David was an Amazon Seller himself and he had a hard time connecting with affiliates. This roadblock inspired David to create Archer Affiliates and he now connects Amazon sellers with influencers, publishers, and affiliates.

Highlight Bullets

> Here’s a glimpse of what you would learn…. 

Here are the 3 action items that Josh identified from this episode:

1. Integrate Affiliate Marketing into Your Overall Strategy:

   Treat affiliate marketing as a core part of your marketing strategy, not just an add-on. This means aligning it with your PPC efforts and overall sales goals, and using platforms like Archer Affiliates to connect with the right influencers and publishers.

2. Set Competitive and Strategic Commission Rates:

   Calculate a competitive commission by combining your Amazon brand referral bonus with your advertising cost of sales (ACoS). This will help you attract quality affiliates by offering them a fair share of the profits.

3. Focus on Audience Alignment When Choosing Affiliates:

   Ensure that the affiliates you choose have audiences that are genuinely interested in your products. Use platforms like Archer Affiliates and social media to find influencers whose audience aligns with your target market.

Special Mention(s):

Related Episode(s):

This episode is brought to you by eComm Breakthrough Consulting where I help seven-figure e-commerce owners grow to eight figures. 

I started Hadley Designs in 2015 and grew it to an eight-figure brand in seven years.

I made mistakes along the way that made the path to eight figures longer. At times I doubted whether our business could even survive and become a real brand. I wish I would have had a guide to help me grow faster and avoid the stumbling blocks.

If you’ve hit a plateau and want to know the next steps to take your business to the next level, then go to www.EcommBreakthrough.com (that’s Ecomm with two M’s) to learn more.

Josh Hadley 00:00:00  Welcome to the Ecomm Breakthrough podcast. I'm your host, Josh Hadley, where I interview the top business leaders in e-commerce. Past guests include Kevin King, Aaron Cordova's and Michael Gerber, author of the E-myth. Today, I am speaking with David Katz of Archer Affiliates, and we're going to be talking about how to create know a no brainer affiliate network to be able to propel your sales on Amazon even further. This episode is brought to you by Ecomm Breakthrough, where I specialize in investing in and scaling seven figure companies to eight figures and beyond. If you're an ambitious e-commerce entrepreneur looking for a partner who can help take your business to the next level, my team and I bring hands on experience, strategic insights, and the resources needed to fuel your growth. So if you or someone you know is ready to scale or looking for an investment partner, reach out to me directly at Josh at Ecomm Breakthrough dot com. That's e-comm with two M's and let's turn your dreams into reality. But today I am super excited to introduce you all to David Katz.

Josh Hadley 00:00:46  David was a former Amazon seller himself and he had a hard time connecting with affiliates. Therefore, this roadblock inspired David to create Archer affiliates, and he now connects Amazon sellers with influencers, publishers, and affiliates. With that introduction, welcome to the show David.

David Katz 00:01:00  Hey, how's it going, Josh? Thanks for having me on, man.

Josh Hadley 00:01:02  David, I'm super excited to have you on the show because, you know, working with affiliates is something I'm actively working on right now, and I'd be very interested to kind of hear your journey as to, you know, what inspired you to create Archer Affiliates. It sounds like you are already trying to do the same thing I'm doing now, which is, you know, looking for affiliates sending outside traffic to your Amazon listing. So give me a little bit more of the background of the genesis of Archer affiliates.

David Katz 00:01:23  Sure. So the, the genesis of Archer affiliates starts in 20, I think it was 2021. it was about January of 2021. I was working with a hair products company.

David Katz 00:01:32  It actually wasn't my brand. I was doing a bunch of marketing consulting for that brand, and it was a it was an Amazon focused brand about, I would say, 60 to 70% of their sales and traffic was through Amazon. The rest was through retail and DTC. And what had happened was it was a pretty decent sized brand, seven figure brands doing pretty well. And one day we woke up and Amazon sales were through the roof absolutely bonkers, like ten x what it was in a normal day, and it was still 9 a.m. eastern time. And US East coasters, no Amazon report cells with the western western time. So it was more Pacific time. So it was pretty it was something was up. Our sales were going through the roof. Nobody did anything. Nobody knew what was going on. We thought we had maybe some like pricing error, pricing mistake and people were buying us out. It was almost like panic. Like, this just doesn't make sense. After some digging in some research, what had happened was pretty remarkable and was the start of my affiliate journey, which is it was right after the movie Spider-Man had came out, and Marisa Tomei, who was in May and Spiderman, had done a video as like a promotion for the movie with Vogue magazine.

David Katz 00:02:27  And the video she was describing her beauty routine, her daily beauty routine, and she was going through like, I don't know, it's probably 7 or 8 different products. About what she uses in her daily beauty routine. Sure enough, one of those products was our little hair product that we're selling on Amazon, which happened totally organically, was super cool in and of itself. that she was using it. It was kind of wild, but the cool part that kind of translated into sales is all these outlets and media publications ran the story that said, hey, check out this $30 hair product that Marisa Tomei is using that will solve your hair problems, cover your hair, or whatever it was. And there was like dozens of these articles across a whole bunch of mass media publications InStyle, Vogue, BuzzFeed, bustle, all these publications were running these articles promoting our product, and it was totally organic. and it was insane. We did a massive amount of sales. And in that 2 to 3 day period, from there, the brand recognized that there is this massive opportunity in general in terms of driving off Amazon traffic to Amazon.

David Katz 00:03:19  So we hired a PR firm. We invested a whole bunch in Google ads, working with publishers, sponsoring different newsletters, different in the, in the beauty space, whatever it may be. Fundamentally, that kind of led to this, this big a lot of work that I did in PR with media publishers and recognized the world of Amazon affiliate. So Amazon affiliate or I should backtrack. What an affiliate means is someone who promotes a product essentially on a commission basis, they get paid an affiliate commission. And what I didn't know at the time, and what I've since learned, is that all these mass media companies, a massive chunk of their revenue is coming from affiliates. So CNN, BuzzFeed, Forbes, NBC, Hearst, they're writing these commerce articles promoting specific Amazon products or really any commerce product across the internet, sending traffic to a particular retailer and in turn earning a commission. Generally speaking, it was from the website or the Shopify site that they're sending traffic to. But in the case of Amazon, it was really interesting.

David Katz 00:04:04  In the case of Amazon, Amazon themselves was funding the commissions on any sales that a publisher or even an influencer was driving to Amazon as part of a program called the Amazon Associates Program. Now, as a seller, I had immediately recognized that I had no idea which publications were sending traffic to my listings, how much traffic they were sending, and most importantly, how to generate more of that traffic and really move the needle in terms of my sales and being able to work with some of these affiliates. And that's kind of where the where Archer spun from Archer was, is designed to solve the issue of, the world of Amazon affiliates being completely siloed away from Amazon sellers, both of them totally not working together, and the opportunity that both sellers and affiliates have when they do work together. So obviously, the first thing, first and foremost, the most important thing that Archer is doing is enabling Amazon sellers to independently offer affiliate commissions to affiliates who can be anyone from micro-influencers all the way to mass media publishers like CNN, BuzzFeed Forbes that we're working with.

David Katz 00:04:57  and then even more fundamentally, really enabling these two parties to connect and build relationships so sellers can communicate to potential affiliates when they're running a promotion, when a product might go out of stock, when a new product from the brain might be launched, whatever it may be, and really enabling both parties to start earning more revenue when it comes to Amazon.

Josh Hadley 00:05:14  Awesome, I love that. Well, I love that it, you know, spun out of like a huge opportunity that happened. And then as you continue down that rabbit hole, it it opened up a whole new, you know, revenue stream for you guys in traffic stream. And that's what I think is going to be that's that's how you can create a moat around your business. Right? We talk about having an IP around your products that, hey, if you have a patent on a product, it can, you know, help you, you know, keep the competition away. Well, likewise, I think driving external traffic can help keep your product ranking well.

Josh Hadley 00:05:41  And that's a that's a moat that your competitors are going to be like, how in the world do these guys stay ranked. They have a higher priced product. Like where like how are they doing this? Because it doesn't seem like they're spending a lot on PPC ads. And the secret could easily be this outside traffic. So David, I'm interested to hear your perspective. Let's take, you know, Archer affiliates off offline for right now. Let's say I'm signed up. And I love this this idea that you're talking about reaching out to these big media publishers and having them promote my products, like how do you go about doing that? What success did you have even before Archer affiliates existed?

David Katz 00:06:15  Sure. So I think I'll break down the answer into two separate, categories. So number one, in general, the strategy will vary, mostly just based on category and price point. Those are two key factors. Strategy will vary based on category, price point, and also how established a product is. More specifically, how much reviews does it have? and that's kind of like really will determine which publishers it would make sense to target, how much budget you need, what the commission should be.

David Katz 00:06:41  Do you maybe need a flat fee, like an upfront cost, to incentivize some of these publishers to work with you? products that are more established publishers are going to always be more inclined to write about and promote. and they might not need some sort of flat fee incentive but it might not always be the case in a more newer product that's just coming to market. And then I want to speak about my personal experience. So we'll start there, actually. Let's speak about what we did at Style Edit or at the hair products brand. so once this article kind of happened, went live and everything, we, we immediately hired a PR agency. I'm going to PR we knew specifically we wanted to target two things. Number one, external traffic. So really anywhere that there's traffic coming from off Amazon to Amazon, we want to go after it at the time. And it still is the case. Amazon has the brand referral bonus program. So anytime we use an attribution link we're getting 10% back from Amazon.

David Katz 00:07:25  We immediately recognized kind of what you touched on, which is that Amazon heavily weights a lot of this traffic. It increases organic green consumer impactful. And we knew we wanted to really invest in lean into bringing off Amazon traffic to Amazon. And that's where we kind of broke it down. So we knew we had we invested a lot in paid ads actually, Facebook, Google, meta, all that type of stuff, using attribution links, just driving it to Amazon simply to break even. And we even lost some money, but we continued running it just to kind of show Amazon that, hey, there's a lot of external traffic or people are coming from off Amazon. And we did see it's hard to put it like a hard metric to it, but we eyeballing it, we did see a pretty good increase in organic ranking from that. The second thing we did, which was much more impactful, was we hired a PR agency. At the time, the idea of hiring a PR agency to promote an Amazon product was almost unheard of.

David Katz 00:08:05  The PR agency actually didn't want to take us on, they said, like, we're used to promoting traffic to DTC or general branding, but we were very sales focused and, still wanted to drive that traffic to Amazon, which was very unique in the, in the space. And what this PR agency did was this priority agency had a lot of contacts, or I should say, relationships directly with editors. At most of these publications, the teams of the people who are in charge of the editors that are in charge of testing products and putting them into stories and creating stories about them, they have really close relationships with PR strategists or PR strategists who are pitching them different things. They know how to pitch them, where to pitch them, what they want to write about. And we hired a really good team of PR people who can pitch a lot of these editors across different publications, which was a pretty good strategy. It wasn't cheap. it's an expensive strategy. but that's kind of what we did in our situation in general kind of what I touched on before.

David Katz 00:08:54  As a brand, once you identify that you do want to focus on affiliate, you really want to break down as to which types of affiliates you want to focus on. So, I would say I would categorize affiliates into like 4 or 5 different areas. So number one, you have your media publishers, which we've been talking about. Number two, you have deal and coupon sites. which is like I don't know if you're familiar with Slickdeals deal newsstand deals. These are websites that literally just post about products that have aggressive promotions and limited time aggressive promotions. And for a lot of sellers, it's a really cool opportunity to drive a ton of external traffic to Amazon. You just have to feature a limited time promo code. send that to the to the Deal site. They feature it on their homepage, or they write an article about this product. It's an unlimited time deal. Boom. You're getting a ton of traffic. then there's the influencer world. For us, that wasn't much of a focus. But for a lot of brands, influencers actually drives meaningful sales and is a huge opportunity.

David Katz 00:09:42  and then there's the world of like, which at the time didn't exist. We were doing this and now it's become it's slowly becoming more of a pretty big opportunity, which is what we call media buyers, media buyers is kind of review sites. I would call them actually. So I don't know if you're familiar with like best reviews, top ten deals. And these are only relevant in very specific product categories. Product product categories, generally with a higher price point, product categories where consumers do a lot of product research and building relationships with these people who are ranking like, here's the top ten air fryers, here's the top ten, air conditioners, humidifiers, whatever it may be. and making sure that your products are featured on top of those lists. we've seen it to be really effective in terms of driving sales. A lot of consumers utilize these websites to do custom research as to which products they should buy. So those those are kind of the different types of affiliates. And for brands, I think it's important to identify what product category am I where how establishes my product, what type of budget do I want to throw at affiliate? And based on that backing, the strategy into which types of affiliates do I want to target? and we can maybe speak about how to target them.

David Katz 00:10:36  But that's first and foremost what I would do as a brand.

Josh Hadley 00:10:39  I love that. So David, let's let's double down on that. Why don't you walk me through like the strategy, that you would recommend setting up. Like what types of products are good candidates versus maybe not? What type of commission should we be paying? What type of budget should we be coming out with, etc.? Like if you wouldn't mind walking through maybe some examples? Sure.

David Katz 00:10:56  So in terms of types of products that do really well, they're like no brainers for affiliate. I kind of touched on before, which is first and foremost higher priced items. So this is actually interesting because in general Amazon's a bottom feeder, right. Lowest price point wins. And traditionally it's Amazon's been really good for products that are low priced. When it comes to affiliate it's actually not so much the case. The idea is that if you're an affiliate, think about it just from an affiliate perspective. If you can earn a small commission, let's just say a 10% 12% commission on a $2,400 item, it's probably a lot more efficient to your revenue to promote that item than promote a product that's 2030 bucks and earn a 3,040% commission.

David Katz 00:11:32  so generally speaking, and this is again, there's a lot of exceptions to this, but generally speaking, the products that are built best for affiliate are in categories that the price point average order value is higher. They're in categories where consumers do one of two things. Either they it's like a lot of spontaneous purchases. So some beauties like that where there's a lot of different brands, but a customer will see it and say, oh, that looks kind of cool, and they're willing to test things out consistently. or a product category, which I mentioned before where they do a lot of consumer research. So again, kind of goes hand in hand with higher price stuff. But mattresses, home and kitchen, air purifiers, humidifiers these are just categories where customers want to really assess their options. What are the different products do, what are different product features. And they do a lot of research around the internet before they make a purchase. This other area where products do really well is products that have a high level of innovation.

David Katz 00:12:17  so we see this in a lot of tech stuff, even a lot of like seasonal items. where and the reason for that is specifically in the area of media publishers, media publishers need to write stuff that's interesting, and they focus on products that are innovative, products that are unique, products that have a cool kind of twist. Seasonal is obviously a falls into that kind of same general discussion. another area of, I mean, generally speaking, like home and kitchen do really well, that's probably our best category of consumer electronics is probably up there. And then products that are aggressively priced, within their category. So doesn't necessarily have to be a low price, but products that are just a low price relative to their subcategories, I should say, do pretty well. And the final thing I would say is, generally speaking, affiliate is always going to have more success and products that are more established. So the opportunity for a brand that's ranked one, 2 or 3in their subcategory is going to be much, much larger than the opportunities for a brand that's newly launched.

David Katz 00:13:08  And the reason for that is its kind of logic, which is, you know, publishers, in order for all this to work, they're earning a commission on generated revenue, right. And they need to ensure that there's a conversion rate. There's no better way of, you know, guessing that a conversion rate will be really high from a publisher's perspective or expecting a high conversion rate. Then by sending traffic to established brands, established products, products with a lot of reviews, products that are ranked really well, it's kind of a good indicator for a publisher that, hey, this product will convert if we send traffic there. So those are just off the top of my head. Some some areas where we definitely see much more success consistently than with others.

Josh Hadley 00:13:40  Is there a particular like commission percentage that you should be targeting, or is it just very on, you know, if you have a $200 product, maybe you only need a 10% commission like you talked about, whereas lower cost $20 items, you're needing higher commissions.

Josh Hadley 00:13:51  What do you see in there?

David Katz 00:13:52  Yeah. the average rate in the network right now I think is just over 20%. I think a lot of that is fueled by the brand referral bonus. So sellers are earning that 8 to 11% depending on their category back from Amazon. and flipping that and, you know, funding that to the publishers and really only paying about 10% out of pocket. So that's kind of where we see the average. it definitely is true that as you kind of get higher up in the, in the prices, the necessary commission rate that a publisher will be willing to work with you at is definitely lower. that being said, I mean, the more it's just logic, the more you can offer, the more incentivized publishers are going to be, the more publishers are going to want to work with you. And even the ones that work with you, the more aggressive they're going to want to be to push that item.

Josh Hadley 00:14:35  Yeah, makes a lot of sense. And I even think if business owners approach it this way, what if you can just break even on those sales that are generated from an affiliate? Right.

Josh Hadley 00:14:44  The if especially if you're. It's one thing if you're sending it to your own DTC website, like you obviously need to make a profit, but if you're sending it to Amazon, it's helping boost that Amazon flywheel, right. And so you almost say, all right, I'm going to break even on these affiliate sales. But I know that's going to lead to more organic ranking and sales. And that's take it as like part of your PPC strategy. Right? I think all of us like know that like, hey, I'll keep spending, you know, till break even on PPC ads in order to support my organic ranking. So I think that's kind of like a mindset shift that people can have there. David, I want to go down into, you know, how do you reach out and partner with these different affiliates, right. Because I do think that, you know, there's there's a few different players in the space right now. You have Levanta, you have Archer affiliates, there's the Perch Plus program.

Josh Hadley 00:15:28  There's been a number of of programs that Amazon sellers can get into where they will, you know, you're on their platform and figuratively. They have a bunch of influencers, media buyers, deal sites and stuff that can promote your products. But I think the secret is not just like, hey, I listed my products on Levanta, Archer affiliates and Merch Plus like there's more to it. So I'm curious to hear from your perspective, like David, how would you recommend Amazon sellers like do a little bit more hustle than just putting their products and listing them on Archer affiliates?

David Katz 00:15:57  good question. well, first off, just last point before I answer this question to your last point, one strategy that we've we've really encouraged sellers to think about when setting their commission is, back into two factors. Number one, that brand referral bonus really identify what Amazon's paying paying you out as a seller on on external traffic sales and attribution sales, which is generally about 10%. And number two, like you touched on, figure out what your ACOs is.

David Katz 00:16:20  And what we tell sellers is add those two numbers together. So if you're earning 10% from Amazon, you're at 20%. You should probably be offering a 30% commission to affiliates. it's a pretty aggressive rate. It will drive a lot of sales, generally speaking. And like you kind of said, it's just it's all top, top of funnel sales. It's all top level is not going to separate from your PPC. It's going to be incremental sales. and that's just kind of a strategy that we've really used to to help sellers identify what commission they should be offering out of the gate back to your to your question in terms of what sellers should do. so it depends. I mean, the two factors that there's the biggest factor that and we kind of touched on this from different angles. But the biggest factor that's always going to to going to be there for sellers is what does my product affiliate fit look like? Meaning regardless of the network, regardless of who you're reaching out to, the first thing affiliates always look for is, well, my audience be interested in this product.

David Katz 00:17:07  A seller could be offering a 90% commission on a product. If it's a no relevance to that to their audience, they're not going to be interested in promoting it. Once you get past that. I would say there's two key factors. So number one is, number one is what's the commission offer. Obviously the higher the more exciting the better. If one thing we've seen is brands that, you know, want to get really aggressive and stand out, remember, most of these publishers, especially the ones that are effective, are literally getting hundreds, if not thousands of requests per day. there's people at the publishers whose job is to deal with these requests. So if the offer is good, they generally get dealt with. But there's a lot of, you know, requests coming in. So you want yours to stand out. And for brands that want to get extra aggressive. What we've seen is them just offering upfront budget to for, for, especially on the media publisher or the media buyer side when media buyers are investing their money to earn the commissions, if you can come to them and say, hey, here's $5,000, you guys take this go spend against my product with this budget.

David Katz 00:17:56  And then after that, we can work at just the commission rate. That's kind of a strategy. It's very aggressive. Very few brands are actually leaning into that and doing it. But it is effective in terms of just getting attention from some of these affiliates, kind of incentivizing them not just with commissions, but with some sort of upfront bonus. and then I would say the other key factor is promotions. and again, this is true for sure, with dueling coupon sites, which has been really effective in driving volume. but even with media publishers and sometimes media buyers, not so much, but sometimes, offering some sort of aggressive promotion, whether it's a promo code on page coupon, even a subscribe and save on page coupon, just they need anything back to our conversion conversation. They need anything that will increase conversion to a product with a lot of reviews. Product is ranked well, the product that's trending or a promo code. All these things are going to increase conversion, which is the most important thing for them.

David Katz 00:18:41  This is their bread and butter. If they don't have conversion, they have nothing, regardless of what your commission offers.

Josh Hadley 00:18:45  Yeah, makes a lot of sense. How do you recommend reaching out to them then? Is my question how do you find them? How do you make sure you're reaching out to the right person?

David Katz 00:18:53  Oh, I'm still trying to figure that out myself. I would say the best means right now is through the networks, through Archer, through Levanta. you know, we've we've both I think both of our companies have kind of done the dirty work in terms of really identifying who these people are and pitching them on attribution and whatnot. And I think from a brand perspective, leaning into the work that's already been done is probably going to be the most effective. generally, I mean, there's some cool stuff that we've done to, like, especially with influencers, you can we backed into and brands can do this where you kind of, like back into, different hashtags on YouTube and Instagram.

David Katz 00:19:32  like Amazon finds, Amazon beauty hacks, all these Amazon related terms. And we've used that to back into influencers that are specifically promoting Amazon products and then reached out to those creators and brought them on to the platform. When it comes to media publishers, I think most of the opportunity, unless you're like a really large brand, most of the opportunity is going to be on a network. Like I mentioned before, these publishers are dealing with hundreds, if not thousands of requests, and they want to, roll those requests together as much as possible and just create a lot less work for them. So by then, working through a network, the advantage of a network is we can go to a USA today and Us Weekly, any of these publishers and say, hey, instead of, you know, you're getting a thousand requests from brands and then having to send you attribution links, and then you're having to go get the data and build them for the sales. The advantage of a network is we're working with 3000 brands.

David Katz 00:20:13  You can sign up to our network, we'll handle all the billing, will handle all the attribution link creation. You'll have one centralized spot where brands can communicate with you. Brands can reach out to you. all that can happen. And generally speaking, that's the value added for publishers. So I would say that most of the time there's exceptions, especially with some larger brands maybe. But most of the time, the, the that's the value of a network is that we make it really easy for brands to identify who the affiliates are that are promoting Amazon products. Seamless way to reach out to them, and it makes it easier for the publisher by working through a network that you know they don't have to chase after you for money, they don't have to chase after you for data of what an attribution link did, how it performed, and all that.

Josh Hadley 00:20:51  Yeah. So is there a way that you can reach out and contact these bigger publishers, like USA today through Archer affiliates, then to try to get at least awareness of your brand? Because I think the great thing, like you said, is like, you guys have already kind of brought on a bunch of influencers, you've brought on a bunch of media, publishers.

Josh Hadley 00:21:08  That's great. But now I'm swimming amongst 3000 other brands that are on the platform. How do I make sure I actually get attention or my products get seen? Or if I'm running a specific deal, how can I get that in front of BuzzFeed or something like that?

David Katz 00:21:21  Good question. So on the Archer platform, the way we've built the network, and this is different than most traditional networks, but the way we've built the network is that, the publishers are the ones that have to take initiation to reach out to you. So they have to request a product sample. They have to request a promo code. Once they do that, or if they create a link, then you as a brand have the ability to connect with them and communicate with them. some other networks are different, but that's kind of how we built our network. The, the way to get in front of them, I would say, if that doesn't happen, is create that promo code. that promo codes in general are the best way in terms of like popping a product up in our, portal where publishers do product discovery and identify products that they want to promote.

David Katz 00:21:58  So that that's been the most effective strategy, I would say, and making sure that publishers see the product.

Josh Hadley 00:22:03  All right. So you recommend, if you're on Archer affiliates, create promo codes for your products. And that will there's something in your algorithm that pushes us up to the top then.

David Katz 00:22:10  Exactly.

Josh Hadley 00:22:11  Okay. What else. Anything else that high commission can do.

David Katz 00:22:14  High commissions. Yeah. and then seasonal stuff. anything if you have products that are centered around seasonal stuff, you know, holidays, seasons like summer, winter, those, those we tend to, you know, bump to the top as well.

Josh Hadley 00:22:29  Do you recommend, like adding the seasonal products like when it comes close to that time of year? Is there something of like newness to the platform? Like, what if I upload a Christmas card back in, you know, October of last year? Is that Christmas card going to be seen again this coming year, or do I have to, like, remove it, put it back up?

David Katz 00:22:46  No, you don't have to remove it.

David Katz 00:22:47  Put it back up. It definitely gets seen. We always encourage sellers to you can reach out to to the Archer team and forward Archer affiliates and just, you know, say, hey, we want to we have these seasonal items. We'd love to know if we can do a push that doesn't hurt. but generally speaking, we pick up on that. We're focused on on all those kind of product areas that we discussed, you know, seasonal items, items with deals, items with high commission offers, trending products, anything trending on TikTok? again, these are all conversion, you know, areas where we've seen an increased conversion and that's that's what publishers are looking for.

Josh Hadley 00:23:14  Yeah, yeah. No makes makes a lot of sense. What other advice would you have to an Amazon brand owner like myself and others that want to get in front of more affiliates? How do I get, you know, obviously getting on the platforms. Any other ideas or recommendations would you recommend getting a PR agency, and if so, at what point, is it worth reaching out to USA today, you know, on your own? And if so, who am I reaching out to?

David Katz 00:23:38  A good question.

David Katz 00:23:40  I don't have an answer coming to the top of my head in terms of, like, additional strategies than what we discussed in terms of hiring a PR agency, I think it's important. if you're a new brand and you're launching a lot of new products, it can be an interesting move. They're expensive. So I would say it depends on the category. It depends on how aggressive you want to be. It depends on what you're trying to do. They're probably not going to be profitable. It's really a brand awareness play in terms of getting traction. The idea is always that when you're a new product. Again, back to the conversion conversation. Publishers are just getting a lot of requests, and they're going to want to probably be more inclined to promote products that have already some sales history on Amazon or some awareness within their audience. so anything that you can do to kind of incentivize and move that needle with some of these, publishers, such as getting a PR agency who already has relationships with some of these publishers, or the flat fee thing that we spoke about, like a budget upfront, is going to be effective.

David Katz 00:24:31  But again, it depends. I don't I don't think that generally speaking, when you're launching an Amazon brand, affiliate should be, you know, a big focus out of the gate. I think the, the, the focus, affiliate should be more focused on which product is more established and kind of bringing a product from level five to level ten, not level one to level five.

Josh Hadley 00:24:49  Interesting. Okay. That makes a lot of sense when you've done upfront payments for publishers or influencers, what's the kind of the going rate that you've seen for like an upfront like, hey, will you post about this product in addition to commission? Have you seen any averages there or give us?

David Katz 00:25:04  It varies. it's it's it's there's no hard number there. It varies tremendously. And some are good value in terms of like being effective and you know, actually driving sales. Some are totally not. Some are very expensive and don't drive any sales, some or somewhere in the middle. it varies tremendously based on the publisher, based on even within a publisher where they're going to feature their content, how they're going to feature their content.

David Katz 00:25:27  It's seasonal. Also, obviously during Q4, these the kind of going rate, increases. So there's no hard, hard number there, unfortunately.

Josh Hadley 00:25:37  Yeah, okay. That makes a lot of sense. And then is there any particular like media publishers that you would recommend. Like these guys always perform really well or is it just very niche dependent.

David Katz 00:25:47  Very category dependent. category dependent, price point dependent. It's. Yeah, it's very different.

Josh Hadley 00:25:54  Two variables. Yeah. Lots of variables. what about for PR agencies? I know you guys had a lot of experience with that. Are there any recommended PR agencies if you know bigger sellers that want to dive in a little bit further on that, do you have any that come to the top of your mind that would be good fits for Amazon sellers?

David Katz 00:26:11  I don't it's a good question. no, I don't I would say that where we've seen the most success, though in general I have I don't have a lot of experience with PR agencies. The few that I do were it's kind of becoming a theme in this conversation, but very category specific.

David Katz 00:26:25  So like a PR agency specialized in beauty. And the reason for that, I would think, is because a lot of these, a lot of the again, when you're hiring a PR agency, really hiring them for the relationships, right? They have relationships with editors. They can influence an editor as to what to post. They're taking editors out to dinner, taking them out to lunch, giving them holiday gifts. So there's there's has a lot to do with it. So I think if you're like a beauty brand and you hire a beauty focused PR agency who's targeting beauty editors, it's probably a good idea more than just the general PR agency. but I don't have a massive amount of experience working with PR agencies. Generally. Archer is working more with commerce teams at some of these publications. So like a lot of the the people who are in charge of bringing revenue, a lot of the crows and stuff like that, not necessarily the editors. And there's at some of these publications, a pretty big separation between the two teams.

David Katz 00:27:12  So some not so much. I mean, you have much more access to editors, some no access to editors at all. So it's a big variety there. But I don't have, trying to think I don't have a particular PR agency I would recommend. I would say tread with caution. It is very expensive, and there is a lot of ineffective PR agencies out there

Josh Hadley 00:27:32  Yeah. So I guess this kind of brings it back kind of full scope here, which is you know a lot of this is very category dependent. Right. And you're just going to have to go in and test things out. It sounds like. So David I'd love to for you to maybe like wrap things up based on your in-depth experience here, working with affiliates, being an Amazon seller yourself, what would you recommend? Maybe some basic steps are step one, step two, step three. For a brand that's new to affiliates, that likes what we're talking about, but they have no idea, you know where to get started with what would be kind of your recommendations to get going?

David Katz 00:28:05  Got it.

David Katz 00:28:05  yeah. I mean, first and foremost, no bias here, but obviously sign up to Archer. the kind of the idea of how we built our network and this wasn't true from day one, but how our network is today is that we are fully performance based. So what that means is we don't have any upfront fees, we don't have any monthly fees, we have no setup fees, no commitments. And we've done this specifically for because of the understanding that, you know, we understand that Amazon, this whole space for Amazon sellers is really new. And we don't want them to have a massive upfront cost to find out that, hey, this product category is not good for affiliate or it's not working or whatever it may be in. The second reason we do that is we really trying to build a network as big as possible and include as many products as possible so we can bring our offers to to more publishers as we increase our product catalog. The publishers that are willing to work with us increase just because the revenue opportunity for them increases.

David Katz 00:28:49  So, there's really no risk to to working with our network. There's no upfront fees, no monthly fees. And what we generally tell sellers is set a base level commission back to what we said before, probably somewhere around your whatever your ACOs is, plus what you're going to be earning back from Amazon with that brand referral bonus. See what happens if you start getting traction, then you probably know there's more here. We can start getting, you know, really strategic with the rates, bump them up during peak season to offer build some relationships with affiliates who are already doing well, and see if you can maybe offer them an additional 5% commission. And how much more can they increase? See if you can offer them some limited time promotions and maybe they can rerun certain stories. you know, different strategies like that. But I think the idea of what we're doing here is making this a no brainer for brands, even if it's not a huge if affiliates, just not a huge opportunity for your product category and it's not massive.

David Katz 00:29:32  There's no reason you shouldn't be signed up. And even if it brings a few thousand dollars of sales, you know it boosts up your top level sales by 5% monthly. It doesn't hurt. It's there's no risk here. You're not paying for a click. You're not paying for an impression that you're paying for a sale. You're literally buying sales with affiliate, which is a beautiful thing.

Josh Hadley 00:29:47  Yeah, David, I love that kind of that that summary there. So as we wrap things up, I'd love to leave the audience with three actionable takeaways. So here are the three action actionable takeaways that I noted. Let me know if you think I'm missing something here, David. But number one, your recommendation was, hey, just get going on some of these affiliate network platforms, right? I mentioned you have like a perch, plus you have Lavonte and obviously David, you're a big fan of Archer affiliates. So you've got a few of them that you can choose from. But as you mentioned, the great part about some of these platforms is that they're not going to charge you up front to just list your products.

Josh Hadley 00:30:18  Like you can just test it out and say, I'm going to upload my full catalog, do a decently high commission, and then let's just see. And so that's kind of my action item number one is just get on to these networks and just see give yourself a generous, you know, commission rate. You don't have to pay that unless somebody actually generates a sale. And the nice part about this, too, I think, is that you're already doing all the technical aspects of pulling somebody's brand attribution link. And so, like, there's no additional overhead work that you have to say, all right, affiliate, let me go get my brand referral bonus link. Please make sure you use this link and only this link like you're the people working through Archer affiliates and these other platforms. They know the game. They know they got to get the links if they want the extra commission percentages. Action item number two is once you start to see if somebody starts generating sales or they request samples or they're requesting promo codes, that's your time to open up those conversations.

Josh Hadley 00:31:08  And my recommendation is to double down on those relationships, build a true relationship with these media publishers or these influencers, whoever's you know, wanting to pitch your products like, don't just see this as like, oh, everything's going to be handled by the platform. I promise you, the people that will win at the end of the day are going to be the people that put forth the extra effort to actually maybe take that conversation offline, jump on a phone, call with them and say, hey, what else can we do to further this relationship? I've got new product launches. Can I get maybe something custom made for you guys? What fits? you know, your audience. So that's actually item number two. And our final third action item is, you know, if you have the extra funds and you really want to go all in on this strategy, I think testing out a media or a PR agency to really double down on things. I mean, that's kind of where you got started. David was like, you saw the success of an affiliate.

Josh Hadley 00:31:55  You're like, how do we do more of this? Let's get an agency now. It's not going to be cheap, as you mentioned, but I think the juice can be worth the squeeze. and I do believe that this can become a strong defensive moat around a product that might not have a lot of IP protection. This can be your your brand defense to maintain your ranking, even though you have a lot of cheap overseas competitors trying to compete with you. So David, anything else that you feel like I missed here?

David Katz 00:32:17  that was awesome. That was spot on. I would I have one question for you, Josh, which is, I mean, your brand has been on, on our network for, for quite some time, and it seems like you've been doing a bunch of different stuff in affiliates. So, I mean any strategies or touch points that that we missed which or tips that we missed, which you've seen success with, with your brand in terms of affiliate and connecting with some of these creators?

Josh Hadley 00:32:36  Yeah, I think my biggest thing is like we we give out anybody that requests a sample gets a sample.

Josh Hadley 00:32:41  And that has kind of been our mantra, even though, like, what's funny is like some of the micro-influencers, even the ones that we're like are I don't know if it fits your audience or your vibe very well. Those are the ones that actually end up creating like a viral video or a viral post about the product. And it's like, well, that's I wouldn't have ever pegged that. And so I think that's the hard game about these is like, you can't be overly, you know, you can't have a set amount of criteria. That's like you have to have X followers. You have to have, you know, this type of vibe. I mean, audience does make a difference. Like, I'm not going to somebody that's talking about, I don't know, automotive parts probably not a good, you know, product market fit. so there's there's kind of low level things, but they're probably also not going to request a sample. So my biggest recommendation definitely stems from like anybody that wants a sample I'll give you a sample.

David Katz 00:33:22  It's interesting I know one thing, one thing I'm starting to see as a trend, both when you gave that summary and now your answer is, and in hindsight, this I think has been true across the network is, most of the brands that are successful are not overthinking the strategy, really just throwing a bunch of shit at the wall like you kind of said, just list your products, set up the conditions and then see what happens, see what works, and just lean into that. Send everyone a sample. Go. Like this whole space is really so new and it's very unclear what's working, where the full opportunity is or what what the full opportunity is. It's just clearly something's here kind of go widespread with their approach. Get something set up and slowly like throw shit at the wall, see what works, see what sticks, and then back into that as a real strategy.

Josh Hadley 00:33:57  Yeah, yeah. No, I love that idea. So that would be those are some great takeaways. I love that strategy, even though it's a strategy of just see what sticks and then double down on it.

David Katz 00:34:06  Exactly.

Josh Hadley 00:34:07  So that's great. David, for the final three questions of the podcast, what has been the most influential book that you've read and why?

David Katz 00:34:13  Oh good question. So not much of a reader, I would say two books that stand out. Jordan Peterson has had a huge impact on my life. I know this sounds like a cliche 20 year old, but what are you going to do? 12 rules for 12 rules for life and 12 more rules for life definitely had a huge impact in my life. I think that was that's for sure. But that stands out. And then, The subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck by, Mark Mason was an incredible book. I thought that was awesome. And why I would say, specifically the latter. It's, you know, a lot of times I feel like, especially in, like, starting a business and working, we, we get so focused on, like, you know, the day to day and the intensity of that. And then sometimes just, you know, zooming out and realizing the bigger picture, not being so stressed out and taking a deep breath is as important.

David Katz 00:34:57  Yeah.

Josh Hadley 00:34:57  I love those are great recommendations. And, I really enjoy Jordan Peterson stuff, so I do that.

David Katz 00:35:02  All right.

Josh Hadley 00:35:03  Question number two. What's been your favorite AI tool that you're using?

David Katz 00:35:06  I rarely send out an email without using ChatGPT. So I would say ChatGPT specifically to write emails. actually two things that I used to do before. So number one, specifically to, to, to write emails. I usually draft up an email, put it back into ChatGPT, ChatGPT, spit it back out. Then I edit it and send it almost every email. The second way I use ChatGPT is ChatGPT. For the past six months or so has been my new personal trainer and we have. I use it for all my workout plans. it's been going pretty good. I've had a pretty good summer in terms of workouts. Yeah.

David Katz 00:35:37  I like.

Josh Hadley 00:35:37  It good. Well, we'll have to bring you back on a year from now and see the transformation. So see how good of a trainer ChatGPT is.

Josh Hadley 00:35:45  all right, final question. Who is somebody that you admire or respect the most in the e-commerce space that other people should be following and why? Oh.

David Katz 00:35:50  Good question. I have some personal mentors that I respect, a whole lot. I don't know if they're public figures, but I think some of the people I respect most of the quietest ones, the ones not on social media, the ones and the ones that have built awesome businesses. they're super humble about it. I think that's probably been the coolest part of, being a transitioning from the, Amazon seller side to the service provider side has just been the ability to have conversations. And even if it's a sales pitch talk with some sellers. and some of these people are I'm sure you've had the opportunity to speak a lot of them in your podcast and, they're awesome. Like the people that are that you don't hear about on LinkedIn, the people that are quiet, operating in the background. You probably never heard of the brand, but they're killing it.

David Katz 00:36:32  Doing like 100 million plus, have been really cool. And I think the other really cool experience, for myself, has been I've had the opportunity to go to China now three times in the past year to meet with Chinese sellers in, Amazon sellers in China. And that's been fascinating and super eye opening to see the cultural differences, how they run businesses and how advanced they are in terms of their, their Amazon strategies. And just the scale of what they're doing is remarkable.

Josh Hadley 00:36:57  Very cool. And the best way to to find these people, right, is by networking, coming to the events, going to $1 billion seller summit, going to accelerate, go into innovate, go into all the different meetups. And that's where you meet, wicked smart people like this. So for sure, David, this has been awesome. If people want to follow you, they want to learn more. where could they do so?

David Katz 00:37:15  David Katz on LinkedIn. That's where most active.

Josh Hadley 00:37:18  Awesome, great. David, thanks for taking your time out of your day to join us on the podcast.

David Katz 00:37:21  Josh, thanks a lot for having me on. It's been awesome.