May 12, 2024 • 16 mins
I am thrilled to release our latest episode featuring Jesse Lake, creator of Geniuslink, discussing key strategies for affiliate marketing and maintaining good standing with platforms like Amazon Associates. Whether you are just starting your podcasting journey or looking to enhance your existing content monetization strategies, this episode is filled with crucial insights.
Key Takeaways:
Understanding Amazon’s Rules: Learn the common pitfalls that could lead to being banned from Amazon Associates and strategies to stay compliant.
Optimizing Affiliate Links: Explore how Geniuslink's Choice Pages can help provide multiple purchasing options, potentially increasing conversion rates and earnings.
Preventing Stock Issues: Discover how Geniuslink's new feature can alert you when a product is out of stock. This allows you to update your links promptly and keep your audience engaged with available products.
Listen to this informative episode at profitfromyourpodcast.com/68 and enhance your affiliate marketing tactics today!
Feel free to share this post with your network and share your thoughts!
Mentioned In This Episode
Mastering Amazon Associates: A Creator's Guide To The Amazon Affiliate Program
(and yes, I'm using Geniouslink to monitor the link above).
9 Reasons Affiliates Get Banned from Amazon (How to Avoid)
Link Whisper
https://supportthisshow.com/linkwhisperer
Mentioned in this episode:
Profit From Your Podcast Available as an Audiobook
If you order the audiobook now as I record the chapters (4 are available, over an hour of material already) YOU will be mentioned at the end of the book.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
On my last episode, I told you how I'd found this cool
tool called Geniuslink, and I was super excited about it. So
much so that I went and found the creator, Jesse Link, and we're gonna do
a deep dive on affiliate marketing using Geniuslink.
(00:26):
Hey. I'm Dave Jackson from the school of podcasting.com.
And when I consult with clients, I always say,
never start your show with an apology, but I need to apologize
in this case. This was actually recorded back in
November of 2023. I
lost the file, and the good news is I found it. The only
(00:49):
reason I even bring this up is at the end, we're gonna talk about some
new features that he's hoping to add by the end of the year. Well, that
was 2023. But this tool, the more I use
it, the more I love it. And so I asked Jesse, like, what
even inspired him to create this? Let's go back.
16 years ago, I was running a series of websites that took the
(01:10):
soundtracks from extreme sports films, and I linked them up to songs
on iTunes and Amazon. And every time someone clicked to buy their new favorite song,
I'd earn a few pennies. And this website was kind of my first real web
project that that really kind of took off and I was really proud. I had
this nice key stick growth in traffic. My revenue was really flat,
Just could not figure out what was going on. So scratching my head, you know,
(01:31):
why why do I have this this delta that keeps getting bigger and bigger? My
moment came when I realized that people around the world love music.
They love skiing. They love snowboarding, and everyone around the
world was buying music from different stores. It was still maybe Itunes was the
Itunes US store, the Itunes Canada store, you know,
Amazon dotco.uk. So my oh, no moment was when I realized that
(01:53):
most of my links were essentially broken for that international audience. So that's why
the traffic was ramping up and my revenue was really flat is, yeah, lots and
lots of broken links. So call my best friend engineer at Microsoft and say, hey,
dude, can you build me a SmartLink? And classic engineer goes, yeah. I can build
you anything, but you have to write me the requirements doc. So I spent a
a good chunk of time kinda deep diving and learning how the Itunes affiliate program
(02:14):
really worked. And it was a great program, but there was really no documentation.
So poked and prodded and dug and made a lot of mistakes, but
ultimately was able to write him up a requirement stock. Another friend said, hey, keep
going. Write a book. We got nothing else going on. I was a white water
rafting guide in the summer. I'd go down to Costa Rica in the winter, essentially
just a bum with with some web projects. But so I decided to write a
(02:35):
book. So I took all my notes and and it kind of cleaned them up
and put some graphics together and sent off to, to an
editor and and came back and had this, you know, PDF, 160 pages, 60,000
words that was the ultimate guide to the iTunes affiliate program. So just as
about ready to publish, I sent a copy off to Apple and said, hey. You
know, I think you'll you'll appreciate this. And I think the response he got
(02:56):
was not what he expected. And got a cease and desist and a a
threat to sue me if I published the book. And when you get a cease
and desist from Apple, a company that large, that'll grab your
attention. So ended up popping on the the phone with this woman, first 30 seconds,
very civil and polite, next 45 minutes. She's kinda screaming at me, who who the
f was I to be writing all these lies? They'd never heard of me. There
was no way I can know anything about this. They weren't gonna let me publish
(03:18):
it because there's no way it could be accurate and so forth and so on.
So we made a deal. I'd let them review it before I published it. So
they they took a look at it. 3 weeks later, they came back. I had
3 pretty trivial mistakes, and they asked if I was over 18, a US
citizen. And, yeah. That might make you just a little bit nervous,
but hold on. Yeah. She said, well, come work for
(03:38):
me. So I trade in my flip flops for a cubicle on a commute in
Cupertino and spent the next couple of years working in Itunes and essentially made that
book obsolete except for one thing, and that one thing is what we now call
geofragmentation. It's that whole idea that as a global brand or as a
brand wants to expand, they often expand globally and then create different country and region
specific storefronts and then create affiliate programs that are specific to those
(03:59):
storefronts. So they paid me quite well to make the Itunes problem even
worse. I think we tripled the footprint in the the couple years I was there.
So after a couple years of, you know, the the good life at Apple, working
with some amazing people, realized that I'm more of an entrepreneur. Her life is
great, but I I was getting fat and lazy, and I I need the hustle.
So left in early 2012, and I have been building a
(04:21):
solution to to fix my website, also to help, you know, many,
many other creators and websites kind of around the world that not only deal with
the Itunes issue but with Amazon. And there's a number of different
global brands that kinda have the same geo fragmentation issue. But Amazon, obviously, is is
the one that brought us together. And my joy with Amazon, I've been
kicked out not once, but twice. The first time I accidentally used an iframe
(04:43):
and actually had somebody on the phone. And they're like, oh, yeah. I can see
where you cleared it up, and yet they still kicked me out. The second time
I put something like support the show, use this link, that
got me kicked out. It's kinda hard to stay up with this stuff.
And Jesse actually has a book and a blog post about
this. We've worked with some contacts to to write a very
(05:04):
detailed blog article. That blog article is now a chapter in in the book as
well, talking about the 10 easy ways to get kicked out of Amazon's affiliate program.
So, you know, one of those is incentivizing clicks, which is, you know, exactly what
you you did. There's, also the you know, one of the first ones is just
around, you know, not you know, cloaking links, not letting people know the destination.
So, you know, back to back to your question. On a technical basis, if you're
(05:24):
using our JavaScript or WordPress plugin, what we can do is that we can show
the Amazon destination until actual click. And that's a little bit of a loophole
that allows you not to have to put a, you know, Amazon disclaimer right next
to it. If you have a YouTube channel, we've got a tool that'll run through
and add a disclaimer when we convert the link. But in general, it's really about
the education side of just really strongly encouraging people to to spend a minute
(05:45):
reading our blog at a bare minimum but also to go through the operating agreement.
Operating agreement is is the rules of the game. Right? If you don't play the
rules or you don't play the game with Amazon's rules, you're gonna lose. They're gonna
kick you out, and they're probably gonna take the last 3 months' commissions that they
owe you with them. And I'll have a link to that blog post
and the book out at profit from your podcast.com/68.
(06:07):
And one of my favorite features of Geniuslink is what
are called choice pages. This is where you could have a link
to Amazon, B and H. There are a bunch of different places you can link
to. So I was asking, Jesse, about choice pages and how they
work. Most products are sold by multiple retailers, and Amazon
is a amazing retailer. They've got a great affiliate program. But at the
(06:30):
end of the day, they're only, and I put only in air quotes here, right,
40% US ecommerce market share, which is massive. It's 5 times larger than the
next largest retailer, which is Walmart. But at 40%, that also means that
3 out of 5 sales happen outside of Amazon. So the idea with a choice
page is that you as as the podcaster, as the creator,
as the influencer, you know who to recommend or sorry, the product to
(06:51):
recommend. But you make a bit of an assumption saying that everyone should go to
Amazon or everyone should go to Sweetwater because different retailers are gonna wanna buy from
different consumers wanna buy from different retailers. So by giving them a choice,
you allow them to do a little bit due diligence. And if it's a higher
priced item, we believe that that's actually building momentum
towards a conversion. So they can check Sweetwater. Oh, the price is lower than Amazon.
(07:12):
Let me check Amazon anyway. Okay. Now I'm more comfortable moving forward. And when the
visitor can do a little bit of shopping with just a few clicks, that
leads to more revenue. And we found that, in general, we see about
a 2.2 to 2.4 times lift in both conversion rates and
earnings by including the multiple retailers. So if you give consumers a choice,
they'll reward you with typically more money. But is there a point where you
(07:34):
can offer too many choices? It seems that there's some analysis by paralysis.
I wouldn't recommend any more than, say, 6 or 8,
choices, but it seems that Amazon makes a good option.
The specific manufacturer brand going direct to them is another good
option. Again, you know, because of, you know, being an influencer,
a creator yourself, a podcast yourself, you're probably only looking for places that have a
(07:57):
affiliate program to reward you for your efforts. And then maybe 1 or 2
other retailers as well. So if it's Amazon and, you
know, the the microphone manufacturer and Sweetwater, perfect. Or maybe B
and H is another good one. Right. Or maybe Best Buy is is
another good one. But, yeah, it's one of those things where we'd like to give
you the information where you can experiment and and test, yourself as well.
(08:18):
One of the things I love about Choice Pages is there are some that you
can just like Amazon. I can just put in a regular link, and Geniuslink
will automatically make that an affiliate link. But
But I love Sweetwater. And so what I can do is get my premade affiliate
link and add it to the choice page. So you have
your favorite stores there, especially if they have affiliate programs. But
(08:40):
I mentioned the book from Jesse about the different ways you can
kinda get kicked out of Amazon. And as we were doing this
interview, I found out that I might be almost ready for getting kicked
out a 3rd time Because I had mentioned how I was using
Amazon links in my email newsletter and well
Hopefully, when you said newsletter, that wasn't an email newsletter because offline
(09:02):
links is the second most common reason people get kicked out of the affiliate. Well,
there you go. I'm I'm just too it's actually an email. Yeah. So
I can't put affiliate link. No. You can't put Amazon links directly
into affiliate or sorry. Amazon affiliate links directly into email.
That's a certain offline source. You can't put them in a PDF. You can't bump
the art a QR code. You can, again yeah. This is one of the reasons
(09:24):
we built them. Put a choice page there. Our choice page, again, is a a
mobile optimized landing page that's, again, very, very specific to
promoting a product across mobile retailers. It can be a single destination retailer. It can
be just Amazon. But by going from newsletter to landing
page, a landing page has the Amazon affiliate link then to Amazon.
That is okay. But direct affiliate links inside of newsletters is not okay.
(09:46):
Yes. Some people, Tim Ferriss, get away with it, etcetera.
But, unless you have a written okay from Amazon, that is
another unfortunate way. You could be going for, what, number 3 here. Hopefully, you won't
get there, But number 3, you get kicked out. And if you're a person that
doesn't wanna work with individual retailers, there are
affiliate aggregators such as Skimlinks and Sovereign
(10:07):
Commerce. And, yep, you guessed it. They work with Geniuslink. I I will
tell you that, you know, adding individual affiliate programs, we're hoping to build
momentum and and add more of those on a regular basis. However, you can also
add in both VigLink, sorry, it's now called Sovereign Commerce, and SkimLinks, which are
these affiliate aggregators, right? These sub affiliate networks that support
tens of thousands of different programs. So if you add one of those in, then,
(10:30):
you know, drop in your raw links. It'll also affiliate them that way as well.
So there's a couple different ways to ensure you're monetizing. You're absolutely right. Now for
a yeah. I think we've almost got 3 dozen different programs. You add
your affiliate information directly into the dashboard. We see one of those links.
We'll take it from a raw product link into an affiliate link. You can drop
in the raw link yourself. That's option 2. Or option 3, you drop in the
(10:52):
raw product link, and then you add in 1 of the sub affiliate networks information.
And we can run it through them, and they can monetize it for you. So
3 different ways to ensure you're getting paid. And when I interviewed him, he
mentioned what was then a beta feature, and I've now seen it
in action. And that is Geniuslink with Amazon
reports when something is out of stock. To do that localization
(11:13):
piece to ensure you have someone clicking from Canada goes to Amazon dotca,
we have to understand that that link, what that product is. As
part of understanding what that product is, it's really easy for us to peek at
the stock and inventory levels as well. So and part of that
localization process where we're checking with Amazon, If they tell us that it's out of
stock or that link, they don't recognize the, ASIN, which is Amazon's unique
(11:34):
identifier, then we can surface it up to you and say, hey. You know, this
product may not be available or, you know, we don't recognize this product. You may
wanna think, you know, think again about, you know, sending traffic there because a dead
end destination, a product that's out of stock, is really hard to sell. And so
in my case, I had an on air sign that I had an affiliate
link for. And it let me know that for whatever reason, the person that was
(11:55):
selling this, they're out of stock. And I was very easy to go
in, find another on air sign, and just update
my link. It was really, really cool. Now, again, back in
November, when I asked him what's coming down the pike, these are probably in
the system now. But, nonetheless, it shows you the versatility of
Geniuslink. Yeah. We've got 2 big products where or 2 big features we're working on
(12:17):
right now. The first is we we've released it kinda quietly, and you've your
account already has some of this functionality, but we're we're looking into a big cleanup
of it. And that's around mobile deep linking and the whole idea that when someone
is on their device on their mobile device and they click on Amazon link,
the odds are pretty high they actually have the Amazon app installed. And sending
them directly into the Amazon app ensures they're most likely logged in,
(12:38):
which reduces that kind of friction, which improves your conversion rate. So we've actually seen
anywhere from a 4x to an 8x improvement in earnings by
ensuring people get into the mobile app. So we've got some good cleanup stuff on
that. Again, the the core functionality is there. With iOS, we we ran to a
couple little nuances that we're we're cleaning up. And the other one that's that's kind
of brand new that I'm super fired up about is this whole concept called Amazon
(12:59):
seller networks. So when we talk about Amazon Affiliate, we're talking about
Amazon's in house affiliate program, Amazon Associates. Amazon Associates
has been around for, what, 26 years or something. It's kind
of the incumbent affiliate marketing. These Amazon seller
networks is this whole new model around affiliate marketing on Amazon. And the idea is
that instead of being paid out directly from Amazon, you're paid out from the
(13:22):
brand for recommending their products on sales inside of Amazon.
And this is all made possible by this brand new technology that Amazon rolled out
called the attribution API. So I could I could take you deep, deep down to
the weeds, but the gist is not only can you use associates to recommend
specific products, but if this product is supported on one of these Amazon seller
networks and you use an attribution link on top of your associates
(13:43):
link, you can earn commissions not only from associates but from the seller network as
well, essentially doubling the revenue you can make. So there's 3 major ones right
now. We've, just finished integration with 2 of them. The third one, we hopefully
can complete in this next week or so. So in the real relatively near future,
we've got an additional way for you to monetize those Amazon product links. It is
an amazing tool. And if you're listening to this on your phone or on the
(14:05):
website again, profit from your podcast.com/68.
I'll have links to Geniuslink, the book, the blog post.
In fact, I'm gonna name off those 9 things. It'll get you kicked out of
Amazon right after this. And, again, I will
have a link to this out in the show notes at profit from your podcast
dot com slash 68. But here are
(14:27):
some things that'll get you kicked out. Number 1, cloaking links.
That's where I got into trouble, I think, with the
switchy. Io. People didn't know they were going to Amazon. Number
2, links and ebooks. 3, mentioning prices or
availability, Using their star ratings and reviews,
asking for a click or bookmark is directly against the
(14:50):
affiliate program. Linking to not products. And what they
mean here is, let's say, you take your affiliate little code
there and link to, like, how to get a refund. Yeah.
That'll get you kicked out. Too many ebooks is another
one, not including your disclaimer. And per the
FTC, the FTC is cutting down on
(15:12):
this. You have to do those disclaimers at the beginning.
You can't, at the end of the article, go, oh, by the way, you know,
parenthesis, a f f. You have to do that upfront. If you
go to ftc.gov/influencer,
they even made a video about this. So the government's kind of you you we
have the government's attention. And then number 9, old products.
(15:35):
I'll have a link to this again out at the website, profit from your
podcast.com slash 68. Couple other things
I was like, well, of course. He is Jesse is the
CEO of kit.co. That's a great website. And the
other one I found is if you've ever used the Whisperlink
plugin for WordPress, it helps you find internal links and how that can really help
(15:58):
your SEO. I'll be talking about SEO in a future episode,
but, just more reason to go. Yeah. Of course. This guy makes
great stuff. Thanks so much for listening. You can find everything we mentioned
today out at profit from your podcast.com/68.
I'm Dave Jackson from the school of podcasting. I help podcasters.
It's what I do.
On my last episode, I told you how I'd found this cool
tool called Geniuslink, and I was super excited about it. So
much so that I went and found the creator, Jesse Link, and we're gonna do
a deep dive on affiliate marketing using Geniuslink.
(00:26):
Hey. I'm Dave Jackson from the school of podcasting.com.
And when I consult with clients, I always say,
never start your show with an apology, but I need to apologize
in this case. This was actually recorded back in
November of 2023. I
lost the file, and the good news is I found it. The only
(00:49):
reason I even bring this up is at the end, we're gonna talk about some
new features that he's hoping to add by the end of the year. Well, that
was 2023. But this tool, the more I use
it, the more I love it. And so I asked Jesse, like, what
even inspired him to create this? Let's go back.
16 years ago, I was running a series of websites that took the
(01:10):
soundtracks from extreme sports films, and I linked them up to songs
on iTunes and Amazon. And every time someone clicked to buy their new favorite song,
I'd earn a few pennies. And this website was kind of my first real web
project that that really kind of took off and I was really proud. I had
this nice key stick growth in traffic. My revenue was really flat,
Just could not figure out what was going on. So scratching my head, you know,
(01:31):
why why do I have this this delta that keeps getting bigger and bigger? My
moment came when I realized that people around the world love music.
They love skiing. They love snowboarding, and everyone around the
world was buying music from different stores. It was still maybe Itunes was the
Itunes US store, the Itunes Canada store, you know,
Amazon dotco.uk. So my oh, no moment was when I realized that
(01:53):
most of my links were essentially broken for that international audience. So that's why
the traffic was ramping up and my revenue was really flat is, yeah, lots and
lots of broken links. So call my best friend engineer at Microsoft and say, hey,
dude, can you build me a SmartLink? And classic engineer goes, yeah. I can build
you anything, but you have to write me the requirements doc. So I spent a
a good chunk of time kinda deep diving and learning how the Itunes affiliate program
(02:14):
really worked. And it was a great program, but there was really no documentation.
So poked and prodded and dug and made a lot of mistakes, but
ultimately was able to write him up a requirement stock. Another friend said, hey, keep
going. Write a book. We got nothing else going on. I was a white water
rafting guide in the summer. I'd go down to Costa Rica in the winter, essentially
just a bum with with some web projects. But so I decided to write a
(02:35):
book. So I took all my notes and and it kind of cleaned them up
and put some graphics together and sent off to, to an
editor and and came back and had this, you know, PDF, 160 pages, 60,000
words that was the ultimate guide to the iTunes affiliate program. So just as
about ready to publish, I sent a copy off to Apple and said, hey. You
know, I think you'll you'll appreciate this. And I think the response he got
(02:56):
was not what he expected. And got a cease and desist and a a
threat to sue me if I published the book. And when you get a cease
and desist from Apple, a company that large, that'll grab your
attention. So ended up popping on the the phone with this woman, first 30 seconds,
very civil and polite, next 45 minutes. She's kinda screaming at me, who who the
f was I to be writing all these lies? They'd never heard of me. There
was no way I can know anything about this. They weren't gonna let me publish
(03:18):
it because there's no way it could be accurate and so forth and so on.
So we made a deal. I'd let them review it before I published it. So
they they took a look at it. 3 weeks later, they came back. I had
3 pretty trivial mistakes, and they asked if I was over 18, a US
citizen. And, yeah. That might make you just a little bit nervous,
but hold on. Yeah. She said, well, come work for
(03:38):
me. So I trade in my flip flops for a cubicle on a commute in
Cupertino and spent the next couple of years working in Itunes and essentially made that
book obsolete except for one thing, and that one thing is what we now call
geofragmentation. It's that whole idea that as a global brand or as a
brand wants to expand, they often expand globally and then create different country and region
specific storefronts and then create affiliate programs that are specific to those
(03:59):
storefronts. So they paid me quite well to make the Itunes problem even
worse. I think we tripled the footprint in the the couple years I was there.
So after a couple years of, you know, the the good life at Apple, working
with some amazing people, realized that I'm more of an entrepreneur. Her life is
great, but I I was getting fat and lazy, and I I need the hustle.
So left in early 2012, and I have been building a
(04:21):
solution to to fix my website, also to help, you know, many,
many other creators and websites kind of around the world that not only deal with
the Itunes issue but with Amazon. And there's a number of different
global brands that kinda have the same geo fragmentation issue. But Amazon, obviously, is is
the one that brought us together. And my joy with Amazon, I've been
kicked out not once, but twice. The first time I accidentally used an iframe
(04:43):
and actually had somebody on the phone. And they're like, oh, yeah. I can see
where you cleared it up, and yet they still kicked me out. The second time
I put something like support the show, use this link, that
got me kicked out. It's kinda hard to stay up with this stuff.
And Jesse actually has a book and a blog post about
this. We've worked with some contacts to to write a very
(05:04):
detailed blog article. That blog article is now a chapter in in the book as
well, talking about the 10 easy ways to get kicked out of Amazon's affiliate program.
So, you know, one of those is incentivizing clicks, which is, you know, exactly what
you you did. There's, also the you know, one of the first ones is just
around, you know, not you know, cloaking links, not letting people know the destination.
So, you know, back to back to your question. On a technical basis, if you're
(05:24):
using our JavaScript or WordPress plugin, what we can do is that we can show
the Amazon destination until actual click. And that's a little bit of a loophole
that allows you not to have to put a, you know, Amazon disclaimer right next
to it. If you have a YouTube channel, we've got a tool that'll run through
and add a disclaimer when we convert the link. But in general, it's really about
the education side of just really strongly encouraging people to to spend a minute
(05:45):
reading our blog at a bare minimum but also to go through the operating agreement.
Operating agreement is is the rules of the game. Right? If you don't play the
rules or you don't play the game with Amazon's rules, you're gonna lose. They're gonna
kick you out, and they're probably gonna take the last 3 months' commissions that they
owe you with them. And I'll have a link to that blog post
and the book out at profit from your podcast.com/68.
(06:07):
And one of my favorite features of Geniuslink is what
are called choice pages. This is where you could have a link
to Amazon, B and H. There are a bunch of different places you can link
to. So I was asking, Jesse, about choice pages and how they
work. Most products are sold by multiple retailers, and Amazon
is a amazing retailer. They've got a great affiliate program. But at the
(06:30):
end of the day, they're only, and I put only in air quotes here, right,
40% US ecommerce market share, which is massive. It's 5 times larger than the
next largest retailer, which is Walmart. But at 40%, that also means that
3 out of 5 sales happen outside of Amazon. So the idea with a choice
page is that you as as the podcaster, as the creator,
as the influencer, you know who to recommend or sorry, the product to
(06:51):
recommend. But you make a bit of an assumption saying that everyone should go to
Amazon or everyone should go to Sweetwater because different retailers are gonna wanna buy from
different consumers wanna buy from different retailers. So by giving them a choice,
you allow them to do a little bit due diligence. And if it's a higher
priced item, we believe that that's actually building momentum
towards a conversion. So they can check Sweetwater. Oh, the price is lower than Amazon.
(07:12):
Let me check Amazon anyway. Okay. Now I'm more comfortable moving forward. And when the
visitor can do a little bit of shopping with just a few clicks, that
leads to more revenue. And we found that, in general, we see about
a 2.2 to 2.4 times lift in both conversion rates and
earnings by including the multiple retailers. So if you give consumers a choice,
they'll reward you with typically more money. But is there a point where you
(07:34):
can offer too many choices? It seems that there's some analysis by paralysis.
I wouldn't recommend any more than, say, 6 or 8,
choices, but it seems that Amazon makes a good option.
The specific manufacturer brand going direct to them is another good
option. Again, you know, because of, you know, being an influencer,
a creator yourself, a podcast yourself, you're probably only looking for places that have a
(07:57):
affiliate program to reward you for your efforts. And then maybe 1 or 2
other retailers as well. So if it's Amazon and, you
know, the the microphone manufacturer and Sweetwater, perfect. Or maybe B
and H is another good one. Right. Or maybe Best Buy is is
another good one. But, yeah, it's one of those things where we'd like to give
you the information where you can experiment and and test, yourself as well.
(08:18):
One of the things I love about Choice Pages is there are some that you
can just like Amazon. I can just put in a regular link, and Geniuslink
will automatically make that an affiliate link. But
But I love Sweetwater. And so what I can do is get my premade affiliate
link and add it to the choice page. So you have
your favorite stores there, especially if they have affiliate programs. But
(08:40):
I mentioned the book from Jesse about the different ways you can
kinda get kicked out of Amazon. And as we were doing this
interview, I found out that I might be almost ready for getting kicked
out a 3rd time Because I had mentioned how I was using
Amazon links in my email newsletter and well
Hopefully, when you said newsletter, that wasn't an email newsletter because offline
(09:02):
links is the second most common reason people get kicked out of the affiliate. Well,
there you go. I'm I'm just too it's actually an email. Yeah. So
I can't put affiliate link. No. You can't put Amazon links directly
into affiliate or sorry. Amazon affiliate links directly into email.
That's a certain offline source. You can't put them in a PDF. You can't bump
the art a QR code. You can, again yeah. This is one of the reasons
(09:24):
we built them. Put a choice page there. Our choice page, again, is a a
mobile optimized landing page that's, again, very, very specific to
promoting a product across mobile retailers. It can be a single destination retailer. It can
be just Amazon. But by going from newsletter to landing
page, a landing page has the Amazon affiliate link then to Amazon.
That is okay. But direct affiliate links inside of newsletters is not okay.
(09:46):
Yes. Some people, Tim Ferriss, get away with it, etcetera.
But, unless you have a written okay from Amazon, that is
another unfortunate way. You could be going for, what, number 3 here. Hopefully, you won't
get there, But number 3, you get kicked out. And if you're a person that
doesn't wanna work with individual retailers, there are
affiliate aggregators such as Skimlinks and Sovereign
(10:07):
Commerce. And, yep, you guessed it. They work with Geniuslink. I I will
tell you that, you know, adding individual affiliate programs, we're hoping to build
momentum and and add more of those on a regular basis. However, you can also
add in both VigLink, sorry, it's now called Sovereign Commerce, and SkimLinks, which are
these affiliate aggregators, right? These sub affiliate networks that support
tens of thousands of different programs. So if you add one of those in, then,
(10:30):
you know, drop in your raw links. It'll also affiliate them that way as well.
So there's a couple different ways to ensure you're monetizing. You're absolutely right. Now for
a yeah. I think we've almost got 3 dozen different programs. You add
your affiliate information directly into the dashboard. We see one of those links.
We'll take it from a raw product link into an affiliate link. You can drop
in the raw link yourself. That's option 2. Or option 3, you drop in the
(10:52):
raw product link, and then you add in 1 of the sub affiliate networks information.
And we can run it through them, and they can monetize it for you. So
3 different ways to ensure you're getting paid. And when I interviewed him, he
mentioned what was then a beta feature, and I've now seen it
in action. And that is Geniuslink with Amazon
reports when something is out of stock. To do that localization
(11:13):
piece to ensure you have someone clicking from Canada goes to Amazon dotca,
we have to understand that that link, what that product is. As
part of understanding what that product is, it's really easy for us to peek at
the stock and inventory levels as well. So and part of that
localization process where we're checking with Amazon, If they tell us that it's out of
stock or that link, they don't recognize the, ASIN, which is Amazon's unique
(11:34):
identifier, then we can surface it up to you and say, hey. You know, this
product may not be available or, you know, we don't recognize this product. You may
wanna think, you know, think again about, you know, sending traffic there because a dead
end destination, a product that's out of stock, is really hard to sell. And so
in my case, I had an on air sign that I had an affiliate
link for. And it let me know that for whatever reason, the person that was
(11:55):
selling this, they're out of stock. And I was very easy to go
in, find another on air sign, and just update
my link. It was really, really cool. Now, again, back in
November, when I asked him what's coming down the pike, these are probably in
the system now. But, nonetheless, it shows you the versatility of
Geniuslink. Yeah. We've got 2 big products where or 2 big features we're working on
(12:17):
right now. The first is we we've released it kinda quietly, and you've your
account already has some of this functionality, but we're we're looking into a big cleanup
of it. And that's around mobile deep linking and the whole idea that when someone
is on their device on their mobile device and they click on Amazon link,
the odds are pretty high they actually have the Amazon app installed. And sending
them directly into the Amazon app ensures they're most likely logged in,
(12:38):
which reduces that kind of friction, which improves your conversion rate. So we've actually seen
anywhere from a 4x to an 8x improvement in earnings by
ensuring people get into the mobile app. So we've got some good cleanup stuff on
that. Again, the the core functionality is there. With iOS, we we ran to a
couple little nuances that we're we're cleaning up. And the other one that's that's kind
of brand new that I'm super fired up about is this whole concept called Amazon
(12:59):
seller networks. So when we talk about Amazon Affiliate, we're talking about
Amazon's in house affiliate program, Amazon Associates. Amazon Associates
has been around for, what, 26 years or something. It's kind
of the incumbent affiliate marketing. These Amazon seller
networks is this whole new model around affiliate marketing on Amazon. And the idea is
that instead of being paid out directly from Amazon, you're paid out from the
(13:22):
brand for recommending their products on sales inside of Amazon.
And this is all made possible by this brand new technology that Amazon rolled out
called the attribution API. So I could I could take you deep, deep down to
the weeds, but the gist is not only can you use associates to recommend
specific products, but if this product is supported on one of these Amazon seller
networks and you use an attribution link on top of your associates
(13:43):
link, you can earn commissions not only from associates but from the seller network as
well, essentially doubling the revenue you can make. So there's 3 major ones right
now. We've, just finished integration with 2 of them. The third one, we hopefully
can complete in this next week or so. So in the real relatively near future,
we've got an additional way for you to monetize those Amazon product links. It is
an amazing tool. And if you're listening to this on your phone or on the
(14:05):
website again, profit from your podcast.com/68.
I'll have links to Geniuslink, the book, the blog post.
In fact, I'm gonna name off those 9 things. It'll get you kicked out of
Amazon right after this. And, again, I will
have a link to this out in the show notes at profit from your podcast
dot com slash 68. But here are
(14:27):
some things that'll get you kicked out. Number 1, cloaking links.
That's where I got into trouble, I think, with the
switchy. Io. People didn't know they were going to Amazon. Number
2, links and ebooks. 3, mentioning prices or
availability, Using their star ratings and reviews,
asking for a click or bookmark is directly against the
(14:50):
affiliate program. Linking to not products. And what they
mean here is, let's say, you take your affiliate little code
there and link to, like, how to get a refund. Yeah.
That'll get you kicked out. Too many ebooks is another
one, not including your disclaimer. And per the
FTC, the FTC is cutting down on
(15:12):
this. You have to do those disclaimers at the beginning.
You can't, at the end of the article, go, oh, by the way, you know,
parenthesis, a f f. You have to do that upfront. If you
go to ftc.gov/influencer,
they even made a video about this. So the government's kind of you you we
have the government's attention. And then number 9, old products.
(15:35):
I'll have a link to this again out at the website, profit from your
podcast.com slash 68. Couple other things
I was like, well, of course. He is Jesse is the
CEO of kit.co. That's a great website. And the
other one I found is if you've ever used the Whisperlink
plugin for WordPress, it helps you find internal links and how that can really help
(15:58):
your SEO. I'll be talking about SEO in a future episode,
but, just more reason to go. Yeah. Of course. This guy makes
great stuff. Thanks so much for listening. You can find everything we mentioned
today out at profit from your podcast.com/68.
I'm Dave Jackson from the school of podcasting. I help podcasters.
It's what I do.
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