you mentioned.

And you can do these in different ways. It looks like you can be subtle where they were just to get to come on and talk about like you and I are doing today.

Now, granted, this is not this interview Jamie is doing friend. This is not like a pitch for his product.

But if you guys are looking for an affiliate marketing agency and you’re especially in the retail stuff, you might want to check out Jamie.

And so this is not that. So this is more of a subtle way. Yes, somebody watching this might be like, I’m looking for what Jamie offers. Maybe I’ll go check him out.

You can do that, or you can do the direct way and immediately, when you mentioned health and beauty, my first thing was like, makeovers.

Jamie: Yeah.

Matt: I’ve personally never been to one, but I remember my mom had mentioned these back in the day.

They would do, like, a makeover at Macy’s in the beauty belk. Belk is what I’m thinking of.

And there’d be, like, four makeup people in person surrounding watching this person get makeup done.

And she would talk, and I guess she’s like, in this eyeliner, by the way, retails for 1599.

And you can get this plus a coupon for 20% off your next purchase and she put it on.

“Oh, wow. Look at her eyes.” It’s the same kind of thing. That’s more of a direct thing, which I think is kind of cool.

Jamie: Yeah. And I think it’s important to separate marketing from sales.

Direct sales is something like if we got on and said, “hey, use JEB at checkout to get 10% off”, that’s a direct sales thing.

But, yeah, I think there’s a lot of things And the Pandemic really pushed this stuff because we couldn’t all be together.

So now we can watch these things together. We can still kind of experience it together.

But you mix the Pandemic with technology that’s happening. You got affiliates doing some of the stuff we always did out everywhere else, and now we’re able to do that here.

I love horses. If I’m not in front of this laptop, I’m usually either on a horse, falling on a horse, or watching my kids on horses. That’s pretty much what we do.

And we had a client who was in the equine space, and one of their big things was trainers.

So there are hundreds of thousands of horse trainers out there, and clinicians people will go and watch.

And if you go to one of these things, what you want to do is buy every single thing they use so you can go home and try the things that you learned with everything that they use.

But there’s always been this disjointed process. You hear they use this sticking string or this saddle or this piece of tack, and you’ll have to go find it online.

Well, now they’re able to and we did this with our client. It’s people who aren’t affiliates.

They are in the real world. They’re training horses, and they’re able to put a sign on their trailer or on the round pen or the arena that they’re in.

It says, hey, you can buy everything here by going to this Url/myname or just use this coupon code when you go to this website.

And so they’re also bringing in this whole other non-digital world into the affiliate channel.

And that technology improvement is pretty exciting.

Matt: Yes, it is. All right, so live shopping events, like, a little bit of a deep dive there.

And again, what I would, guys, is just picture one of the ways you can basically do what you’re already doing, but do it live.

You could do a makeover. You could do that as a recorded video.

Not as exciting as live because they don’t get to ask questions or engage and things like that.

So think about that. What are you doing? Maybe in asynchronously? What can you do Synchronously Live? so, what’s the second thing, Jamie, that you’re saying?

Jamie: Well, one thing that we’ve seen is affiliates are really in the driver’s seat more than they ever have been.

So back in the day when you and I started, the person who really owned and had the power in the relationship between affiliates, trusted third-party trackers and advertisers was the advertiser. They paid for everything.

But in the decades since we started, these affiliates have built their own brands. They put marketing dollars, the really good ones.

They haven’t focused on transactions of, like, oh, I need to get to this search term and so I can get this sale.

They’re focusing on who is my audience? What do they need that no one is serving? And I’m going to hit that. And they built the brand themselves.

You saw Super Bowl racket and rewards on the Super Bowl ads.

It happened way back when with loyalty affiliates, where they were advertising on McDonald’s French fry boxes or ExxonMobile gas pumps.

And so over time, these affiliates, big and small, have really focused in on who they are and what they provide to their consumers.

And if you want to get access to them, to those consumers, you have to go there.

And you’ve seen technologies like, one of the things I used to be involved in was CNC Woodworking, and there are a couple of Facebook groups that if the owners of those groups mentioned something, I’m going to go buy it.

And if you want to get access to their audience, you can’t go about it any other way.

I’m not going to listen to it or the consumer is not going to listen to it unless it comes from this person.

So there’s a sort of a microniching going on. But these affiliates have focused on their brand for so long that I wrote a couple of blog pieces about.

I call it the pants kind of situation. If you’re going to the mall to buy some slacks, you’re buying slacks and you have your solution set of people stores in the mall, and that’s where you’re going.

And if the advertiser the retailer wants access to me, they’re going to have to be there.

And the affiliates are now doing the same thing. They’re carping out kind of like a geography online.

But they are really focusing, hyper-focusing, kind of like Amazon.

Amazon is hyper-focused on the consumer. They’re hyper-focused on their audience. They’re creating a brand, and now they know it.

So that dynamic has changed. So they’ve done such a good job of catering to and delivering and supporting their audience.

That for a given thing, if you’re going to go buy it, you’re going to go through them with them. You’re going to take their recommendations.

So that’s changed the balance of power quite a bit. And that’s led to all sorts of things happening from the advertiser side.

There’s hyper competition. Budgets have had to be pulled in to work in that area.

But that’s probably one of the biggest things as they have more power now than they’ve ever had before.

They know they’re in the driver’s seat and they’re acting like it too.

So there’s media kits, so you can see all the different advertising and direct sales opportunities you have with these partners.

And that’s allowing them it’s partly allowing them to acquire and get better rates. That’s been a huge change.

Matt: What I take away from that is just the brand building.

This is not about especially ten years ago, less so five years ago, but still, it’s like, how do I make the sale?

Just how do I make this one Sale? Stressing “the sale” and not building a brand.

It was almost unheard of, certainly when I started 17 years ago for an affiliate to build an email list.

Jamie: If they weren’t scraping off of something else. Right?

Matt: I mean, we’re talking a fraction of a percent we’re doing that. Even 10-11 years ago, it was, I would say less than 50% we’re building a list of their own.

Today. It would be almost unheard of. Literally, we flipped in 17 years from almost nobody doing it to almost nobody not doing it. In fact, I don’t know of anybody who’s not.

So they’re building their own brand and when you think of, like, you think of racketon.

Like, I know my wife uses it when we go stay in a hotel. She’s like, let me check out.

We get 10%, and it’s like, it’s a $300. Why would she not take 30 seconds to do it?

And so her loyalty is not necessary although we do have our two favorite hotels that we stay in.

All things being equal, if one’s on Rakuten and one’s on not, we’re going to pick the one that’s on Rakuten.

Jamie: Totally.

Matt: It ends up being 10% cheaper, effectively. So they’re building that loyalty and that brand.

I think that’s a lesson, and I think of smaller affiliates, it’s like, okay, build your brand, build your reputation, build your list, build your list.

Build your list where you own it. Not on Facebook. I don’t know if you guys know this, but Zuck owns that. That’s kind of the big lesson there.

Jamie: Yeah. And if it takes time, what I would say to the affiliate that’s starting out is if you’re trying to build a brand this quarter, this is a long-term thing.

You have to put the time into it, and the fruit is there, and you have to be solely focused on your audience.

What do they need?
Know what is out there and how you can be different, how is that audience not being served? and continue to do that, and the brand will be built.

And then know what you stand for and what you want to deliver and don’t differ from that.

Sometimes saying no to something is way more important and a way bigger decision than saying yes to something.

So knowing what you’re not going to do with your audience, with advertisers, is just as important.

I think a lot of those affiliates that are successful now and have been for a long time have been really good at that.

Matt: I think the cool thing about this, when you do that, you said be solely focused on your audience.

They tell you what to promote. They tell you what price points are going to work.

They tell you what products and what promotional methods are going to work.

They tell you how many emails to send and what to listen.

Live shopping events. Here’s the deal.

If they’re coming on, let’s say you have a group or an email list, and they’re telling you when you do one of these and it performs amazingly well, and you go, wow, in a couple of hours, I made more than I usually make in a week of promoting something.

You just learned something. Maybe live shopping events work, maybe they don’t.

In fact, I know for a fact they don’t work for my audience, all right, I could do them until the cows come home, and I’m not going to sell much.

That’s my audience. It doesn’t mean it’s your audience.

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Jamie: Exactly.

Matt: So I think that’s a powerful lesson. And again, that goes back to what you said.

It’s because the balance of power has shifted, which is something yeah, when I got in business 17 years ago, it’s very different world.

I like being in that position where I’m chasing after affiliates and they’re not chasing after us because it makes the value of what you and I do for a living that much better, personally.

Jamie: I think so, and it is fun. One of the other things that I think affiliates are doing is being more diverse in what they’re doing.

That leads into why they are able to build their brand and also attain higher fees, placement fees, stuff like that, and higher commissions.

As they’re out there being diverse, they’re trying new things.

And so I tell advertisers, yeah, you’re going to get sales when you launch an affiliate program, but you’re also going to get potential of 1000 partners trying different things to reach your customer segments.

And they may be reaching a segment you thought was dead in the water, you thought never did anything.

So you have all these you have a thousand or 10,000 or 300, whatever it is, of these tests going on that you get to see what’s going on.

And so affiliates, they’re really doing a really good job of that, I think as the technology continues to advance, as the pandemic continues on for how long this is going to go on, people are still looking for things that they’re passionate about.

And affiliates are hitting those with really unique content, different marketplaces and communities.

And that’s allowing they’re drilling down on the niches, whether they are doing something on Facebook,

They’re directing them to a different community or they’re doing something on TikTok or whatever the next social media will be.

They’re drilling down and creating content for a specific person.

And that’s really driving a lot of value in the channel right now and a lot of interest from outside parties that we haven’t had before.

Matt: That diversity is part of building a brand.

Let’s just look at a regular brand, McDonald’s, like you mentioned, because you mentioned them earlier, McDonald’s, they don’t just run ads on CBS.

They don’t just run ads on TV. They don’t just market just the kids and just the parents. Like, they’re all over the place.

And now their audience is still a segment of a segment. If you think about it, people think of McDonald’s everywhere.

Less than a quarter of the population eats there.

It’s not like it’s that popular compared to, say well, actually pretty much as popular, but still more like air we all breathe. We all breathe compared to air.

Jamie: There’s still a lot of market opportunity for them still.

Matt: Yeah. And they also know their audience. I’m pretty confident McDonald’s is not going to be the presenting sponsor for Masterpiece Theater anytime soon.

Jamie: Yeah, that’s a great example.

Matt: It’s Norwegian Cruise Lines. People who watch Downton Abbey are disproportionately less likely to eat McDonald’s. That’s just a fact.

So they know their audience and they’re targeting them.

What’s the next one? What do you see other can we shift gears for just one moment?

Yeah, if you can, because I don’t want to disrupt your order, but when we talk about this next one, I want to particularly hone in on how it affects, say, somebody who’s starting out.

You may already have that going, but I just want to make sure we kind of hone in on somebody who’s maybe newer.

They’ve done less than a couple of $1,000 in affiliate commissions in their life, but they’re in that process of building that brand.

Jamie: Yeah, those people are being successful by going into a niche of a niche.

So within anything that we do, if we use the two examples of the stuff that I’m into horses and I was in the CNC stuff.

If you get into that world and you’re trying to build a brand, talking to people who ride horses, good luck.

Because they are as different as people who ride horses and who don’t. You have so many different areas.

So the people who are doing really well, they’re diving into a niche.

So they want to create content, drive revenue around equestrian activities.

Well, that’s too big. So they’re going into Western or English.

Then when they go into, say, Western that’s what I know. They go into Western, and they’re going to go into horse training or horse clinics or products.

Honestly, there’s probably 1000 niches beyond that. They may just go into one event, ranch riding, raining, Western pleasure, cowboy dressage.

And they’re going to go there and then from there, they can even go niche.

They can go youth who are just getting started out. They can talk to a group that they’ve been doing it for 20 years, and they just want to keep growing.

They can talk to the 47-year-old male who’s trying to win a buckle this year and is just starting out in it. They can totally talk to that.

So what they’re doing is they’re continuing to drill down the niche and then think about what is that consumer needs and I’m going to create content for that.

I’m going to interview people, I’m going to bring experts in.

I’m going to do all this stuff to build great content, and then I’m going to figure out exactly how I’m going to monetize it.

Because when you get down to that niche, then you become the only person they want to talk about or they read, rely on, or are loyal to for that specific thing that targets them.

And creating content is so easy. I think we were saying earlier, you can create a full feature film on an iPhone today, so you can create content.

It doesn’t cost you anything. Most of these things are free or very inexpensive and high quality that you can just create all this content and then you can weave in ways to do this, whether you create a course.

One thing I would love to do is work with a very experienced horseman or woman on I’ve never done it.

How do I buy a horse? And it’s a twelve-module course on what to do so you don’t make stupid decisions.

So you can create a course around that particular niche of what do they need.

So they are drilling down on the niche 100%, focusing on what that audience needs that they’re not getting serviced on, and then creating content around that.

Matt: So what I got out of that was you want to create a horse course.

Jamie: I totally do want to create a horse course when I have time between.

Matt: Of course of the horse of course a course.

Jamie: Unless it’s Mr. Ed.

Matt: So I got to connect you with one of the guys that used to work for us, Mark Sieverkropp.

He’s over in Florida, Washington. So not too far from you.

Jamie: Oh, it’s not too far.

Matt: Yeah. His family is I don’t know who it is. I know his daughter.

She does the stuff where the horse walks slowly around and you get judged on it, and the person on the horse dresses up really fancy and I don’t understand it whatever that is.

Jamie: Western pleasure.

Matt: I think it’s and she’s won like, national awards type stuff. Mom was her teacher, I believe. I think.

But yeah, I should connect you with him because I know he works for us.

He’s in the online marketing world, so he would know, of course, prescription and stuff like that. It might have some connections for you.

Jamie: That’s just a great example of like, you’re bringing these two different worlds in and that’s kind of what works.

Like, you get someone who’s in that space that also knows digital marketing, and then what do they do?

They create this affiliate site. That’s pretty sweet.

Matt: Well, if you think about it, that’s essentially what it is.

You’re looking for a market that exists, that’s underserved. You’re looking for an underserved market.

Jamie: Exactly.

Matt: There’s something to be said for if the market doesn’t exist, then it’s probably not a good idea to try to go into it because then there’s nobody there you probably do want some competition.

It’s kind of proof of concept, but at the same time, if it’s an underserved market, that means that there are a lot of people sitting there just like you going, man, I wish there was a blank, and that’s really the ticket.

And then, of course, from there, you as the course creator, this is how we tie this into affiliate stuff.

You as the course creator, are the expert at teaching it.

But as you mentioned earlier, and I don’t know horses, so I’m just going to go with all the things. Right?

Well, what kind of saddle do you use?

Well, are you also going to be a saddle manufacturer? Probably not.

The saddle manufacturer because they have the equipment and the access can create saddles for English and Western and Leisure and whatever the other ones were dressage and the jumping one.

They can create those different kinds of saddles and you can say, hey, go buy your saddle from them.

Jamie: Exactly, yeah.

Matt: Okay, so what about the same thing with the training tools and all those things?

Again, I don’t know Horses.

So whatever the different things are to use, you’re not probably going to manufacture those.

You can recommend the person, the company who does, and they might be more of a general company.

It might even be recommending something on Amazon know, hypothetically.

Jamie: And they’ll probably help you create content.

Matt: Exactly.

Jamie: Which will be really valuable to your audience as well.

Matt: Yeah. Because especially not only can you create that content for your audience, here’s our three best recommendations on saddles for this niche that we’re in.

Again, I don’t know how much saddles are. Here’s the $200 option. Is that even a thing in saddles is there?

Jamie: You can get a $200 saddle.

Matt: Okay, here’s whatever the cheapest one. Here’s the most expensive that you want to use.

If you’re a competition level, that’s probably $5,000. And here’s the one that’s $1,000.

Jamie: Yeah.

Matt: You create that for your audience, but also, as we know, that then ranks on that little website called Google.

And if you’re in a niche within a niche, there probably aren’t five pages on Earth that are going to be indexed for that.

You have a one in five chance of being number one, and if you write it really well, you will be.

So now you bring in new people and you like you said, you become the only person that they follow.

For that, you become the one stop shop. I love it when people are like, hey, Matt, I searched your site for this before I reached out to you.

What does that mean? They didn’t go to Google? Because the answer is on Google.

Whatever they’re asking me, probably on Google if they spend five minutes, they didn’t do that.

They searched my site, couldn’t find it, then texted me or emailed me and said, oh, okay. And I answered the question.

Or probably as I often recorded a podcast and answered the question. Yeah, I love that.

You said you had maybe one more working in 2022 here.

Jamie: This is interesting.

Affiliates are finding other reasons besides transactions, commissions to partner and they’re looking for things that resonate.

So things like other black owned businesses, women owned businesses, brands that are lined with maybe a social cause.

And so they’re finding ways to work together to continue to further the bigger why of what we’re doing.

We have affiliates waving integration fees with some of our clients because both organizations are certified B corporations.

And these are companies verified to hit a high standard of social and environmental performance, transparency, and accountability.

So they’re finding more ways. To work with each other.

And that’s leading, I think, to more partnership, relationship and loyalty to each other because they’re both aligned in what they’re trying to do.

So that alignment outside of, I’ll get you a consumer, you give me a percentage or a bounty if they do something.

We’re seeing that happen and being really effective to create some pretty cool partnerships.

So that was one I asked my staff.

I was like, “hey, guys, what’s some of the real creative things people are doing?”

And that’s when one of our senior managers brought to us today. That’s happening right now.

Matt: Yeah, I see that in indirect ways.

I know with our business, we promoted Allen Thomas, who’s a weight loss coach, and I teach affiliate marketing.

There’s very indirect correlation. I can certainly leave that correlation and say, hey, if your weight is holding you back, you’re not going to be productive, blah, blah, blah.

That’s a pretty indirect correlation. I definitely don’t do it for the commission.

Because, quite frankly, I make less promoting him than I do just about anything else.

And Alan, I know you’re watching this. That’s okay, she’ll promote you, and I love you.

I did it initially because of the impact he made in my life, but I know that with an audience as big as mine, like he says, 50% of your audience is overweight or obese.

Why? Because 50% of the world or the country is overweight or obese, and 92% of my people in the United States, so that means they need this thing.

Now, whether that comes from me, the affiliate guy, or somebody else doesn’t matter.

I want to serve them in that way. I want people to hear about him because he’s doing amazing work.

And then it didn’t hurt. That the very first guy that ever bought through me.

And yes, I made some money, but getting considerably less than I would have if I’d taken that time to promote something else.

The guy named Bob Harris, and I just saw his post on Facebook. I’m in his group.

When he signed up with Alan, I joined his Facebook group. He has an accountability group on Facebook.

He’s down almost £100. It looks amazing.

And I’m watching his journey over the past year, almost 14 months, and just going, oh, my gosh.

If he never makes a dime from affiliate marketing, if he never gets anybody on his email list, his life was completely changed.

I promoted as an affiliate, so it’s a little bit more about that than the pure mission.

I can’t do that 20 times a year, but I can do it once a year.

Jamie: Yeah, there’s a whole group of publishers that are its significance is as important as transactions. So they’re trying to do something of significance.

And then partnering with an advertiser or manufacturer that is aligned with that mentality is creating some pretty unique stuff.

Matt: Yeah, it’s pretty cool. Well, Jamie, this has been awesome, and thank you so much for sharing this today.

Jamie: It’s been a pleasure always.

Matt: Real quick, to recap live shopping events, building the brand, putting the affiliate in the driver’s sheet is super important.

More diversity in what they’re doing and creating content for a specific person, making sure we go down these tie in together that niche of a niche, become the only person that they go to that your audience go to.

And lastly, I would challenge you guys to see if there’s another reason just maybe once over this year.

We’re not asking you to do this ten times a year, but once this year.

See if there’s something you can promote beyond just an affiliate commission, whether it be a social cause, an alignment with a specific cause, or something like that’s near and dear to your heart, or just the impact that it can make for your audience above and beyond, maybe what you do, or transactional type products.

So guys, this has been yet another insider profile. Thank you guys for watching this month.

Make sure you also check out this month’s Backstage Pass, the ATM Report, which is probably one of my favorites we’ve had.

Tt’s definitely my favorite this year. It’s one of two, but it’s definitely one of my favorites over the past couple of years.

You’re going to want to check that out and make sure you join us for this month’s Fireside Chat.

So you get all of your questions about affiliate marketing or any questions you have about building your online business answered.

We’ll see you then, and we’ll see you in the next and set her profile. Bye, guys.

So I hope you got as much out of that as I did.

I actually picked up on a few things, if you didn’t notice that, and I’m super excited not only to implement what he shared in our business and with our clients, but also for you to be able to hear these things so quickly to recap here, really quick live shopping events, right?

Building the brand, putting affiliates in the driver’s seat, more diversity in what you’re doing, creating content for a specific person, making sure you niche, down niche within a niche within a niche, and become the only person your audience goes to.

And that’s impractical. It’s probably never going to be the case that you’re the only person most niches. That’s just not likely.

I know when I think of the people that I listen to when I get into a topic, typically I end up with two or three people.

I think of sales, right? I always go back to Zig Ziggler, Jeffrey Gitomer, Grant Cardone.

When I think of marketing, I always go back Like, when I want to learn more about just marketing, I go back to Jeff Walker, Russell Brunson, and some of the classics.

I mean, we’re talking like 100 years and Robert Cialdini with influencer. I go back to those and I do those over and over.

So it’s impractical to be the only person, but try to be try to give so much value that you’re like one of only two. How about that?

And then lastly, I would challenge you to see if there’s another reason.

Just once this year, don’t do this ten times a year, but once this year.

See if there’s something you can promote beyond just an affiliate commission.

Whether it be a social cause, an alignment with a specific cost, something like that’s near and dear to your heart.

Something that has an impact on your audience above and beyond just a transaction. So that’s what I got out of this.

You may have picked up on some different things and I would love to share what you got out of this. Right?

Text me. Just text me and just share my takeaway with me. 260-217-4619 Shoot me a text.

Let me know. Like, hey, here’s what I got from Jamie. 260-217-4619 you can text me anytime about this or anything else.

I’d love to hear from you. Just share your thoughts. Just one takeaway.

You don’t have to write a novel. I share my takeaway, so I shared mine. You share yours, right?

Make sure also that if you haven’t yet, hit subscribe so you don’t miss the next episode or any of the upcoming episodes.

I got a good one coming up. How to use affiliate webinars to grow your business.

It’s going to be a good one and you don’t want to miss it, so hit subscribe.

Also, tell a friend if they need to know about this episode or the next episode or any of the past episodes, make sure you share with one person today.

Just share with one little person. Share one episode with one person. That’s your goal for today.

I’ll see you in the next episode.