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Limited Supply
S14 E1: How Affiliates and Creators Are Redefining Brand Marketing (with Aaron Paul, Co-founder of Paul Street)
00:34:39
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- [00:01]
A
Welcome back to Limited Supply, the podcast where we get deep into the tactical and strategic side of e commerce, digital marketing and building consumer brands. I'm your host, Nick Sharma. I've spent the last nine years building, scaling and investing in brands. And through this show and my weekly newsletter at Nick Co Email, I'm here to share everything I've learned. The wins, the losses, the experiments, the tactics and the insights. All so you can unlock your next hundred thousand dollars in revenue. Today's episode is a good one, but before we dive in, let me tell.
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B
You about our chosen sponsor for this week's episode.
- [00:35]
A
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- [01:22]
B
Sharma. Well, Aaron, I'm excited to have you on limited supply. This has been a long time coming. We've been friends for years, got to build some brands together, have worked together. We have the running joke that you're the Jacob Johnson type of Indian. I'm the, the Nick Patel type of Indian.
- [01:46]
C
I am Indian.
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B
No, there's Christian Indians and then there's the rest of Indians and Aaron Paul is a Christian Indian. And if you don't, if you don't have the YouTube up, he's a brown dude sitting in front of me shaking his head from left to right. Exactly. And I'm the Indian who does shake his head from left to right. But, but no, I'm excited to have you here, Aaron.
- [02:07]
C
Thanks, man. Thank you. This is fun.
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B
It's gonna be fun for, for the, for the people who haven't got to meet you yet. Can you give just a quick background of yourself and some of the, some of the stuff you've done and almost brag in a way so People are excited to then listen to the rest of this episode.
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C
Sweet. Yeah, my bread and butter is affiliate. I've been in the affiliate space for about six years at this point. We've done a little bit over 500 million in just affiliate revenue. And so we built Paul street. That's my agency. We started that two years ago and we run pr affiliate, mass media, performance, prior influencer. We do a lot of celebrity marriages stuff at sports teams for some of the best brands and consumers. So that's your Hex Squats of the world, the Todd sniders, the liquid IVs. But yeah, we're, we're having a lot of fun doing it.
- [02:57]
B
Yeah, it's been, well, it's been fun to watch you build Paul street from nothing just a couple years ago to, you know, inking deals with hexclad and F1 drivers and neurogum and F1 drivers. I mean, you're doing, hanging out with Rufus Du Sole, signing deals with Grutman. Like it's insane what you're doing and what you're doing to connect like that crazy traditional world of celebrity and this new kind of era of challenger brands. And you know, it's funny cause like all of these big talent agencies have tried to do this for years and take advantage of like how big some of these companies have gotten. But no one's done it successfully and definitely not in I think the way that you've done it. But we're going to get into that in a second. The first thing I wanted to start with is pr. So PR is something that, you know, brands, I mean, for a long time when brands would launch, they would earmark, you know, 25 grand a month, 30 grand a month for a PR agency. So you know, people would earmark 25, 30 grand a month for a pr agency. And you know, it got to a point where like PR at first PR was super impactful. It was a make or break it type of a thing. And I feel like that was maybe like six to seven years ago where PR was kind of peaking and you know, you had to get like a Fortune writer or Bloomberg business, like one of these vogue business, big outlets to do your break. And then you have, you know, all these follow on outlets and you get a massive traffic spike and then it kind of slows down. But then you get the social proof out of it, which is really what like the performance teams really love to use. You know, today pr, I feel like has shifted so much. There was this wave in between where everything was about listicles and you know, buzzfeed shopping was a thing. Insider picks became really big, you know, like today for brands that are doing pr. Like, well, first of all, I'm curious, where do you think PR has evolved to? And then I'd love to learn from you, like how do you think about pr? Because I know you're doing PR for brands that previously have paid those crazy retainers for PR agencies in the past and they were not happy. So I'm curious like how you think about PR but also how you've evolved that you know, basically like what are you doing for these guys?
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C
Yeah, I'd say like the main reason why a brand may not be happy with PR is just because how we define value to just dollars spent is, is changing, especially just in marketing. I think today PR is mainly an exercise of credibility building. That's what it is. Maybe six, seven years ago. Yeah, you're going there to find audiences, find credibility, attach trust and that brings in a really qualified audience today. Like, you know, I, I joke internally but I also don't joke. I'm, I'm, I'm, I feel like I'm real about it. Is PR in the way that we have known it to exist is, you know, quickly dying and this Venn diagram of PR and affiliate like that, that, that common ground is just coming, you know, it's becoming its own thing. The way we look at PR is how can we fundamentally like, you know, go down this exercise of, of, of attaching a brand with credible outlets to effectively build a foundation that helps with, yeah, that social proof, that internal like you know, you know, your paid spend and efficiencies there. Like obviously that opens the door for affiliate partners to care about, you know, the brands that we represent. You know, thought leadership is important but effectively today is how can we marry the brand with anyone with a trustworthy audience or credibility. So PR today can be creators pre, PR today can be brand to brand partnerships. PR today can be, you know, you know, events that are happening in, in real life. But again it's about how do you utilize that to effectively run the engine of growth internally. I don't think that PR needs to be this ongoing, you know, initiative of how can we get a couple of placements every single month. You're going to get that with a solid affiliate program anyway. But it's a nice tool to have from a Sprint based approach anytime you're raising some capital or you have a new product out in market or you've partnered with a celebrity. So it's those story Worthy moments that you want to go to market with. It's a good tool for that. But that's how we approach it. We do it from a Sprint based approach, but mainly we do it to build that foundation that gives affiliate like a launch pad to scale and be successful.
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B
Yeah, it's like one thing I like to talk or one thing I talked about before was like so many brands today do not play in the middle of the funnel. They're, they always think about this top of funnel. You know, I gotta go find audience, I gotta go like run top of funnel and then I've gotta have the best bottom of funnel, performance marketing, landing pages, et cetera. But that middle of the funnel is, is like the PR stuff where. Or is I think where PR now plays its role, which is essentially providing social proof for consumers to feel like they're not about to go get ripped off or that you know, whatever they're suffering from is going to get solved because somebody else got that same thing solved for them. But it's, it's like it doesn't to your point, it's not discovering, it's just, it's like people figure out they want to maybe buy the brand and then they're using that as validation. It's not that it's finding people. I mean there's articles like you know, Forbes, I don't know if they still do this but for a long time always had their viewer count on the web pages. And like you can see that these breaking articles have 472 views. You know you're just like okay, you do the math on click out rate from there. Assuming you know, a crazy clickout rate of even 10%, you're talking 47 people. And then assuming a 5% conversion rate of 47 people, you're talking three people convert. That's assuming everything goes right. And so I think a lot, I mean, yeah, anyways, PR it seems like is, is definitely changing. Are, are these brands like are they still like is it still valuable to get PR in outlets like Fortune and Bloomberg or like is that, I mean what, like what is the purpose of some of those? I guess like if you're a brand that's building right now or a founder who's building, like do you need to worry about go getting that type of pr? Is it. Should you just focus on listicles? Like what kind of PR do you think is important for these brands that are scaling?
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C
Yeah, it's interesting. So from our perspective we focus a lot of our time and energy on the affiliate side of publisher. And one of the things that we noticed was affiliate is a great mirror of how your brand is perceived. So internally, if the brand is doing really well from a numbers perspective, typically the affiliates will also do well. But if the brand isn't well known or if it doesn't have any legs, we typically see affiliates not as interested in, in a, in an offer or a brand that we represent. If they don't have that credibility, if they don't have organic pickups in affiliate. Sorry. And in publisher already, their likeliness of even wanting to work with the brand is super low. And so even, even if you look at that example, it's like.
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B
And that's because they're looking for their own social proof that this is going to sell, right?
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C
Totally. And it's the same thing with consumers too. Like, yeah, I'll go look at a bunch of hex flat pans and, you know, be served to me on Facebook or Instagram or whatever, but then I'm going to maybe take a step out of that funnel and go and look at who's talking about it. Like, hey, has Good Housekeeping talked about hexcloud? What's their perspective on this? Maybe because I trust what they have to say. And even if it's not like a make or break deal for me, at least I have that, like, comfort level when I go to, like, purchase that product and, you know, consider other brands in that category. So it's a nice little like, you know, check of credibility that, a place for that consumer process, that customer journey. But even from the affiliate perspective, like, you know, we've seen that a big, you know, ask is. Affiliates do not want to figure out your business for you. They want to scale your. They want to scale your business. And that's where anything that we can do to solidify it as a brand. And that's why I do say, like in the beginning, like having some of those having a PR initiative to go get some, you know, editors to care, you know, do a review maybe about the founders, you know, what their story is or, like, why they're building this.
- [11:09]
B
Product before their affiliate team goes in.
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C
Yeah, exactly.
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B
The brand.
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C
Yeah, correct.
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A
Yeah, I remember hearing that, like, even.
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B
At buzzfeed and Refinery, they were always like, get it to the editors. Get them to write about it organically and the affiliate side is going to easily write about it.
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C
Yeah, yeah. And, and also, like, from, from like an ongoing, like, you know, campaign perspective, we have tons of brands that are investing so much into, you know, celebrity partnerships, they're putting their logos on, you know, football fields and you know, having PR as an outlet gives you essentially an avenue to tell the stories. Maybe you can't as a brand. And so they get to come in from that editorial perspective and like, you know, shine more light on that. And that can also be utilized by the brand paid initiatives or just overall marketing storytelling. So PR plays its place in, in that aspect. But if you were to look at PR as a source of discovery or a source of revenue, I think those days are well behind us. And I look at discovery as definitely gravy when it comes to PR initiatives. But yeah, if it makes way for a successful foundation for affiliate, then, you know, that's when we're cooking.
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B
Yeah. What's interesting is, is you're saying like that a lot of these things that you're doing that build social proof for customers also basically in turn build social proof for more affiliates. Like.
- [12:31]
C
Correct.
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B
Is what, like what I'm picking up is like, you know, the, the neurogum F1 driver partnership is going to get you the top thousand TikTok affiliates to silver because it draws a bunch of attention and hype. Not that exact thing, but like similar concept.
- [12:45]
C
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. I think like any big picture like initiative that a brand invests into, so that can be your, you know, deals with sports teams or deals with Formula one drivers or you know, you're, you're investing into an ongoing PR inclusion, you know, initiative. Like these are all like tactics or, or pieces of the puzzle that essentially gives people more comfort, more credibility to essentially be affiliates for you make per like, you know, they're coming back and purchasing helps within retail. So yeah, it's all part of that mix as we approach it holistically.
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B
And how are creators starting to play a role in this world of affiliates, PR and like you know, kind of the ev. I guess even the evolution of like creators partnerships and earned media there.
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C
Yeah. I honestly think like the future of pr, like a big, you know, initiative there would be creators. Right. Like your Bethany Frankel's of the world talks about a product or Oprah, like that's your sign of credibility, but that's also like a pocket of discoverability. You're essentially going to these audiences that you know, are, are just bought into a certain individual and they're ready to buy. They're ready to buy. If that fit is there, if there's a fit between that creator and their audience and the brand that they're representing, it's like a match made in heaven. You Know, if you look at like Kate Spade, like one of her first things that she did was she sent, you know, the product to the best editors at the best magazines in New York. And that's how, like she sold out of her first, you know, you know, couple of bags. And like, what would we do today is go after creators. So creators are like the next, you know, evolution of publishers, you know, in by way of podcasts and substacks and you know, their tech talks and Instagram. So there's a diversified approach there. There's ways to, you know, get them in organically. There's ways to get them on cpa, cpc, rev share type deals. There's way to get them in from a flat fee engagement. But yeah, that's also like a big part of our PR initiative is how can we go get more credible people to talk about it rather than just like a credible publication.
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A
Brands like Third Love, Liquid IV and Neurogum all swear by Instant they've tripled their email revenue. And some, like Karen Kane, even see a 5x increase.
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B
Why?
- [15:03]
A
Well, because AI can build hundreds of versions that you'll never have time to make while you're running your brand. Instant is running all the experiments, figuring out what works and then continuously optimizing those to keep the conversions growing. Don't get left behind while Everybody else goes, AI, grab a demo by October 31st and get 50% off your first 60 days at Instant One. Sharma, go lock it in and crush BFCM.
- [15:29]
B
I, I feel like so many brands, they're like, okay, we're going to figure out Facebook and Google and then TikTok and then maybe we'll figure out affiliate as a channel. When do you think is like the right time that brands should start thinking about onboarding affiliate or, you know, and maybe it's done in stages. Maybe it's like you don't need an affiliate agency out the gate, but like, you got to get certain platforms set up or you should start to have an intern building out your, you know, creator seething list or like a small, you know, reaching out to affiliates, like, you know, bloggers and whatnot. Like, how would you recommend that? That happens.
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C
Yeah. So, so before you engage in any affiliate activity, there's one thing that brands just, you know, truly need to, like, understand is effectively forget the type of affiliate. Whatever type of affiliate it is that you're going after, you always will have just one shot with them. Right? What that means is cool. Let's just say you get an affiliate to care and they say, yes, we'll talk about the brand and they go ahead and invest in whatever type of content that, that, that it is that they do. And if it for some reason doesn't convert or it's just a negative experience for their audience, there's, they're not coming back. The affiliate is never coming back. Purely just because if you're an affiliate, every morning you wake up there's probably 100 to 200 brands in their inbox saying hey, where the next best saw company talk about us? Right? Like there's, there's, there's only one shot. And so really that's on the brand. Then hey, when is the right time to go and equip these affiliates to effectively talk about you? And there's two things to also think about when it comes to affiliate like, affiliates are equal parts lazy and they're greedy from a laziness perspective. Give them everything that they need to talk about so they can do the least bit of work to talk about.
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B
What all the branding these affiliates.
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C
Yeah, it's essentially like here's all of the things that work from a messaging standpoint. So let's just say you're Green's gummy brand. Is there an angle to GLP1? Is there an angle to Vitamin D? Is there angle to a busy mom that can put, you know, vitamins into their lunchboxes for their children? Like what are all the angles that you can go and give an affiliate? So that gives, you know, that, that gets their brain kind of turning a little bit so that that's when they can come in and utilize their creative like liberty to talk about the brand in a way that their audience cares about. In addition to that, EPC is like, you know, earnings per click. It's like if you go to a, you know, if you're more than like 2 to 3, $4 per click, that's a successful offer, right? That's something that's, can you break that down?
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B
Epc, what's the math on that?
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C
So affiliates typically look at click based revenue. So every click is a reader or someone that's taking action on their, on their blogs. And if they're now being incentivized from a rev share perspective. So that can be 10% of order or 15% or a CPA. We have brands that give $100, $200 CPA or if they're getting, you know, a flat fee comes down to the amount of clicks driven. And that's what they're looking at from like a conversion perspective as well in terms of priorities for an affiliate. Affiliates typically care for number one, that your offer and your products convert. Right? You can give them a $500 CPA, but if you're sending your traffic to a brick wall and they don't convert, no one's making money, right? So like make sure that your, your, your, your, your just pages convert and it's dialed in from that perspective and show them that it does. The second, you know, thing that affiliates care about is pay them on time. Like you know, a Fed affiliate is a happy affiliate. So yes, if an affiliate is driving all this traffic and then you pay them on net 90 terms. Like if an affiliate drops off, then you're like what the heck happened? Like that was good scale. Like they're not getting paid. Right. And so make sure you pay them on, you know, we pay our affiliates on net 7, net 15 like you know, every two weeks ideally. So that's what we also do. And then thirdly, that's where, that's, that's where the payout really comes into play. Into play. And the cpa, the payout structure is never fixed. Right. I don't want brands to break their relationship or potential longevity with a, with an affiliate right in the beginning because they're just like, oh, we'll only give you 10%, 15%. The CPA is never fixed. Ideally when you're going to an affiliate and saying, hey, like what would it take for you to care, to invest into this relationship? And they throw out a number and say hey, we'll give you five more than that number. Like that's, that's a happy affiliate. And once you've built this rapport with the affiliate, that's when you know that leverage shifts a little bit more to your side and you go into a little bit of deal making and say, hey, like how about we tackle CPAs by SKU or the type of customer, you know, attribution based windows. So there's a lot of ways to dynamically approach payout optimization. So never look at it as a blanket 10%, 15% type of deal, which is what typically most brands, you know, make and break their affiliate programs on. But yeah, yeah.
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B
Is it fair to say that like a lot of the advanced affiliates, meaning like advanced advertisers that work with affiliates have a pretty big variety of compensation models depending on the affiliate versus a lot of the affiliate programs you probably see like crash and burn, they're like 10% across the board standard, that type of thing.
- [20:39]
C
Yeah, I'd say like a prime affiliate, you know, most brands also will See this as like, hey, like 20% of my revenue in the affiliate program, sorry, 80% of revenue that comes from, you know, my affiliate program comes from like about 15 to 20% of the affiliate. So if you were to look at those affiliates and just, you know, like turn everybody out and just focus on those. Now there's a set of, you know, dynamic setups that you can set up with that affiliate. So that can be paid initiatives in terms of hitting their audience. From a newsletter perspective. There is whitelisting deals that you can do where they're now running traffic on their, you know, Facebook handles. And you can set it on a percentage of spend model, right? You can get like access to their articles and run it on your Facebook account. That's a percentage of spend model. There is CPA based deal. So arguably, you know, if you're okay to pay Facebook $120 for a net new customer, if you were to set up that type of, you know, pixel to fire on a net new customer from an affiliate, why not pay the affiliate $120? I, I would argue that if it comes by way of an affiliate, they're a little bit more primed, a little bit more, you know, educated. There's a little bit of credibility there. So that would mean it's a higher quality affiliate or customer. So even giving the affiliate that type of CPA in line with what you're paying Facebook, that's on the table. And then, yeah, there's CPC deals to test out different types of content where it's, you know, I'll give you $1,000 CPC deal and it'll be a cost per click. We'll kind of take that back and see, hey, did it convert? If it did convert, we'll, we'll maybe keep that going or we'll, you know, turn that into a cpa. But there's all these ways of working with an affiliate. You know, let's just call it a list. Forbes health.com like if you go to the Forbes Health, let's call it the GLP1 listicle, right? Every brand on that listicle is fighting to get that number one spot in order to get that number one spot. Because we know number one and number two converts the best. They're hey, we're, we're going to give you exclusivity. That means we're not going to work with any other affiliate. Forbes, you will be our sole publisher. That will drive all the traffic or we'll give you 30 extra dollars for that. So we're willing to lose money on, on, on that partnership because we know that and people that don't go through that funnel might come and purchase through us on Facebook and other channels. So there's all these different ways that brands can typically find an access or an avenue point with an affiliate, but it's, it just comes down to deal making. Right. There's never a way to, you know, set up a deal. It's all about negotiating and finding out the best, you know, incentive for both parties.
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B
Yeah, I feel like most people have never even thought that the, the affiliate marketing world is, can be that complex because typically you just see platforms where you set up kind of a 10% evergreen program and hand it to creators or like it gets listed on couponing sites and that's for the most brands, that's the extent of their affiliate program. Or they hire like a rakuten and just gets them ranked on a bunch of coupon sites. Okay. A couple weeks ago, we were on the terrace having dinner and we were talking about media buyer affiliates, which is a concept that I'm sure like 3% of people are going to know about. Most people have probably not heard about this and don't even realize that this is something that exists. So can you tell us a little bit about media buyer affiliates and give us the 101 and then I'll start asking you some questions that I thought that I was really curious about.
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C
Yeah. So it's interesting because depending on who you ask, the, the word affiliate can mean, you know, different things. I entered the affiliate world with the type of affiliate that I used to work with was primarily media buyers who would run traffic to brands on a CPA model. Right. And so who are these media buyers? These are guys that can run traffic on. If there's an ability to buy traffic on any channel, they're running it on it. So your Reddits at the World, your Tapjoys, Facebook YouTube app 11 and what we found out was these guys are just so darn good at, at buying media that they don't work at brands, they don't run agencies. They just, you know, work with brands who are willing to give them a competitive cpa and they're arbitraging that, you know, that, that, that differential and just making so much money off of that. So let's just say a brand is paying them $150 for a sale. They're acquiring customers for 80, so they keep that split and they're doing sales per offer in, you know, the 1200-1500 sales per day type Type number. So it's very scalable, this type of affiliate, you know, if you go back 8, 9, 10, 11 years, like it got its start in like black hat affiliate. So it's like back when there was zero compliance or zero policing, it's like, cool, go find a pill bottle. It can be an empty pill bottle for, you know, no one even cares. And make whatever claim you want on Facebook or whatever channel. And it was just a crazy arbitrage game back then. There was so much competition. So the affiliates had to get really creative in terms of the type of creative and the type of messaging that they had to invest in, but also optimize and, you know, fully make sure that their landing pages were incredibly CRO, you know, optimized. So from that perspective, you, you fast forward five, six years. These are the best storytellers in the world and they are the best at creating offers and landing pages, right? Because they just know what converts. Now if you bring in like a legit brand, right, and you kind of marry that process in terms of what they're used to, there is this now window of opportunity of, of how to work with these buyers. So what does that mean? So about a couple years ago, I joined this affiliate network called jumbleberry. They were known for being a black hat, gray hat network. And Matt Dobson, who was one of the partners there, had this idea of, okay, cool, these are some of the best media buyers in the world. How do we now take what they're good at and apply these on some really cool consumer companies? In theory, we should be able to create and drive traffic a lot more efficiently than the brands can. And we tried and failed for a year. We earned some change. But effectively, you know, we, we found some wins in goalie nutrition. You know, everyone knows goalie from a couple years ago to have seen, is.
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B
This the largest TikTok Shop partner?
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C
Right. Right now. So it's, it's the largest ever, you know, TikTok shop brand. And again, it, it's a brand that's not only been built on the backs of affiliate marketing, but it's affiliate marketers who built this brand, right. So they understand where to go to invest into just even storytelling initiatives so that it can go back into affiliate and kind of give it the collateral that it needs. The other brand that we were able to scale is on it. You know, Joe Rogan's brand, Rent, Alpha Brain. But these are two brands where, you know, we came in and the playbook was cool. We understand what's working from, you know, a Brand's internal paid media perspective. But now how can we apply a layer of direct response on it? So if you go to article.onit.com I think it's still live. It's essentially a very doctor focused advertorial about how Joe Rogan stays productive using alpha brain. And now if you're the right type of customer and you read that article, you're like, heck yeah, I want to know how Joe Rogan stays productive. Because this guy seems to be talking a lot, doing a lot, you know, commentating the ufc. And you go in and you start to see that, you know, he's talking about alpha brain. And we're going into the science of it. And then we sprinkle layers of just like, you know, call to actions and offer based like principles in it. And it goes from there to a gated landing page instead of going to the actual dot com, something that we also just like spent a lot of time just optimizing and building. But effectively this funnel, once it was dialed in, we would go to an affiliate and say, hey, within the guidelines set by the brand and all of that, go ahead and create content and drive traffic to this from Meta or you know, YouTube or TikTok or wherever. And per affiliate, like each affiliate at scale was driving anywhere between 3 to 5, 3 to 4 to 500 sales per day given seasonality. But now with like 10 to 15 affiliates, that's like almost 2,000 sales per day that we're driving just on a CPA model with these affiliates, right? And so this world of CPA based affiliate marketing is kind of like a sleeper. But the ones that know fully understand that this is a tactic that has scale. Some of the best brands in consumer today, from the pet Lab coast to the athletic greens of the world. So a lot of brands that household names got their start with this tactic, right? And this essentially got them to a place where they're now able to invest in a brand and like, you know, be a household name. But this type of affiliate's also been really cool at, you know, talking about the principles that we apply today. So obviously, you know, you've with hooks and character, you've invested a lot into advertorials and landing pages. But these types of affiliates were running that tactic probably like four to five years before the average direct to consumer brain kind of caught on that tactic, right? White listing. That was something that a lot of brains have been talking the last two years, but five, six years ago, this is standard with an affiliate. They don't want to run from a brand's Facebook page. Right. So it's a good window to also test in terms of what's working from a, from a paid media perspective. And that's how we're also viewing this type of affiliate today, is how can we go work with an affiliate to effectively test a new channel that the brand maybe doesn't need to invest into with, you know, huge retainer or capital by working with an agency or a fractional consultant or whatever. But if we can go find the perfect affiliate, you know, we. It can be also a window of testing that allows you to scale into later.
- [30:37]
B
But yeah, yeah, that's really interesting. And. Well, first of all, it's crazy that there's kids who are basically like, yo, I'm going to sit in my boxers and rip landing pages for you and I'm going to build funnels and you're going to pay me a CPA and I can do it better than you and pocket the difference. And from the math you said it sounds like some of these people are making like 30 grand a day doing this.
- [30:59]
C
Yeah. I mean, a good, a good example also is last year we had an affiliate who was one of the top affiliates for Golden Hippo. And Golden Hippo, you know, owns brands like Beverly Hills MD and Gundry md. And if you look at Golden Hippo, they invested into VSLs, which is essentially advertorials and video format. And they would take these type of funnels and give it to YouTube affiliates and their top YouTube affiliate last year, just on one offer with them and took home $20 million. Right. It's insane. So it's like, you know, I hosted a dinner in Vegas and he flew there on a private jet and flew back out. And I'm like, I'm in the wrong business, but I'm adjacent to it. So, you know, I'm not too unhappy. But it's kind of wild, like the scale that you can access within that, but it's, it's just so. It's very different to what like a lot of brands know to be true within advertising. So the, the appetite to testing is a little, you know, small. But the ones that, you know, do it. There's a lot to gain.
- [32:03]
B
Yeah. From what I've realized, like the brands that get it and know how to dive in kind of like because they know what's to come and, and what the investment looks like. The time horizon looks like those guys crush affiliate. The ones that are like, ah, we'll test it eventually. And then when they test it they test it with a limited budget it and you know, they don't really dive in all the way. They, they fail at the channel because it's not tested. Right. And then they, they'll claim affiliate doesn't work. But I mean, the way that you've described affiliate, we just talked about four different ways to do affiliates and all are very interesting.
- [32:34]
C
Yeah, I, I, I'd say like the, you know, I talked about like just, you know, basic, like fundamental, like understanding when starting an affiliate program. But like this one point, like changes your perspective on affiliate is affiliate is not like a machine like Facebook. It's not like an algorithm. It's not, hey, you, you put in a dollar on this end and hopefully two or three spit out on the other end. With affiliate, you're dealing with people, right? And so when you're working with people, how can you have a relationship conversation and negotiate the right atmosphere, environment for both of you to be successful? But every deal is going to be completely different from like the payout structures to exclusivity, the creative styles. But when you approach it as, you know, people and relationship building, that's really what's going to scale up any partner program, you know, and that can be creators, it can be pr, it can be affiliates, it can be, you know, strategic relationships with athletes, whatever it is, it's all people based.
- [33:33]
B
But yeah, totally. Okay, Aaron, that's all the time we've got for this episode, but I'm going to have you back on. I want to talk all things like attribution. I want to hear about the template of what you email to these affiliates to get them on board. I want to know like, what your rollout looks like for a brand at 10 million versus 50 million versus 200 million in revenue. And so we're going to have you back. We're going to go through all that and I think it's going to be sick. But thank you for coming on this episode. Where can people get in touch with you to learn more on affiliate or ask you questions around, you know, anything that we talked about today?
- [34:09]
C
Sweet. Yeah, you can email me at Aaron at Paul Street P A U L Street S T R E E T CO C O. Or you can just fill in a form on the www.paulstreet.co. but yeah, or you should just hit me on Twitter. Aaron Paulos, P A U L O S But Nick, thank you so much for having me on, man. This was fun.
- [34:31]
B
Thank you. Thanks for listening. We'll be back next time to cut through the noise on cpg, retail and E Commerce.
- [34:37]
A
If you enjoyed this episode, why not.
- [34:39]
B
Share it with a friend?
- [34:40]
A
And be sure to subscribe wherever you.
- [34:41]
B
Listen so you don't miss the next one. Sam.