Doug: Hey, what’s going on. Welcome to the Doug show. My name’s Doug Cunnington. And today I’m pumped. I met my friend, Jesse lakes for the first time in person. I think we’ve known each other for what? Like five plus years or so.
Jesse: Maybe even closer to eight. Maybe it’s been a while. I’ve been stalking you for probably eight, but we’ll put it that way.
Doug: All right. Yeah. And you were like, Hey, I’m going to be in town. Can I come to the studio? And I said, yes. So if you don’t know, I got this great intro. So Jesse is a native Montanan and the co founder. And CEO of genius link or as you like to say the head cheerleader
Jesse: and chief bottle washer
Doug: a chief bottle washer
Jesse: Yeah, the two go hand in hand
Doug: Before jesse co founded genius link.
He was a whitewater rafting guide. You worked at a sushi restaurant And a skate and snowboard shop, you were a professional student and then you became the global manager at Apple for the iTunes affiliate program. Sounds like a path that went all over the place. It’s been an adventure. And Geniuslink helps affiliate marketers, social media marketers, and retailers automatically boost sales and commissions through intelligent links.
So Jesse, you’ve been on the show, I think more than anyone else. Welcome to the studio. How are you doing today?
Jesse: I’m doing awesome. It’s so, yeah, it’s so great to actually meet you in person. Yeah, it’s super pumped to be here and just, I always really enjoy our conversation. So today is a good day.
Doug: Today, we’re going to talk about Amazon seller networks and we’ll get into some of the details. Cause I frankly wasn’t even aware of that term.
Jesse: You’re not alone. You’re not alone.
Doug: And it sounds like a sort of a big area that we should definitely cover. Before we get into that, why are you in the Colorado area?
Jesse: Hanging out with you is important, but it was actually a it’s a conference that I’m here for. Readers take Denver.
It’s a, it’s a conference for indie authors genius link. You know, we’ve, we’ve grown to really do a lot around the, um, Affiliate creator space but authors are another creator type that care a little bit less about affiliate, but really care a lot about the other tools that we’ve, we’ve crafted. So, they’re a pretty important demographic that we are.
It’s like, what is the correct term? Psychographic persona. Maybe persona is the correct term there that we pay attention to.
Doug: Interesting. Is this a pretty big conference? Have you been to it before?
Jesse: I haven’t been to it. I’m, I’m excited. It was a big enough conference to show up on Apple books as radar.
We do a lot of work with Apple books and they said, Hey, Check this one out. I’ve been to a couple other author conferences but this one, yeah, if it showed up on their radar, they’re doing something right. So I’m excited to be here.
Doug: Are you speaking or you, do you have a booth or anything like that, or just attending as a.
Jesse: Intending as an industry expert. So yeah, it makes it a lot easier. I, I’d really do enjoy speaking, putting on presentations, but man, there are a lot of work and yeah, so it’ll be fun to kind of just coast through and hang out, meet people and yeah, learn something along the way.
Doug: Yeah. And I, I’ve. I haven’t done any, like, big stage, um, talks or anything yet.
Yeah. Well, I was going to say after talking to friends who have done it and observing like how stressed out they are, of course you get, you can get used to anything if you do it enough and you slowly build your way up. But I’m like, I don’t know if I want. To take on that stress, at least like with other stuff that I have going on.
So it is, it is sort of a confirmation bias thing. I always like to hear people say, Hey, you know what? It is a little bit stressful. And I’m like, okay, that fits the narrative in my head to not, but, but.
Jesse: You like to play outside, right? You, you like the outdoors, right? You know, you have a big intimidating hike ahead of you, you know, you’re, you’re a little stressed, you know, as you’re, you’re driving up to the trailhead in the dark, you know, it’s the same, same sort of thing for, for a big presentation, but man, you’re exhausted and mentally beat at the end of that awesome hike.
Same, same story with giving a great presentation. But that, that high from it is just really incredible. It feels so good to get on stage, tell a great story, teach people something amazing and walk off and just, yeah, yeah, the stress is done. And yeah, it’s, it feels, it feels pretty cool. It’s a bit addictive, so just be careful.
Doug: And I know, you know, part of it is like the preparation. So if you train for the hike or the climb or whatever it is, then you’re like, Oh, I’ve practiced this. Like, this is not that far outside of what I was doing before. So I could see. How you can get used to it and as long as you did the preparation you’re like, oh I’m confident to do this and you don’t freak out as much as it’s like a good nervousness like you’re
Jesse: Exactly. There’s always a little freak out though.
Yeah, that’s that’s what makes it fun.
Doug: So before we get into the details Are there any conferences that you’re going to like coming up where people can, you know, look out for you and maybe meet up with you and chat with you and stuff?
Jesse: For sure. So again, connecting in person is always awesome. Yeah, I’m super stoked.
We’re going to do this today, but it doesn’t mean that people shouldn’t reach out to connect, even if I’m not going to be in the same city at the same time as them. But in general, yeah, I’m going to be at think tank. It’s a, when the affiliate networks, a conference in just a couple weeks. And that’s the, I believe end of April, first day of May.
And then we’d be at CEX content, entrepreneurs expo, which is the which is the week after. So I think it’s a May 5th through 7th. I’m thinking disappear for three weeks on the Grand Canyon. Hopefully you don’t meet me down there. I’m looking for some solitude down there. And then ConvertKit has the craft and commerce.
My team will be there. I will actually be missing that cause I’ll be just finished up my Grand Canyon trip. And then we’ve got affiliate summit East in New York, which I believe is the end of July. There is VidSummit, uh, in somewhere in Texas which will be sometime, I think in October, looking to go back to PI Live in London, which I believe is the end of October as well.
And then AuthorNation is another author conference Indie author conference. I’ll be that in the beginning of November. And I think that gets me through 2024. Um, so there’s a lot of stuff. It’s I’m glad the pandemic’s over. I forgot how much I enjoy seeing other places and yeah, connecting, connecting over a beer.
Doug: Yeah, that is a, it’s a pretty busy schedule one. So I’ve gone to FinCon for a few years and have you gone to that one?
Jesse: No, I haven’t. I’ve heard great things though.
Doug: Super fun. It’s going to be in Atlanta. I’m from Atlanta originally, so. And I’ve been the last few years, I think I’ll, you know, keep going sort of indefinitely, but there’s a, there’s a big audience there.
I’m not sure if it’s like the right audience for you. Have you looked at that one before?
Jesse: So if I’m not mistaken, Roberto Blake is in the Atlanta region and Roberto is a huge super impressed with what he does and how he does it. And just, yeah, great advocate for, for kind of this, yeah, YouTube creator space where affiliate product recommendations, affiliate monetization is an important part, but that’s a, that’s why I should go to, right?
Doug: Yeah, I think so.
Jesse: Okay. When is that?
Doug: It is October as well. I can’t remember. I think like the October 20 something or other. Okay. But I know like some other. other folks in our space with like similar type tools. Like I know Spencer and his team. Oh, awesome. Okay. Was out New Orleans last year. So I got to meet him in person plus his team, but I think they had a booth and stuff and they were, I think he was promoting link whisper.
Jesse: Perfect. Yeah.
Doug: But he gave a talk and, and I think It was received pretty well. It’s a big conference. I think it’s at least a couple thousand people. So there’s like a, a sliver of folks who are creators. Mm-Hmm. and various platforms that would probably fit with your, you know, demographic that you’re going after.
Yeah. Yeah. Persona. Persona. the persona. Okay, cool. Let’s get into Amazon Seller Network. So, like I said, I don’t know anything about this. You mentioned it to me and I was like, great. I can learn a lot. So what are the seller networks?
Jesse: Start with the WTF? Yeah. So affiliate network consists of kind of three core pieces, right?
You have the, the publishers, the creators you know, the people that are kind of in our, our space. Then you have the, the merchants, the, the, the sellers, the people that are selling something, then typically an affiliate network that kind of sits in between and combines them. And that’s the traditional model for affiliate networking.
So that model exists here in these Amazon selling networks. But what’s been really interesting is that. Amazon is now a piece of that as well, but it’s kind of the, the landscape. So you have these seller networks that act as the affiliate network that sit in between, but it’s combining both publishers and creators, as well as sellers that are selling on Amazon directly in the Amazon space.
So it’s not Amazon associates, but it’s still affiliate marketing on Amazon. So the big kicker here, the big difference is right. Amazon associates is Amazon’s in house affiliate program. Amazon seller networks enable affiliate marketing on Amazon, but the money comes from sellers. So. Obviously, you know, quick step back.
Amazon is made from first party and third party sellers, right? First party is essentially Amazon buys the inventory and sells it. Third party is a lot of this FBA stuff. You know, some, some really cool stuff going on there. Well, these companies that are doing the FBA that are selling on Amazon, because Amazon’s a marketplace as well they have some sort of marketing budget.
And traditionally they’ve been putting a lot of that marketing budget towards, you know, Facebook ads or Google ads. And as you’ve seen as well, you know, as things have evolved over the last handful of years, it’s, it’s getting harder and harder to see a good, you know, return on investment, good return on ad spend ROAS from, from some of these advertising avenues.
So they’ve got this marketing budget. They want to see some transparency. They want to see some return. They found that, you know, working with publishers or influencers, creators, YouTubers to promote those products, it’s actually way more efficient. The next piece of this is, is that Amazon and their infinite wisdom has created an API and attribution API.
That’s kind of the exact opposite of associates. Uh, attribution API allows you to track links. Doesn’t pay you out, but allows you to track links and gives you great data. Yeah. We all know associates, you know, it’s nice to get those paychecks, but man, it’s a pain in the butt to try to get any good sort of clean data out of what’s working or what’s not.
The attribution API is the exact opposite. So a, you have sellers with the marketing budget, B, you have this attribution API that interfaces cleanly. And then C, the really interesting thing is that again, Amazon has also been spending lots of money on ads, trying to drive traffic into Amazon. I’ve heard, you know, numbers of, you know, a hundred million a month.
They spend across paid ads. Well, Amazon, it seems in their infinite wisdom is taking some of this money. Instead of helping their semi competitors, they want to help their sellers. So what they’ve done is it’s done this thing called the brand referral bonus. The brand referral bonus is this program where sellers on Amazon can get up to a 10 percent kickback if they can bring offsite traffic onto Amazon.
So Amazon, instead of paying Google and Facebook, they’re paying their sellers to drive that same traffic. So. Sellers have a marketing budget. Sellers are incentivized to bring offsite traffic, and now you have a marketing tool that actually tracks that. Well, it’s the kind of this perfect recipe that these seller networks are making that very easy to put all these pieces together.
So Amazon seller networks, there’s really kind of three big ones in the space right now, Levanta, Archer Maverick X are the most well known ones. Wayward is a company that’s just showing up really starting to kick some butt. There’s one coming out of China called partner boost, but there’s these five companies that sit on top of the attribution API set on top of Amazon and make all these pieces work.
I’ll take a breath there. I threw a lot at you.
Doug: Yeah. And we’ll keep, I’m assuming there’s some listeners and viewers out there that are definitely smarter than me and they already understand what you’re talking about, but. But I want to break it down a little bit more because I understand all the words that you said, but I’m trying to imagine like how this works exactly.
So these are like, basically it’s the third party sellers, right? And they are integrated with the five companies that you mentioned.
Jesse: They’ll typically pick one. Yeah. Okay. Sometimes two.
Doug: Okay. So they’re integrated with a company that is probably one of the five. And then they have a marketing budget. Like you said, there is a way to track this stuff.
So, so that’s how it’s working essentially. Okay. And how do we get hooked up with, with this? Right. So like, I understand the pieces that you mentioned, there’s API, but what do we do?
Jesse: Yeah. Great question. So just like. Amazon affiliate, Amazon associates, sorry, where it’s, you have a raw Amazon link and they have an extra parameter, the end of the end, add to the end TV, that tracking attribution is somewhat similar.
You have a raw Amazon link, but you have six other parameters that get attached to the end. So you have the specialized Amazon link that has these additional parameters and the seller, or sorry, the, the seller network will give that to you. And that’s, that’s the link you will use instead of just the associates link or in combination with associates link, which we’ll get to in a minute.
And that, yeah, with those extra. Six parameters that will track through Amazon. Amazon can report back with our attribution API. The sellers can see how many sales you drove and therefore how much they should pay you. So the mechanics of it are fairly similar where you need a specialized link the way you get that specialized link.
Unfortunately can’t just willy nilly add that tracking idea to the end. Like you could with associates, which is again, one of the pieces I think is so brilliant about Amazon or the Amazon associates at least, but you have to go to these seller networks. They have, you know, this link kind of creator aspect that you can use to attract traffic.
Genius Link as well. We’ll get to that in a minute, has, has simplified this significantly. But yeah, keeping, keeping the Genius Link part out of it. You would go to lata, you would say, Hey, I wanna, I wanna, you know, help with these, you know, HDMI cables, this one in particular. Okay, boom. Here’s that link for you now.
You would go share that link on YouTube or on your blog or whatever it may be. And that will track and you’ll get paid out.
Doug: Okay. So you create some special link. It’s not like our standard like tracking Id. that we’re used to with the Amazon associates. Right. Okay. And there’s various ways to do it, which we’ll get into other details.
Of course. Any other aspects and actually let me backtrack here. Cause I, again, I’m sure some people are also like, okay, I don’t know how to do this.
Jesse: So it’s, it’s a very new thing. I guess I should say that as well is that, you know, don’t feel bad here. These cellular networks are the biggest one is barely a year old.
Um, you know, the Amazon having the attribution API and. And the brand referral bonus, these both are very new things. So it’s, it’s very kind of, yeah, it’s a brand new. Incredible opportunity, but it’s a brand new one.
Doug: So when I’m, when I’m thinking about it, I’m like, okay, these products are available on Amazon, right?
That’s what we’re talking about this way. So they’re available on Amazon. And typically if I saw a product that I wanted to promote, I would go to Amazon, find that product and grab the link in some mechanism, right? So I would grab the link and then. Send people to that product page. And how do I know that it is available via some, you know, seller network?
Jesse: So that’s, that’s the great question right now. Seller networks are new. Let me take a step back. Amazon, as I’ve seen is about 600 million products across, you know, amazon. com massive number of products. Seller networks right now are about 300, 000. Products toll. So it’s just a small drop in the bucket of, of what’s available.
So if you go to any random product on Amazon, the odds are probably relatively low that it’s supported by a seller network. That being said, the seller networks are doing a great job of building catalogs and working hard to bring in additional brands to support more popular products. So instead of just going and finding the random product you would, you’d recommend, which authenticity is key here, right?
I don’t mean to say only recommend selling network things. You get an extra bonus. Authenticity is always, always important. But we’re seeing more and more products that are name brand or are supported or are very tangential to what you would be recommending. So, but you would go to, you know, Lavonta or Archer or Maverick X and browse their catalog, see what’s available.
And if there was a good, a good fit, a good overlap with what you want to promote yeah, you grab the link from, from there.
Doug: Okay. And I’m sure I’ll think of other questions related to. The line that we just went down there, but I’ll, I’ll, I’ll say it specifically. Like we’re, these are my words, not yours, Jesse.
So like, we’re guided by our incentives and our incentives. It’s not a hobby, right? We’re like, all right, we can go. to the catalog of specific products where we can earn potentially a higher commission. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. It is just, we’re following our incentives. The big companies follow their incentives and Amazon.
They follow their incentives, blah, blah, blah. So don’t feel bad about it again. Not your words, Jesse. Those are mine. Okay, well, let’s get into those incentives. Why would someone even care about this? Talk about the commission rates for us.
Jesse: For sure. So I think it’s all, it’s important to kind of look at it in, in regards to Amazon associates as well, right?
Amazon associates 20 years, but some of the research we did, um, Not too long ago, showed that over the last 10 years, Amazon commission rates the average commission rate has dropped by three X, you know, we’re looking at like three to 4 percent these days which is a little bit of a bummer, you know, Amazon has obviously increased its catalog.
It’s, it converts incredibly well, but you know, rates, rates have lowered on the flip side, we’re seeing again, because these sellers. How their marketing budget and they’re getting a 10 percent kickback for that brand referral bonus, their commission rates often start at 10 percent and can go as high as 30 or 40% sometimes up to 50 during peak holidays, et cetera.
So we see a pretty significant difference in what that average commission rate is. So, Levant in particular, the affiliate or the Amazon selling network I know best. I think average is 18 and a half percent. So 18 and a half percent versus three, say three and a half percent. That’s, that’s a pretty big Delta.
So that the commissions are much higher. Okay, there is, there is a caveat here and you’re ready for the asterix. Amazon associates is great because of the opportunity of what they call halo commissions, right? You recommend a TV, but someone buys a toaster and some toilet paper. You still on commissions on those other two items with the seller networks.
It’s specific to that product. So if you recommend a specific, you know, HDMI cable and they buy microphone cables as well, they’re different brand, et cetera. You’re not going to earn commissions on that.
Doug: Okay.
Jesse: But you ready for the kicker here? What the beauty of it, at least right now is that associates and the attribution.
So associates, Amazon’s in house program, the seller networks, they’re not mutually exclusive. You can do both. You can earn associates revenue and seller network revenue on the same link.
Doug: Okay, that’s crazy.
Jesse: Mic drop.
Doug: Yeah. That’s one of those rare, rare things. It sounds like something that would go away in the future, right?
Jesse: Yeah. So I’ve got a deck that, yeah, I usually share. It’s got a big asterisk there as well and see how someday this will change, you know, right now Amazon’s associates operating agreement, the terms of service, essentially do not explicitly endorse or deny. Doing this behavior on the flip side, Amazon attribution does not explicitly endorse or deny that you can do this.
So it’s, it’s a very well known, I don’t want to call it a loophole because that wouldn’t imply that it’s, it’s, you know, not encouraging. It’s, it’s a way around it, but it’s, it’s a relatively new thing where it doesn’t really cause any damage to associates because that’s still working. Well, it’s not costing anything.
On the flip side, the sellers are very eager to have the transparency and tracking and be able to build this relationship with the influencers that can actually drive some volume. So it’s very well worth their, their marketing budget as well. So it’s kind of this, yeah, what is it when the, when the sun’s out make hay?
So it’s a pretty cool time and I think you’re right either at some point. Someone will put some sort of wording in which may not allow it or the brand referral bonus will go away or decrease. So, you know, instead of an 18. 5 percent average commission rate, that’ll that’ll start to drop down. But we haven’t we obviously are paying very close attention.
We look at it regularly. We ask a lot of questions and yeah, we have no indication that in the Yeah. Short to midterm. Anything’s going to change. And the hope is that if, if this really catches on over the next year, longterm, nothing’s going to change either because it’s going to be as valuable as paid ads were, you know, the last handful of years.
Doug: Interesting. Okay. And this commission rates just sound alarmingly high compared to what we’re used to. And Yeah. I wonder if, do you have any examples of, of those products or are they all like male enhancement type?
Jesse: No. Yeah, exactly. That’s a great question. Typically when you see such high commission rates, it’s things you wouldn’t want your grandma to know you’re recommending.
No, uh, we are, we are. Right now Sigma lenses camera lenses, uh, Sigma’s. Yeah, exactly.
Doug: We’re shooting on one right now.
Jesse: That’s you can get, you know, uh, I think it’s 11 or 12 percent commission on those. Um, so yeah, there are some big names. There are also a lot of products that are I don’t wanna say necessarily bad products, but just unknown kind of commodity products coming out of Chinese factories.
There’s obviously a, a good chunk of those as well. We are not seeing yet. You know, Apple watches or, you know, Sony cameras. The Sigma lenses are obviously a good step in the right direction. So some of that name brand stuff, that name brand stuff is typically kind of first party sell sold stuff as well.
And this, the selling networks is really kind of focused on that third party where they are selling directly in Amazon and have that marketing budget. That being said, as I understand, the technology allows the first party to Companies to do it. It just hasn’t happened yet. It’s new. I don’t hopefully it’s not too far away where we’ll see some sort of commission that’s higher than associates for for recommending some of this stuff.
Doug: Okay, any other, any other details of like the specific products or anything like that? I’m not sure if there’s anything else to
Jesse: yeah. So it’s again, there’s kind of three companies. So three companies that they’ve been around for over a year that, um, you know, with genius link, we’ve integrated with that.
We know quite well we’re, sending some, some good volume through. And we see a pretty wide range of products there. You know, there’s a lot of humidifiers, there’s a lot of uh, cables we talked about hawaiian ice shave machine. Yeah, there’s, there’s some fun stuff there and it seems to be you know, stuff that’s worth thousands, tens of thousands of clicks a day from what we’re seeing.
So it’s, it’s not, Complete crap by any means. Someone out there is recommending this stuff and getting excited and recommending more of it. But with these other two wayward and partner Bruce, the other two we’re looking to add here in the relatively near future, it’s going to radically increase the catalog size.
And I think with more and more selling networks competing, we’re going to see the quality of products being available, continue to increase. So I’m, I’m excited about it. I’m quite excited about the future of it all.
Doug: So. How does Geniuslink tie into it?
Jesse: Why do I care so much about this? So, you know, to be perfectly transparent I’ve been a fan of this model for quite some time.
You know, Associates I like Associates, right? I wrote a damn book about Associates, right? Yeah it’s, it’s, it’s, yeah. Something we’ve been working on for the last decade, but associates so associates had a monopoly on monetizing traffic to Amazon for quite some time. And that’s that monopoly.
I feel like has been abused to some degree by them, not maybe intentionally, but just associates isn’t isn’t like a lot of other affiliate programs where you can build a relationship and and They’re open to other things. You know, they have such a large market share. They’ve got to be pretty strict about what they do at, you know, Amazon in general, runs their teams pretty lean.
There’s not enough account managers to, to, you know, to, to listen to everyone. So I, I really liked the idea of, of kind of moving some of this opportunity for, for publishers away from associates. That’s again, 20 years later. Pretty pretty rigid unfortunately. So when I first saw this model and got super excited about it, there was a company called ripple analytics six, seven years ago that was based off of the affiliate program.
This is before the attribution program came out and I got really excited about their model, their Seattle base. So I got to sit down with them and they got closed down. So I’ve, I’ve been kind of. Thinking about this for quite some time. So when this new model, this attribution stuff came out, got really excited Levanto, one of the companies that’s been really pushing hard.
We’re actually small shareholders. And I saw it and it’s like, you know, I love this model. I want to get involved. How can we write you a check? So fortunate that that, yeah, genius link is, is partly there, but we’re trying to also be Switzerland here. We see that Levanta is doing some great things, but we know they’re not alone.
We feel it’s very much a greenfield opportunity. The more that this, this model can grow in the next couple of years, I think that the safer, better. More opportunity it’ll be. So we’re trying very hard to be again, Switzerland for these, for these other guys and help them out. So what is genius link doing?
Right? So we’re advocating for this model. We think it’s a good opportunity. We’ve also built some really cool technology where a lot of our clients are sending all their Amazon clicks through us. So we can see of those clicks, which ones are for products they’re supported. You know, it may only be one or two products, but we can then auto add the correct tracking information so that you’re getting that full commission rate associates plus, plus the actual attribution, the seller network and as these seller networks continue to expand more and more products, we’re going to manage that is, you know, seller moves from one network to the other, we can manage that all as well.
So the gist is that, you know, with about five minutes of work, add in your, your API keys from the different seller networks, we’ll manage that all for you. And hopefully. You’ll see some more paychecks show up for the same work you’re doing. And as things continue to grow with the other seller networks, we’ll add those as well.
It goes back to our ethos, right? Genius Link has always been about improving the user experience and helping you better monetize user experience. We do mobile deep linking and localization and multi retailer. The monetization is for a long time really been just about auto auto doing the associates, making sure it’s there.
But now that we can tack this on, we’re, we’re super excited to it. And it, yeah, it seems to fit pretty well and has made a lot of our clients pretty happy so far.
Doug: So, basically, if I’m using Geniuslink on my site, I don’t have to go backtrack and figure out which products are available on one of these networks at a higher commission rate, and then go create a link within the company’s platform and then update the link.
I don’t need to do all that, right?
Jesse: Nope. You. Yeah, exactly. That’s one of the value adds is we want to get you integrated into the space as easily as possible. You know, you may have already been sending clicks for a product that’s supported. Now you’ll start earning commissions for that. And that’s, That’s important, but we hope that that’s just a stepping stone, right?
If you see that, you know, these products, Oh, wow, there’s actually some money coming through. Hopefully you’ll build a relationship with them and maybe they’ll send you their new product and you can do a review on that. Or, you know, at the end of the day, affiliate marketing is all about adding incrementality, right?
Just capturing commissions from people that are going to buy that’s that’s not great for the ecosystem in general for the ecosystem to really grow. We need to get creators recommending products they believe in and they see financial incentive from so that sellers can then realize their marketing budget is better spent their create better products and just kind of build that positive feedback loop where they build more products.
People recommend them or review them and recommend them. They have more money because they had sold more. They can put more into the marketing budget, more of their R and D and just continue to build and build and build this until, until we hit the ultimate products.
Doug: And I think this is implied through like the, I guess the motto and the analytics that are now available.
But if I, if I’m a creator and I’m. or sorry, I’m promoting some of these products that I’m helping to sell for a company because of the API and the tracking and like the fact that they’re paying me, they know. That I am selling quite a few of those specific products individually. So I do have leverage to go to Sigma and say, Hey, I’m pushing a lot of stuff.
You actually see it. You’re paying me extra. Like I would love to work with you on whatever, some other brand deal or something, is that a piece? Okay.
Jesse: So. Amazon has actually tried to mimic some of this as well. They have a creator connections. It’s one of their internal programs that some people know about.
A lot of people don’t, but that whole idea of being able to get brands to work closely with creators is not new and Amazon has tried to do it. Unfortunately, they haven’t put the resources towards it, but when. You have the two pieces of the puzzle working closely together. It’s pretty amazing because, yes, you have leverage.
They also have new products they want to talk about and do a launch with. They will absolutely give you a higher rate commission for, for, you know, continue to improve it. You know, they it’s it’s a win win situation to build those relationships. And I think that’s another thing that really makes the seller network piece cool is that it’s just it’s taking down a lot of those barriers where you’re not.
Someone off in some corner, you’re, you’re a real person. They have a real relationship with you again. You know, income mentality is key for affiliate marketing. Direct relationships are also a huge part of helping the affiliate ecosystem grow.
Doug: Yeah, I agree. I mean, that’s, I don’t do, I don’t do much overall, but I don’t do too many brand deals, but the thing is it’s really hard.
Unless you work directly with a company to get, you know, what I think is worth my time.
Jesse: Exactly. And that’s, I think there’s two sides to that, right? It’s gotta be worth your time to do it, but you’re a huge unknown risk to this brand that, yeah, they’ve seen some of your videos, they see some of your work, but are you flaky?
You know, how many of these other things didn’t happen when you can start that relationship built off of mutual third party reporting and shared trust around performance. It’s way easier to then say, Hey, you know. Whether we have this relationship to begin with or not, I’ve already sold 100 of your, your cables.
Let’s do something cool. I’m going to get paid what I need to get paid. You’re going to actually see 1000 cables sold now. Let’s do it. But that relationship’s there. That trust is there because again, it wasn’t you, you know, screenshotting or, you know, fabricating something that, you know, and they can, they can trust the numbers because it’s coming from Amazon.
Doug: It just to recap. The configuration and set up on genius link. Is it literally like putting in the API and connecting to that network? Super
Jesse: Super simple. Yeah. Each of the networks are a little bit different in how they’re set up. Levante, you have to go and apply for each of the individual brands.
They’ve got, you know, 7, 800 brands now. So, but of course, yeah, if you’re promoting camera gear, you don’t care about dish soap and air conditioner. So you can focus on that Archer and Maverick X, you know, once you’re into the network level, you’re, you’re in for all of them. So yeah, there’s little nuances about exactly what information you provide.
You know, API key is, you know, Levanta, but you have to give a username and password for Archer because that’s how they authenticate their API. So little, little things, but again, it’s about five minutes. It’s, it’s pretty, pretty basic to get rock and rolling.
Doug: What about cons? You know, there’s no, no free lunches here. So what are the issues with seller networks?
Jesse: Yeah. So halo commissions, right? Again, if you’re, if they give you the attribution link specifically for again, a cable and someone buys an air conditioner, it doesn’t work. You’re not going to earn commissions like you would with associates. That’s why that whole double dipping with associates is so cool right now.
So limited catalog. It’s gotta be for that specific catalog. There’s a lot of, you I don’t want to say miseducation, but lack of education as well. A lot of people have been afraid of associates for a long time and for good reason, right? When it makes up a sizable chunk of your revenue and you’ve heard some of these horror stories, that you, that was one of the earlier conversations we had, right?
When you get that, and you have five days to respond or else you’re gonna lose your account. And you have the last two months of payment. That’s scary as can be. So people, people are a little nervous to poke the beast and to try something new. And it’s, I don’t, I don’t disagree with them whatsoever. That being said on the genius link side, if we get people in trouble, we’re out of business.
So we, Very, very closely follow the operating agreement. We have contacts. We ask questions regularly. Now, um, it’s, it’s important that we keep everyone in the clear. So just, yeah, the, the, the bit of education about is this legit? How does it work? Why, you know, it sounds too good to be true. How, how is it possible?
But it’s really, you know, a little bit from Amazon associates, a little bit from the seller. Adds up to be something meaningful. So, okay. We talked about catalog size. We talked about the attribution means specific. We talked about kind of the um, concern about Amazon associates. I think the last piece, and again, genius link has worked hard to solve this is just, it’s kind of complicated, right?
There’s a lot of brands moving into these selling networks and then moving between them. Or pulling their catalog off or whatever. So there’s a lot of kind of churn in that product catalog. So if you’re not using a tool like ours, like Geniuslink, and you’re building those links individually, you may find that, you know, it worked this week, but doesn’t work next week, WTF.
So just kind of that, that dynamic aspect of the catalog, the greater catalog across the networks is, is definitely a challenge at the moment, but one that we’re in a great position to help solve or have solved for our clients.
Doug: Perfect. All right, I’m going to pause for a second here and cough. Similar question, any common mistakes? And I just want to make sure we don’t miss anything. So if someone’s just getting started and they’re like, all right, I want to check out the seller networks and I want to get rolling, obviously genius link helps prevent some of the issues that you mentioned already, but any other mistakes that you want to highlight
Jesse: in general?
You gotta make sure you have your FTC disclosures, right? You gotta play by the rules. So just disclosing, you know, hashtag ad or, you know, putting the, the the links below may earn me an affiliate or revenue. Spacing out what the most concise wording is. But, yeah, just making sure that, you know, it’s clear and conspicuous that you’re, there is a paid relationship associated with these links.
There’s no That, that will piss off Amazon across the board when, yeah, you don’t do that. And obviously, yeah, them getting in trouble with the FTC is not another headache they need right now. So, yeah, that’s one to just in general, always be conscientious of to include it. Yeah, the, The unique piece about this cellular network stuff is that, you know, you don’t have this, you know, hour of really dull, laborious reading to get through to understand the seller network stuff.
They obviously have terms of terms and conditions as well, but it’s not the same draconian arcane language legalese that associates has in their operating agreement. So it’s a little bit easier, a little bit more flexibility.
Doug: Okay. And then we haven’t, you know, spelled out any distinction between like bloggers versus YouTubers versus social media or other creators.
Is there any difference depending on like, What someone
Jesse: What’s your medium is?
Doug: Right
Jesse: Yeah, not not really. It’s it’s you’re still following the same basic tenets, right? You know recommend a product be you know, be cautious thought that you’re incentivizing to click give your FTC disclosure You know link in the comment below or you know, the link here link wherever it may be You know, it’s it’s all the same.
It’s all the same game. It’s just being played slightly different fields So yeah, we’ve see great pickup from youtubers. We see amazing pickup from publishers as well. It’s I think We were talking about this a little bit before we started hitting record, you know, with the, the mess that Google has made recently, we have seen a lot more publishers getting super excited about this to kind of make up for some of the revenue they’ve seen drop off with, with their traffic dropping off as well.
So I think that’s, it’s kind of this, this perfect time. You know, it sucks that, yeah, websites are losing, losing some of this key traffic, but at the day, if they can, you know, take that traffic that they do have and monetize it better and get back to the breakeven that they were before. It’s not a great day, but it’s a better day than it was before.
Doug: That’s a good way to put it. All right. So people want to get started and learn more about Amazon seller networks. Where could they go, Jesse? What’s the best way for them? And you could pitch a genius link here. You have permission.
Jesse: I’m allowed. We have been spending a lot of time working on education related stuff.
We’ve got a knowledge base. We’ve got a landing page up. We’ve got I think a couple of different videos, but that being said Some of these seller networks are doing an amazing job as well. Levanta, I believe it’s levanta. io has put a lot of time and effort into creating some, some knowledge stuff knowledge pieces both from the seller side and from the publisher side.
Archer Affiliates, again those guys have been doing a great job just trying to get the word out. Yeah, it’s, it’s More and more people are talking about it and it’s, it’s pretty cool to see. So it’s not just us talking about it, but kind of across the board. There’s, there’s, yeah, you got to search for it.
It’s got kind of a weird name, Amazon seller network. What, what does this mean? How is this affiliate related? But yeah, it’s very much for, for us in the creator space. They’re looking to, to monetize our product recommendations.
Doug: Perfect. Yeah. We’ll link up. to that stuff so people could find it. So you can just check out the show notes there.
And Jesse, anything else you want to throw in here that I forgot to ask or anything like that before we let people know where they could find you?
Jesse: Once again, your curiosity, I think we’ve covered, covered most of the major pieces. No, it’s, uh, it’s pretty exciting. Yeah. Again, if I can be a resource as well, please don’t hesitate to, to reach out. I’d be happy to, happy to help however I can.
Doug: All right, cool. So where, where should people find you?
Jesse: Well in Cleveland and Chicago. Yeah. Feel free to email me JL Jesse lakes at genius GNI dot U S. So JL at genius. Happy to, yeah, take you. We love your audience. So happy, happy to be a personal conduct there.
I’m also on Twitter or I guess we call it X these days. At Jesse lakes or at genius link and LinkedIn spend a fair amount of time there as well. Just slash Jesse lakes.
Doug: Perfect. Yeah. We’ll link up to all that stuff. Thanks a lot, Jesse.
Jesse: Thank you. Uh, it’s always fun.