Affiliate Interview Series Podcast: Recent Episodes
John Wright
We interview affiliates and publishers, anybody in the affiliate marketing landscape to talk about what it takes to make money working for yourself.
Want to get my take on the latest WordPress dramas? I think the problems with Automattic and other companies like WP Engine just won't end well. Regardless of who's right or wrong, this is going to hurt the trust surrounding WordPress that has been built up over the past 2 decades.
When plugins are taken over, this is where I feel people will abandon WordPress as a platform featuring their work could be taken away from them at any moment.
Why should you have a newsletter?
Because Google is basically telling you this.
Own your audience is the main reason but you don't want to let your traffic forget about you either.
This is especially true for casino affiliate sites too.
This episode is inspired by a chat with an affiliate friend who's got a background in data science. He thinks SEO is less stable than it has ever been and the big will only get bigger.
This podcast is brought to you by StatsDrone.
I'm back from ASE 2023, that is Affiliate Summit East in New York City.
This is my 2nd Affiliate Summit and this event surpassed all my expectations. There are some talented people passing through here and it was 2 days of rich conversations about the future of affiliate marketing.
The hot topic both in terms of panels as well as in person discussions was AI. It is here and everyone believes this is a new revolution we are just entering into.
Affiliate marketing, major industry.
If affiliate marketing is worth so many billions, why is one of the most important jobs being filled with people that have almost no qualifications? I'm talking about affiliate managers and affiliate management!
Affiliate manager is definitely a respectable and needed career in the affiliate marketing industry. However there is a problem setting the industry back which is affiliate managers that lack training.
There is a new wave of affiliate managers hitting the floor at the next conference you'll likely be attending. Many of them will have a feverish drive to grab your business card and leave you behind as if they've achieved part of their quota.
In this solocast, I talk about where affiliate managers can get training and tips on how affiliate managers can do their jobs better.
One of the most common questions we get asked by customers before they signup is, how can they trust StatsDrone? Who are the people behind it?
In this episode, I look to address all questions pertaining to trust. In this solocast, I explain why we care about protecting user data.
Where can you review or see reviews about StatsDrone?
https://ca.trustpilot.com/review/statsdrone.com
https://www.capterra.ca/software/1024653/statsdrone
Why did we create StatsDrone?
Listen to our story and journey as affiliate marketers and identifying pain points that were simply not getting solved. In this solocast, John explains what we wanted to achieve in building an app when a few already were on the marketplace.
I've been called the LinkedIn guy before and there are a lot of peers that are better at social media on LinkedIn.
That said I'm going to give you my 3 best tips for getting more followers and engagement on LinkedIn. A quick hint, tip number one is stop posting links inside your posts. If you see people say 'link in comments' there is a reason why they do that.
Oh and be sure to follow Justin Rowe on LinkedIn.
You can follow myself too, look for John Wright.
Mark Terris is the business development manager at AstroPay and is wanting to get more affiliates joining their affiliate program. Why? Simply put, affiliates can earn 2 commissions from a single player when they promote an ewallet like AstroPay.
In this interview, Mark shares insights as to why users and players should care about ewallets like AstroPay.
In this solocast, John Wright, CEO & co-founder of StatsDrone, talks about the fact that there are not many CRM solutions available for affiliate marketers. The ones that are available cover some of the pain points like the StatsDrone stats app.
What's in a good CRM for affiliates?
-collecting affiliate stats
-BI for stats analysis
-note taking
-deal manager (or deal CRM)
-invoice manager & payment tracking
Ryan Knuppel started off as a writing freelancer and has now turned it into a full time content production business with KnupSolutions.com. He shares his best content tips for you to adopt in your content strategy.
Garrett Graff of ReachCreator.com. Today he helps with a case study for SEO strategies for a new site https://onlinebet.com.
You can reach Garrett on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/garrett-graff-5a9b6736/
Jacob Ganten is fresh out of university studying economics. He has a background in data analysis having had experience using R to analyze odds for table tennis. He is an off-page SEO specialist with Ribacka Media. You can reach Jacob on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacob-ganten-215853164/
In this solocast, John talks about one of his favourite topics: conversion rate optimization (CRO).
He discusses how conversion optimization and A/B split testing tools are really a class of BI tools and he looks at how AI heat maps are making it easier to start applying these tools.
This is a solocast with John Wright whom is CEO and co-founder of StatsDrone and has 20 years of affiliate marketing experience.
In this episode, he talks about how security needs to be looked at for both affiliates / publishers and affiliate programs and how fraud impacts us all.
He talks about best practices and what affiliate programs can do to bring affiliate marketing into the future.
It is important to keep your passwords safe and secure. It may be the responsibility of the affiliate for best practices for security, however the affiliate programs are the gatekeepers of data and your payments.
What can you do when an affiliate program software has your accounts compromised?
Listen in, leave a comment if you have a suggestion for how everyone can level up their security game.
Want to know some of the best Business Intelligence tools available to affiliate marketers?
In this episode I talk about a few things.
1. Capturing your data
* Using tools like Nifty Stats, Voonix and StatsDrone)
* Google Analytics (GA) / Google Search Console (GSC)
* Email newsletters (aka checking open and click through rates)
2. BI tools
* Voonix, StatsDrone to analyze campaign data
* CRO & heat maps
* GA / GSC
* Dataviz tools like Tableau and Power BI
Summary
Review your data: affiliate stats & GA / GSC.
Top affiliates look at their financial affiliate data and their traffic data almost daily and you should too.
Craig Campbell is a Glasgow based SEO who's made a name for himself speaking at every big SEO and affiliate marketing conference and putting himself out on YouTube.
Today we chat with Simon Jones who runs investingreviews.co.uk. In this episode we play a game on how many times can we say bingo and how many times I can say 'this is not investing advice'. What is advice is from Simon about setting up affiliate sites and navigating some the rules and regulations in running a finance related website.
In this episode I take the first 5 interviews I've done and taken the best of the best. That is their answers and best tips for new affiliates wanting to get started in affiliate marketing.
The wisdom comes from these 5 people.
- Havard Lehn, Nordic Affiliates
- Markus Jalmerot, CryptoLists.com
- Mike Murphy, BettingUSA.com
- Matt Diggity, The Affiliate Lab
- Paul Puolakka, a branding genius
These are all the important takeaway notes that I got from these 5.1. Self taught affiliate marketing 2. Focus on long-tail (niche) 3. Understand the industry 4. Don’t procrastinate, just do it 5. Finding untapped niches like horse racing & lottery 6. Can work anywhere in affiliate marketing 7. Video is a gateway for new affiliates 8. SEO tools: Ahrefs & Surfer SEO 9. Networking & communities
Oli Baise of olibaisedigital.com is an affiliate marketer and link building expert. In particular, he is a HARO expert which stands for Help A Reporter Out.
His HARO course is available at IMG Courses (this is the Netflix of SEO) and he shares a ton of insight on outreach.
Phil Fraser is former Mr online bingo and is now a business coach with his business sounding board. In this interview he gives a lot of business owners tips on how to be more efficient in your operations and why outside help can give you a fresh look on your work. He can be reached at philfraser.co.uk.
Michael Shackleford is the founder of Wizard of Odds and also runs The Wizard of Vegas site and forum. It was an honour to interview the guy that created the site that I first learned blackjack basic strategy. If you want an expert on gambling, Mike is your guy!
Itay Paz is the founder of The Morning Dough newsletter and the DMIEXPO. Itay is more than a networking guy in the affiliate marketing space, he lives and breathes it by practicing what he preaches by building affiliate websites.
In this episode with Olga Denisova who is VP of digital marketing of Semrush, Olga shares a lot of valuable insights for affiliates on all the SEO tools they need to be successful. She also shares how new and existing affiliates can level up their skills using Semrush as well as new Chat GPT skills to become a better marketer.
I really want to thank Steve Brownlie from Reach Creator for this episode of nearly 50 minutes talking about all sorts of valuable link building strategies. He talks about why links are important, how to do it in a quality way and even on getting the most out of HARO, you know, Help A Reporter Out.
William Armitage is the co-founder of BestOdds.com and also an angel investor. Will knows plenty about startups and understands that any business must add value for the user.
In this episode we dig into the US iGaming space and what it means for affiliates to consider this new space.
Also Benjamin shares his insights that many affiliates don't have a mobile first mentality and they should.
Oliver Mitchell is a true super hero. Through the work of his company iConvert, they are helping the internet become a better place with improved conversions. iConvert helps identify and fix issues through conversion rate optimization (CRO). CRO is one of m personal favourite topics to discuss. If iConvert can help operators convert better, the affiliate community will benefit.
Catie Di Stefano is Director of Community Marketing at OnlineGamblers.com which is a site that is expanding in the US iGaming markets. Catie talks about the shift in marketing mindset from Europe to USA and shares a lot more in her journey from starting as a customer support agent for Betsson to her newly appointed role today.
I asked Graeme a lot of questions on his journey in affiliate marketing. He mentioned how he just started creating websites for hobbies and started making money off of it. He started essentially one of the first rakeback poker affiliate sites before it was even called rakeback! Now he builds sites promoting Amazon books.