Doug: Hey, what’s going on? Welcome to the Doug Show. My name’s Doug Cunnington, and I’m pumped to have a guest on my good friend Jesse Lakes.
How are you today?
Jesse: I’m doing really well. Thanks, Doug. It’s good to be back.
Doug: And it’s been way too long. I think you are the most frequent guest on the Doug Show. In fact, about a year ago you were here in studio might be closer to a year and a half.
So, uh, as friends and professional acquaintances, we have not been doing a good job keeping up with each other.
But you’re, you’re on the show and we’re gonna talk about mastering Amazon Associates in 20 25, 20 26. And the thing is. I’ve been talking a lot of smack about how, you know, niche sites are dead.
I’m like, don’t waste your time with, with Amazon. Don’t waste your time with basically all the stuff that I used to talk about before. And part of part of this is like the change that I saw and what I’m into now. And one thing that I am aware of, although I haven’t said it in those episodes. I’m not really looking for this sort of information.
I’m not looking for success stories. I’m out of the loop. I’ve unsubscribed from, you know, YouTube channels. I’m not looking in Facebook groups. I’m not watching YouTube videos on this topic. I’m watching completely different stuff unrelated to marketing. I’m not finding that information. Now we’re gonna talk about some details of mastering Amazon Associates, which you have a, a new version of your book out there.
Jesse: Yeah.
Doug: And it’s by you and the Genius Link team out there. So we’ll get into the details, but you’ve been on the show a ton.
We’ll link back to some of the previous episodes, but just in a nutshell, who are you? What’s Genius Link? And then we’ll get into some more details on Amazon Associates.
Jesse: Yeah. So in short, I’m an unfortunate student of the Amazon Associates program for the last like 20 some odd years.
Um, and the, there’s, there’s various lengths of this story, but yeah, it started playing with affiliate marketing back in the.com crash. Um, and then used it to help support a, uh. Alternative lifestyle of, of bumming around. And then ultimately found there were some pretty big gaps and some pretty huge opportunities.
So started building, uh, services software specifically to help fill those. And now, uh, fortunately work with thousands of, of different publishers and, and bloggers and, and creators to help them yeah, really turn their, their passion into a livelihood and, and earn something reasonable from, from Amazon.
So it’s been, uh, it’s been a crazy, crazy version, but who am I? Yeah, just, just some dude that’s. Likes to learn about affiliate marketing, believe it or not,
Doug: and you do have a very cool story, so I, I encourage people to, to check that out or head over to the Genius Link blog. I think, you know, you cover some of the backstory because.
I mean when you think about affiliate marketing as we know it online, I mean you were there from like kind of the beginning in that insane, and again, your story’s cool ’cause you did bum around for a bit and then, uh, ended up in the high tech world and then yeah. Running your own startup. So very cool story journey.
Jesse: I’m sure we can reference some other earlier version where I hold the story ad nauseum, right. We’ll skip that
Doug: for Okay. And then. You mentioned Genius Link. Mm-hmm. Helps creators earn money, basically. Mm-hmm. In the, you know, whatever the 92nd version, like what does Genius Link actually do behind the scenes to help people out?
Jesse: Yeah, there’s a number of different problems that we’ve solved within Amazon’s ecosystem. Kind of the two three biggest are that Amazon is very much focused on global domination, and as they’ve kind of started to move their, you know, their risk pieces around the world, they create these different storefronts.
And each of these storefronts are really, opportunities are really optimized for specific, uh, regions, which leaves a lot of opportunity for you, especially when you have any bit of a, a, a global audience because Amazon does a horrible job or no job at all with Geotargeting. So one of the first things that Genius Link does is make sure that your global audience is sent to the right product in a place where they can easily buy, and then uses your affiliate tracking information so you get credit for that.
So taking care of your global audiences first. We also do mobile deep linking. So many of, uh, the world’s consumers are using their phone to, to transact Amazon while they are known for their website. They also have an incredible app and it’s one of the most downloaded social, or sorry, one of the most downloaded, uh, commerce apps out there.
So almost everyone has it. And when you can get someone to buy. That product you’re recommending inside the app, the conversion rate is way higher. So mobile deep Link is another aspect of it. Uh, Amazon Associates is, uh, used to be the, the, the way you could always monetize all your Amazon links, that’s expand as well.
There’s this whole new seller network model where you can actually get revenue directly from the sellers on Amazon, and that’s usually a lot more on a, on a per click basis. Uh, we also help with multi retailer, so forth and so on. But yeah, the localization, the mobile deep link are kind of two of our. Our marquee features, and there’s a lot of other stuff that really kind of helps wrap it around so that when you use a Genius link, you’re getting a better conversion rate, which ultimately means more money in your pocket.
Perfect.
Doug: Okay. As I mentioned, I’ve been doing a lot of videos about me not recommending Amazon associates or niche sites or content websites, and in a nutshell, I. Did that for a few years and kind of, I mean, I get bored after about five years on a thing. I get pretty obsessed and then like I, I like to learn new things and I slowly adapt while I leave other things behind.
I’m not unique in that way, but as I look back at my career, like that’s kind of what happened. Now, the, the thing is, I’ve, I’ve stopped talking about it as much. However, there’s a lot of people that I think they’re going to like chat GPT or somewhere else. They’re saying, Hey, is Amazon a good way or what about affiliate marketing with websites?
They end up on my site and that’s the first time they see anything about it and they’re like, oh, this seems pretty good. The problem is, I wrote that article like eight years ago, so, and I have very little incentive to go and clean it up or change it or anything like that.
Jesse: Absolutely.
Doug: So, so anyway, people are asking, so I’m doing these videos now.
I. You know, you just put out a new version here and I mentioned that I’m not really seeing these success stories because I’m not looking. Mm-hmm. Can you give some examples, like, who is doing well with Amazon Associates these days? Is it, um, just different platforms that I’m not looking at? And I’ll leave it open and I won’t lead the witness in this case.
Jesse: We’re seeing success still kind of honestly across the board. Yes, there are some areas that have definitely been hit. Right. And one of the areas where you were, you know, a, a leading voice for a long time is really that niche and authority website, and I think. It’s not that they’re not able to monetize Amazon or use Amazon as a core revenue stream like they used to.
It’s just, it’s a, a challenge on the other side of the coin where Google has made it incredibly difficult to bring the traffic that they, they, they can then monetize. You know, Amazon’s doing incredibly well as a, as a business, right? The, the retail side, you know, it continues. Their stock prices just up and up.
They continue to sell more and more and more. They continue to also be what? It’s the next eight largest retailers combined, have approximately the same market share as Amazon does. You know, 40 some odd percent. US E-commerce market share belongs to Amazon. So Amazon affiliate hasn’t. Fallen off. I think it’s really the challenge kind of on the, on the backside of getting traffic.
So I’m kind of sidestepping your question to a little bit. You know, niche and authority sites, we don’t see them as prevalent as they once were. And again, I think that’s not because of the monetization, but more of the traffic. On the flip side, we’re seeing um, you know, one or two or three person teams really focused around a creator, you know, video first, um, working on social media blowing up.
Uh, we’ve been very fortunate to work with some of the largest, um. You know, mass media brands out there, and we see that, you know, while, while they’re relatively large clients for us, and often, you know, in, in the top 10, you know, the, the, some of the other top 10 clients are, yeah, these, these very small teams that are very focused, uh, around helping people find deals or products or whatever it might be via a Facebook group or a TikTok channel or, you know, uh, Instagram reels.
And it’s, it’s been incredibly. Exciting to see how, again, the focused work, they’re, they’re putting in a lot of effort, but it’s a relatively small team being agile, moving quick, and earning significant sums of money from Amazon.
Doug: So to be specific, can I, I’ll, I’ll just name some platforms. So is it like YouTube and Instagram and TikTok and the usual suspects where a lot of conversations are happening?
Can you generalize?
Jesse: Yeah, so it yes and no. Taking a step back, right? There was this, this for a long time, it, there was this kind of rule of thumb that you needed to create content unique to each of the platforms, right? If it was a TikTok video, it had to be vertical and it had to be short, et cetera.
And if it was gonna be YouTube, it needed to be long form, et cetera. And those, those rules are definitely kind of starting to disappear. This whole create wants, use everywhere. Ideas is really proliferated, so that same content, one, one creator is often on. Essentially all the channels. ’cause there’s amazing tools.
repurpose.io is one of my favorites that you build it once and it, it’ll take all that work out of there and just get the content across the board. So, you know, back to what channel specifically. Well, yeah. YouTube is, is great for longer form content, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t clip your videos and put them everywhere else to also include your affiliate links because you know, TikTok, they’re looking for the, you know, the quick hit and if it’s an impulse buy.
You know, that’s, that’s awesome to include your affiliate link there as well. So I can’t say one platform over the other by, for one specific reason other than YouTube traditionally has been better and continues to be in a pretty good spot, but do ’em all.
Doug: Okay. That sounds overwhelming,
Jesse: but repurposed.io again, this is, uh, they’re, they’re great guys.
It’s cool technology, but it’s, it’s so easy now to just plug it in and just push one and it, it ends up everywhere. You know, it’s really. Meeting the consumer with where they’re at. And there’s, there’s multiple different assets, facets of that idea. But you know, if you’re, if your consumers are spending more time on Facebook and during times that they would buy, awesome.
If they’re, you know, on YouTube when it’s, they need to make a purchasing decision, then, then you’re meeting them there too.
Doug: Okay. And. In a upcoming episode where we’re actually, uh, behind the scenes, we’re gonna record this all in the same day, in the same session. I’ll be wearing the same shirt. Well, you know what?
I will too, unless I do a wardrobe change, but I, I didn’t prepare for that. So the. Next episode we’re gonna talk about video. ’cause you have been spending more time on video. So you’re speaking on this from firsthand knowledge of like publishing and getting it out to all the platforms. And of course, meet, meet the customers where they are.
And don’t, don’t do what I do where I like put up barriers and make it harder. Like my recent videos, I’m doing like a one minute guitar intro. It’s like I’m trying to push people away. You know, they, they really have to want to be there. So, okay. There’s.
Jesse: There’s some philosophy behind that as well, which I’m sure we’ll get into it some point, but No, I, I, I applaud that as well.
Doug: The, okay, so things have changed, like they constantly do. I mean, again. Mm-hmm. You’ve been in this industry for 20 years, you’ve had to pivot and like the audience has been in different places. Consumer habits are completely different. I mean, I was going to, I, I’ve. Uh, little side story. So I, I ordered some stuff on Amazon recently, as most of us do, like once a week or something like that.
So, and I’m in a hub area, so. Half the stuff I buy, I could like get today or like overnight. And I know not everyone’s in that situation, but like And you’re in that spot too, right? Like they have drones. I’m in the shadows of Amazon. Exactly,
Jesse: exactly. Haven’t got a drone driller yet. Deliver yet. But yeah.
Doug: And Jeff, Jeff goes out and like delivers it himself to your place that you’re so close. So the the thing is, I ordered a couple things, had to return ’em and mm-hmm. One, one issue. Like I’ve, I’ve been doing research and I, like, I watch a lot of YouTube and I end up on some websites, but it’s clear the information’s wrong.
I’m seeing AI overviews that are incorrect, so I, I’ve like ordered the wrong parts. I was like doing some, uh, wiring work on a guitar yesterday. I spent. Like an embarrassing amount. I spent about six or seven hours, like wiring something that should take like a few minutes. And it still didn’t work. Oh, no.
Because I had the wrong part and then I watched like incorrect information and Oh no. Anyway, so all this bad, all this bad sort of stuff and I, I’m, my trust is lower. But one good thing I was able to return stuff via Amazon and I ordered a bunch more stuff, but I’m. I’m like very hesitant to trust the information that I find from websites now.
I mean, videos are usually better, but insane that it, like I watched something and I was like, this is wrong. Like, but I didn’t know until I wired it up, which is like not, not cool. So, all that to say, I, I did have a question buried in there, but like people do buy so much from Amazon and there’s still, I mean, I buy more now than I did in the past, but things have shifted.
So you have a new version of the book. Can you tell us about some of the things that changed from. You know, whatever version 1.1 and two and and so on. So what’s different now?
Jesse: Yeah. So that’s, that’s a great question.
I want to, actually, if you don’t mind, can we take a quick step back about please. It is crazy how confidently AI is helping us be.
In sharing wrong information. Right. You know, it’s, it’s, I love Chacha, BT I use it every single day, but it’s, it’s, it’s, you know, the, the point that you’re making, I think is, is a really important one, is that it’s empowering, especially the written word where it’s relatively easy at crank out ai, swap to, to, yeah.
Have a few details wrong and those details. Matter a ton, especially when Yeah, you’re, you’re connecting things. You need specific parts, which I think kind of goes back to kind of one of the themes we’re, we’re really kind of hitting on today is around four bloggers in in 2025. It’s not just. Yes, use the tools available for you to be efficient, but when you can actually confidently make a video along with having written word, I think that goes so much further and just proving that authenticity.
And I think that’s honestly where we’re gonna see the future moving is that you need, you need the content to be easily indexable, to, to show up on the little bit of, you know, Google, SEO or wherever to, to, to be there. But ultimately people are gonna trust. A real video, not a, you know, 32nd Sora video that that’s all animated, whatever.
But yeah, you longer form working through, talking through. I think that’s one of the last. Vectors where there really is a lot of ENT authenticity left. So, you know, back to what, what do bloggers do in, in 2025 to, to make Amazon associates revenue? I think, you know, as you alluded to video’s, a, a key, a key piece of that because of the misinformation that comes from little bits here and there.
And again, I don’t know your scenario super specifically and hopefully it wasn’t a video long form video that that led you a astray, but
Doug: so funny thing, since we are getting into the details and thanks for going back. To this ’cause it, it is important. Like I, I was already hesitant to trust the AI overviews because I know where a lot of the content came from for the things that I’m searching for.
It’s from like websites that I hired people to write content for and they didn’t know what they were talking about. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And we have AI eating against tail at this point where people are creating content based on that. And it was a very, some very basic things that. AI should be very, very good at, and it was recommending, so in this instance yesterday, so I’m, I’m basically ignoring the AI overviews.
I’ll look just to confirm the inaccuracy, but I’ll, I won’t, uh, use that. But it actually, it’s
Jesse: fun to catch AI in, in a lie. In a, in a, I mean, but that’s, it’s insane. Isn’t helpful. Its insane.
Doug: It’s so crazy. And it’s like, oh, is that actually right? It’s like, nope. It’s, it’s not right. I just, I don’t know what I was saying.
It’s like, man. Get your shit. Get your shit together. Exactly. If I’m gonna trust you. Yeah. So, um, in this, this case, it actually was a, a long form video. It was only like three minutes, but technically long form video. Yeah. And it was for, it was like unclear. For which part it was for. So this person had ordered something that was different than what the normal default thing is out there in the world.
So imagine, I don’t know if you got like a, a nine volt battery and then the, the polarity was switched, that example ’cause you flip it. But, um, but basically it’s that, and he’s like, this one was different, but he didn’t like emphasize that. So as I went through, I realized it before. It got too, too bad. But then I had other failure points.
So, um, like, uh, it’s the first time that I’ve worked on guitar wiring and I’ve I’ve taken a lot of electrical engineering classes, but like 25 years ago, so I, I’m kind of outta practice soldering and so there were a number of things that slowed me down, but like it was. It’s all gonna work. I didn’t destroy anything.
But it was a little frustrating to like, you have the wrong part and then you gotta send it back and the blah, blah, blah.
Jesse: So, so just to challenge me real quick, yes. Would you have had that same challenge five years ago though? ’cause DIY at least for me, it’s three steps forward, two backwards, spin around a little bit.
Like I, I’m not a great DIYer, but I also don’t have that, the background that you do as well.
Doug: Great question. The one issue, I think I would’ve been better off a few years ago and I like, okay, the only thing is there’s too much information now and a lot of it’s wrong. Ah, yep. Because like what I started to see, I’m pretty sure there’s websites that are taking PDFs of wiring diagrams.
And I’m, this is just this specific industry and thing that I was looking at yesterday, but I was like, these are from another website. And the text around it seems AI written and it looks like just a traffic grab. So they’re taking PDFs, repackaging it, writing some garbagey content, and then. Google is ranking it, and then I go there and I’m like, this looks like bs.
The URL is derivative of another site that I know of and I’m like. You know, marketers ruin everything. There’s some, you know, just all the, all this garbage. And then probably, I mean, AI is gobbling up that inaccurate content and then other mm-hmm. People are making those diagrams and it’s like inaccurate.
It’s just not right. So I have to be very careful from which sources I’m going to all that to say. Five years ago, fewer sites, I probably would’ve like you Google it, like three sites come up or whatever. Mm-hmm.
And then it, it’s just there’s too much information that seems untrust or that seems like it could be trustworthy.
But now I’m finding that I’m like. It’s much harder to find what to trust and I think distill down it’s video. ’cause that’s hard to fake. There’s a couple websites where they actually had, I mean, these are, these are companies that, uh, sell these materials so they have photos and I could tell mm-hmm.
They’re actual photos of them wiring step-by-step like you would see in a forum in 2010 or whatever. Yeah. Like, that’s what it would be. So.
Jesse: Okay. I dunno. Awesome. Awesome. Yeah. Thanks. Thanks for diving down that with me for a minute. Yeah. So,
Doug: so
Jesse: what’s changed?
Doug: What’s changed?
Jesse: Yeah. So Amazon changes and that of course, you know, triggers us to have to update the biggest updates, I think between 1.3 and 1.4, which we published, um, yeah, earlier this year is, is twofold.
One is that for the longest time Amazon never allowed affiliate links and email. You would see someone do it here and there, but that was probably ’cause they hadn’t been caught yet. But that was back to kind of this whole, you know, all these different pieces. Social media is great, but it’s rented land.
You know, your websites, you have to battle, you know, Google for traffic. But email marketing, email newsletters have always been kind of held at a, a pretty high standard is as owning your traffic in one of the, the, the cleanest, clearest ways to, to interface with your, your audience. Well, as of last March Amazon’s cool with that now, and that’s obviously a, a huge difference to be able to put affiliate links directly into the content that you’re, you’re sending your audience and they’re engaging with and, and trusting it.
So that was, that was a big change and that definitely needed, uh, needed an update. And then the second piece that really needed some, some, um. Clarification push. And we actually, there’s a lot more to it than just these two pieces, but these are the biggest ones that Amazon did is back this whole seller network push.
So let me take just a quick step back because I think this is important for anyone that’s watching that is curious about monetizing with Amazon. But you know, as mentioned earlier, Amazon has been the default way to monetize clicks recommendations on Amazon for, you know, since 1996 is when I think they started the affiliate program.
So closing on 30 years. Amazon Associates over the last decade or so, it’s, it’s been kind of a, their average commission rate has continued to drop. And it’s just been a bit more of a challenge to, to monetize it, the, the higher levels that it was before. And what we’re seeing is that Amazon has actually introduced some relatively new technology that opened up this new kind of cottage marketplace.
But the idea of.
Ads becoming a, another major pillar of Amazon where they’re getting people to, you know, buy ads inside the Amazon site has led them to build something called the attribution, API. And the gist of it was is that Amazon allows, you have these five different parameters you can attach to an Amazon link that allows you to track different sales coming in.
Now it’s kind of the opposite of associates where they’re not paying you for those sales, but the attribution, API gives you a pretty clean and very data. Forward way to see that traffic from other sources. So maybe it’s Facebook ads, maybe it’s, you know, Google ads coming through. On top of that, the retail team also offered this incentive to sellers where they would discount up to like 10% of their fees if they drove traffic from offsite.
So instead of, you know, relying on Amazon being the person that brings the traffic, if the seller can bring the traffic and then sell on the Amazon platform, they get a discount. So with having clean attribution. And having an incentive for sellers to, to send this traffic.
These seller networks are essentially an affiliate network that sits on top of Amazon that really kind of facilitates the interaction between creators, publishers, bloggers, and these different brands.
And because these different brands, these different sellers already have some degree of a marketing budget, you’re seeing a much higher commission rate that can come out of it. So instead of an average of like 3.5% from associates, you’re gonna get like 18, 20, 30%, which obviously is, is a, yeah. Comes down to brass tax and your earnings per click is is pretty, pretty awesome.
So anyway, Amazon, last December put out some clarifying language finally around what is and isn’t allowed for, for a while. You could build. You technically could build a link that included both your associates information as well as this additional attribution information and essentially double dip.
That’s not cool. Uh, Amazon made that very clear that you can’t do both of those. So those were kind of the two biggest changes that, uh, necessitate a, a pretty major update to, to the book. I will take a breath. There you have, you have a question?
Doug: Yeah. No, no. Thi this is pretty cool. So, and I’ll quickly summarize the couple and then ask a follow up.
So, number one, you mentioned you could put affiliate links and emails, which is pretty cool. I haven’t, you know, actually done much with that, but now that you mentioned it, I was like, oh yeah, I can do that. And people open emails and, you know. My specific email lists are not geared towards like products, so I know it’s not gonna convert as well as if I had a email list around a certain topic and I’m like, I use this thing to do X.
Not as direct, but still effectively. Right. The seller network thing. Very interesting. And I, you mentioned Amazon basically having, they earn a lot of money from. Basically the seller’s running ads. And when you hop over and you search for something, it’s sponsored all over the place. Exactly. When you take a look.
Exactly. It’s, it’s just everywhere. And I, I think I started running across videos that Amazon was earning some pretty insane amount of their revenue from ads and, you know, it’s, uh. Quite an ecosystem. So because of that, they have a very, I mean, they have a good API, so now the attribution can be tracked all over.
And so the seller network, it sits external to Amazon, is that correct?
Jesse: Exactly,
Doug: yeah. Can you tell us more about that? Like how does, if, let’s say, obviously I have a YouTube channel, so if I’m like mm-hmm. Oh, when it’s happened to the seller network, I’m curious like, are there some good opportunities? How does that look?
Jesse: Yeah, so there’s, there’s a handful of different seller networks now. So Lata is one of the, the earliest full disclosure, we’re, we’re a small investor in that so follow them very closely, but they’re one of a growing number. And in fact, we’ve seen, you know, some of these smaller companies pop up with seller networks.
We’re also seeing some of the large affiliate networks also doing an Amazon play. You know, impact has, uh, a number of brands that they sell on Amazon that can be, you know, monetized to this as well. But the gist is you now have this, this. Affiliate network, very optimized for, for Amazon. And then again, it’s kind of that two-sided marketplace where you have the sellers, the brands that have, you know, vacuums or battery caddies or, uh, what, you know, Amazon, of course, you, you sell everything on Amazon.
So they’ve got these different products that you will then kind of opt into or, you know, you have to get a blanket, you know, these are all the different products you earn commissions on. So then for your YouTube channel, you would essentially go, okay yeah, I want to. Talk about product X, Y, and Z.
Awesome. Well, here’s product, you know, X, Y, and you know, something similar to Z. They’re there and you’d use an attribution link versus an Associates link to, to earn from that. Of course, genius Link will make that all super easy for you and take out a lot of the complication. But the gist is instead of, yeah, just drop in amazon.com/blah blah.
It’s amazon.com/, you know, maass equals blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So slightly different links. The tracking again is super important, but I don’t bore you with the details right here.
Doug: Perfect. And just to confirm, so at that point, you’re paid by the seller network, which, uh mm-hmm. Comes from the, the seller.
Mm-hmm. Not Amazon Associates, because you mentioned that you can’t double dip and earn from both places. Is that accurate?
Jesse: That’s exactly it. Exactly. Yeah. And then the associates is, you know, it’s a 90 day lag and the, the seller networks are, you know, payer quicker or paying quicker. Typically, the, the commissions are higher, the earnings per click is higher.
It’s, it’s, it’s pretty cool. The kicker is, it’s maybe 2 million products spread across, you know, the largest seller networks versus 600 million across all of Amazon marketplace. So it’s very specific products, but some pretty good brands these days. So it’s, it’s a, it’s a pretty cool model.
Doug: And then can you do the deep linking that you mentioned before?
So in this case, someone watches my YouTube video and I’m like, this product. And what we don’t want is to have friction, right? We don’t want them to end up on the website. They’re like, oh, I have to create an account. You want ’em to go to the Amazon app on their phone so they could like just order the thing and have it show up as soon as possible, so,
Jesse: exactly.
Yeah. Social media apps in general. We’ll pop open a browser that’s still inside the app because they wanna watch you shop. They wanna watch you browse because their whole thing is serving ads to you. And the more they know about you, the more behavior they see from you, the better they can build the profile, the more target the ads.
So yeah, by default, when you click on a link from uh, YouTube or Facebook or you know, Instagram, it’s gonna keep you in the sandbox browser. So, yeah, that, that mobile deep link will send you into the Amazon app where you’re probably, if you download the app, perma logged in versus to your point, the sandbox browsers, you’re typically not logged in because they’re gonna lose cookies or every update, you know, uh, flushes the cookies, et cetera.
So,
Doug: gotcha.
Jesse: Huge difference in conversion.
Doug: Sandbox browser, meaning, you know, I’m in Instagram and I click on the little link and then it opens the browser within Instagram, so it’s, I’m not logged in and it’s weird.
Jesse: Exactly. Yeah. It’s kind of a pain. But Instagram likes it because they can look over your shoulder and see what you interact with or what you buy.
Doug: Yeah. Yeah. And then I was like, oh man, what a, what a crazy picture they have, uh, you know, across, uh, I hope the companies don’t talk, you know, what kind of Tangled web have I created here?
Jesse: Oh, right. Unless it’s meta and they own both Facebook and Instagram, you know, and WhatsApp. We’re not gonna talk about that.
Doug: Okay. So those are, those are huge changes. So, any other details on the seller network that are important for us to know?
Jesse: Well, yeah, again, going back to where we kind of started the, the conversation, right? As a blogger, um, you know, a, a website owner, and today, what’s different? How do you make it work?
And again, I think that’s one of the key pieces that. Amazon Associates is an amazing affiliate program, but that’s kinda became become table stakes, right? For those that are really kind of figuring out how to optimize it, paying more attention to these seller networks and finding the products, um, you know, again, if you’re gonna recommend.
Lemme take a step back. Authenticity is really important, right? Recommend products that you know, because we don’t wanna get in a situation where you’re mis recommending or mis configuring things because really you’re just, you know, chilling for a dollar. That’s not cool. Affiliate marketing, when it works well, has a deep authenticity component.
But when you are looking, you’re working on your website and you know, again, Amazon sells everything. But if you’re flipping through, you know, LA Lavana or Partner Boost, or some of these other seller networks, um. Archer affiliate, there’s a, a handful of great ones, wayward, uh, et cetera. You can find different products that, again, if you’ve got familiar familiarity, I’m gonna butcher that.
Or you can, you know, works well into kinda that flow. Using a product that has a seller network backing, the seller’s gonna pay you will yield a much more per click than kind of the associate baseline.
Doug: Okay. And can you remind me. What’s the typical payout from a seller network? I know it’s a range, but just so people know the scope of like several times more.
Jesse: Yeah, so I think on average associates is about 3.5%. Uh, and the seller networks are about 18.5%, just shy of 20. Okay, so it’s approximately five x more. Yeah.
Doug: Yeah. Dramatic difference. And again, we always love Amazon Associates in the past. I’m saying we as a royal, we, it’s me because it converted so well.
’cause people like so incredibly, very comfortable. And then in this case, like they go to Amazon, but you’re getting paid from the seller network, not associates. So it’s. Five times more on average.
Jesse: Right? And there are some nuances here as well. With the seller networks, the attribution window is longer, but you don’t get paid for halo purchases.
Uh, Amazon also has a thing internally called Creator Connections, which is kind of that seller network model that they’ve been working on as well. Uh, so you’ll get paid a baseline or an additional fee on top of associates. So it’s again, why is the book updated? Because there’s a lot of these nuances now.
Uh, in particular because the sellers are beginning more and more invested in working directly through these channels to, to work with the influencers, creators, publishers, et cetera.
Doug: Perfect.
Okay, so we only have like a few more minutes before we wrap up this episode, and I will, if you’re up for it, I want to give you the opportunity to mention like if someone was just getting started with.
Amazon Associates, they don’t have an existing platform. How you would sort of guide them to get started. Mm-hmm. And I won’t pin you down on any like, uh, specific platform, but you could make an example and you could make up in a, a person who’s into a certain thing and give an example on how one might get started from sort of, uh, whatever the first six months or something like that.
Jesse: Yeah. So. Your path is going to be unique, period. But one of the things that we spend a lot of time talking about is that it’s so important to build your community before you try to start monetizing your community. So if this is the very first six months in your journey. Focus on your craft, focus on your engagement, focus on, on getting that information out because that’s so important to build that baseline.
Once you are starting to get some engagement and people are asking for product recommendations or asking, you know, X, y, z, that would, you know, an affiliate link would fit well with, that’s really kind of time to start diving into it. Granted, affiliate is often one of the very first monetization channels, especially in social media versus, you know, getting paid ads or, uh, brand deals, et cetera.
Once you have engagement in that community kind of really ticking you, you found your passion, you found your niche, you figured out how to kind of create content on a regular basis, and you are starting to monetize, definitely recommend Amazon as one of the very first affiliate programs you play with because as you mentioned it, it monetizes so incredibly well.
There’s such a diverse range of products that are supported there. It’s just. Easy to get started with. Uh, and that’ll build your baseline. So play with that a little bit. Once you start to see things coming through, realize that there is some product market fit between what you are recommending, which with your audience there as well, then it’s time to start optimizing.
And there’s a lot of ways you can optimize. And again, that’s really where Genius Link has, has spent a lot of time, is helping those clients. That are ready to take, you know, that, that passion and, and really kind of take that next step and whether it’s a full-time job or just, you know, a, a solid side hustle, start to give ’em some of those tools there.
And that includes, yeah, paying attention to how internationally your audience is starting to pay attention, mobile deep linking so you convert better with everyone on mobile, uh, et cetera. But back to kind of some other, those early pieces, you know, you will know where and how to get. Information out.
Again, is it a newsletter? Well, if it’s a newsletter, you know, how are you building that newsletter? Is it a hundred percent Substack? Okay. That’s awesome. That’s a, that’s a great place to start. Is there a video component of it? Well, if there’s a video component, are you starting with YouTube or are you starting with with TikTok?
Or do you plan to go wide to begin with? And then how are you building that audience, et cetera. So it’s less and less platform dependent. It’s more about kind of having. Business mentality, mindset, but knowing that it starts with a, a strong audience and, and kind of growing from there, that was incredibly broad.
Happy to answer any specifics off of that, but it’s, it’s, um, yeah, everyone’s past gonna be a little bit different.
Doug: So the one, one follow up, and again, that was broad. If people wanna learn more, get the book, you know, we’ll put a link out there. So it’s on Amazon, by the way. Surprise, surprise.
So the, what’s a common mistake that.
People at the beginning make, and you already mentioned like try to monetize too early. That’s obviously you don’t wanna do that. You wanna build your audience and have, uh, people that, that trust you. And they’re, they want, they wanna learn from you. So what’s another mistake people make?
Jesse: So unfortunately there’s about 10 mistakes people commonly make, and there’s a whole chapter in the book about that.
But really Amazon has very specific rules on how you play their game. And if you don’t know the rules, at some point you’re gonna lose the game. So I think the one mistake that that people make very unfortunately, too regularly is not spending the time to read the the, the operating agreement and the policies.
And I get that that’s a massive headache. So while I a hundred percent encourage it, there are cheats. For the short term, you should still always read it, you know, um, you know, I think it’s chapter three in the book is a good one. Amazon has their, uh, uh, associates, university, that’s got some good information et cetera.
But definitely take just a little bit of time and learn what is okay, because just mimicking and replicating what you see out there doesn’t necessarily necessarily mean that it’s the right way to do, or that it’s okay. They may have a, a special agreement, they may not have gotten caught yet. But just don’t willy-nilly do what you think is, is right for you or, you know, will help Amazon read the rules, know, know how to play the game, because that’s ultimately how you’re gonna win the game.
Doug: It’s a good read just to get a cup of coffee or your favorite energy drink and then you go through it. It’s, it is not as long as you think it would be, although there’s probably links to like 45 page documents out there. But yeah,
Jesse: it’s, they’re the rules. Yeah. Or yeah, exactly. It’s, it’s not bad. Just do it.
Take some notes because yeah, it’s, there’s nothing worse than hitting, you know, your best month ever and then Amazon sending you a nasty gram and then claw back the last three months of commissions like that. That is the worst feeling in the world. Trust me. Um, yeah.
Doug: No fun. Alright, Jesse, for people that wanna learn more, where should they find you?
Jesse: So I, uh, spend a lot of time on LinkedIn for better or worse. So yeah, I think it’s just LinkedIn slash something slash Jesse Lakes, so J-E-S-S-E-L-A-K-E-S. But also feel free to email me. I love talking about this stuff. Um, and I’m just simply jl my initials@gei.us. So yeah, send me a note. I, I, yeah, I love this stuff.
Lemme know how I can help. Perfect.
Doug: Alright, we’ll link up so people can find it really easy. Thanks a lot, Jesse. Absolutely. Cheers.