In this episode, Josh interviews Lauren Lee, ClickBank’s e-commerce and affiliate marketing expert. Lauren shares practical strategies for finding and recruiting affiliates, managing relationships, and setting commission rates. She highlights the benefits of affiliate networks like ClickBank and Shopify’s Dovetail, and offers tips for pitching offers, optimizing landing pages, and starting with best-selling products. Lauren distinguishes between influencer and performance affiliates, explains how to set sustainable payouts, and provides actionable steps for launching or improving affiliate programs. Listeners learn how to connect with Lauren and access additional affiliate marketing resources.

Chapters:

Introduction to Lauren Lee and Her Background (00:00:00)
Lauren’s experience with top brands and her approach to scaling e-commerce through affiliate marketing.

How to Find and Connect with Affiliates (00:01:11)
Strategies for finding affiliates, benefits of affiliate networks, and leveraging marketplaces like ClickBank.

Networking and Recruiting Affiliates Outside Networks (00:03:20)
Tips for recruiting affiliates via Facebook groups, LinkedIn, and sharing campaign data to attract partners.

Using Data to Attract Affiliates (00:03:42)
Importance of sharing conversion rates and average order value to entice affiliates.

Affiliate Offer Visibility on ClickBank (00:04:58)
How ClickBank displays offer metrics and ranks offers for affiliates.

Alternative Networks and Cold Outreach (00:05:24)
Advice on finding affiliates for Amazon brands, using cold DMs, and other affiliate networks.

Shopify’s Dovetail Platform for Influencer Affiliates (00:05:53)
Overview of Dovetail for finding and messaging influencers at scale on Shopify.

Other Affiliate Networks and Amazon Integration (00:07:35)
Recommendations for entry-level networks like ShareASale and Amazon traffic facilitation.

Determining Affiliate Payout Ratios (00:08:28)
Guidelines for setting commission rates for different affiliate types and the importance of knowing your margins.

Commission Structures for Different Affiliate Types (00:10:18)
Typical commission ranges for influencers, publishers, and performance affiliates, and strategic considerations.

Three Actionable Takeaways for Affiliate Programs (00:12:09)
Summary of key steps: define affiliate type, start with best-selling products, and optimize landing pages for customer problems.

How to Connect with Lauren Lee and ClickBank Resources (00:15:03)
Ways to contact Lauren via LinkedIn and access ClickBank’s e-commerce resource hub.

Links and Mentions:

Affiliate Networks and Marketplaces
"ClickBank": "00:01:33"
"ShareASale": "00:08:20"

Influencer and Affiliate Search Tools
"Dovetail": "00:06:15"

Educational and Support Resources
"E-commerce Resource Hub at ClickBank": "00:15:14"

Transcript:

Josh 00:00:00 Today. I am super excited to introduce you all to Lauren Lee. Lauren is Clickbank s ecom expert who works with eCommerce brands to unlock new sales channels with affiliates. She believes that there is always a solution to scale brands, and you can always find a way to exceed your goals. Lauren has partnered with top fortune 100 companies like Walmart, Amazon and Apple, leading their affiliate marketing strategies and offer campaigns, and is helping brands like yours craft scaled affiliate channels. You can find her hanging with her husband and daughter when she isn't supporting clients traveling the PNW, aka the Pacific Northwest, and assisting in Buddhist meditation teacher training. So with that, welcome to the show, Lauren.

Lauren 00:00:50 Thank you so much, Josh. It's nice to be here.

Josh 00:00:52 Lauren. I kind of want to point our attention to how do I find these affiliates? It all sounds great, but how do I find these affiliates, how do I manage the relationship with them? How do I make sure that the offer I'm going to give them is enough percentage of the deal or of the revenue share? Right.

Josh 00:01:11 So there's a lot that I think we need to dive into there. So let's start first with like so how in the world do I go find the right affiliates? If I've decided that with organic I, I've, I'm targeting more, let's say people that are trying to lose weight. Right. how do I go find the right affiliates that are focused on talking to an audience that's wanting to lose weight?

Lauren 00:01:33 Yes. Great question. And basically, we're taking somebody through the whole journey, right? Of what? Of starting of starting from the ideation stages and just of interest. And now you're you're ready to connect with affiliates. And so you by joining in the network, you get access to the affiliates. And that's one of the benefits of joining a network. And outside of a network you can absolutely connect with people on like Facebook groups and maybe on LinkedIn. and it's kind of ad hoc, right? And it does take some manual effort. So that does exist that just natural facilitation of relationships. But once you're inside a network in a company like Clickbank or another network, what they allow you to do is to join a marketplace.

Lauren 00:02:15 And the marketplace is not consumer facing. It's for affiliates. And affiliates are coming every single day to be able to see what offers are there and what they can begin to promote. And so you want to be in that marketplace. You want to be just like you're on Amazon, right? And you are in that marketplace. It's kind of very similar in the sense of what products can I promote as an affiliate. And so that's how you're really going to start to connect with affiliates. So pick up your offer. And so there's some strategies around there. You know you can get your offer and require that affiliates, you know, provide information so that you can start to create these this network of affiliates that you're connecting with by email by contact. And you also can learn what is their traffic source. Maybe one affiliate is really good at YouTube and one's really good at Facebook. And you can start to be strategic around that. that is the main facilitation, the main way that you are going to connect with affiliates.

Lauren 00:03:07 There are other things like events and networking and like I mentioned, kind of this ad hoc relationship that does happen, but you want to ensure your, your, you're connected on the marketplace.

Josh 00:03:20 Okay. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. So the first thing would, you know, a network that you join in the marketplace would kind of do a lot. Help expedite things. Do you have any tips or strategies? If somebody is just, you know, they're networking with people or they're in Facebook groups, have you seen any good strategies that way to maybe recruit some affiliates that you're meeting personally?

Lauren 00:03:42 Yes, absolutely. Okay, so I think one thing that often gets overlooked when you create your funnel and create your campaign, you're super excited, but you want to be able to have some data around your campaign, your offer. Is it converting? What is the conversion rate? You know, what is the average order value that you see people transacting with on your on your funnel, on your campaign? Those are going to be really attractive metrics to share with affiliates.

Lauren 00:04:09 And so if you did go on a Facebook group or you go to a networking or a conference, right, you'r...