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Welcome to another edition of the Always Be Testing podcast with your 

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host, Ty De Grange. Get a guided tour of the world of growth, performance 

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marketing, customer acquisition, paid media, and affiliate marketing. 

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We talk with industry experts and discuss experiments and their learnings in growth, 

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marketing, and life. Time to nerd out, check your biases at the door, and 

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have some fun talking about data driven growth and lessons learned. 

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Hello. Welcome to the Always Be Testing podcast. I'm your host, Ty 

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DeGrange. I am thrilled today to have Trisha Meyer. She 

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is a affiliate legend and excited to dive into all things affiliate 

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PMA, her background. Welcome. Welcome, Tricia. Thank you so much. Thanks for having 

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me. I'm ready to talk as usual. 

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There's there's no shortage of things going on in the affiliate industry, and, I'd 

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love to just maybe kick off a little bit about yourself and your and your background, kind of 

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current role. I know there's a lot of questions I wanna ask you because you've been in the space longer, 

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and have been involved in some really pivotal moments in performance marketing. And maybe just maybe start off 

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with what you're working on right now and focus on at the moment. Sure. So I actually started as 

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a lawyer. I went to law school, took the bar in Indiana, and luckily 

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passed on the first try. Became an attorney and was working for LexisNexis, 

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which is, like, legal news and information, and it was at a really pivotal 

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time in legal research because it was going from the old school of having to go to the library and 

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look up everything in a book to being able to go on this thing called the Internet and put in a 

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search and be able to just search whatever you want. So it was really it was a 

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completely new time for legal research, and for me, it meant learning how to do everything I'd learned in law 

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school, how to do it on the computer, which then kind of led to, oh, well, if I can do legal research on the research 

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on the computer, what else can I do on the computer? And then from there, it was just a weird kind of 

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slide into affiliate marketing. Started off, I had just had my kids, and so they were, like, 

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two and four maybe at the time, and I was looking for things to do while they were at home. And 

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so I started a blog. It was before, I think, WordPress even existed, so I was just, like, hand 

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coding HTML back then, that was just called helping moms connect. And I was 

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looking around at all these other mom sites, and they had all these great brand 

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names on them, like, sponsored by Target. And I was like, how does this little bitty 

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blog with almost no following, how did they get sponsored by Target? So I 

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started going to, like, local places around me asking if they wanted to sponsor this website of 

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mine, and they're all like, no. We're why would we wanna do that? Everybody that reads your blog lives 

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in another city or another country, So why would we wanna sponsor you? And so I thought, okay. 

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I'm clearly missing something here because these other people who also have little bobs like 

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mine are getting sponsored by these huge companies. So my husband is in IT, and 

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he helped me install a little tracker where I could click on all these people's links 

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and then see what happened to them between the time I clicked on the link and I got to Target or 

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Walmart or whatever. And lo and behold, I found be free network. And then it was like, oh, and then there's 

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CJ, and then there's, you know, all of these other link share. And I started finding all these networks, 

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and it was like, oh, affiliate marketing. Okay. I have no idea what that 

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means. So, of course, no one really knew what affiliate marketing was. 

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A history of affiliate marketing. Yeah. And so I ended up just stumbling in. 

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Like, I I found those links and I started searching, like, what does that mean? What does affiliate marketing 

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mean? And I found the BestWeb forum, and that was, like, being thrown into the 

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fire, to learn affiliate marketing. And then I went to an affiliate summit because they told me that's 

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what I should do. And within, oh, six months of going to my first affiliate summit, 

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I quit my job as a lawyer and just started doing affiliate marketing full time. So I've 

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never really looked back except that I always missed the law. And so 

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after doing just kind of straight, really, affiliate marketing for 10:12 years on the 

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publisher side, I started getting involved with the PMA, fifteen years ago when it first 

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started, and then that gave me a chance to start looking at, well, how does my 

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legal knowledge overlap with what I do as an affiliate? And it turned out that there's really a lot of that 

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because there's so many regulatory and compliance issues, and there are so few affiliate 

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marketers that understand those things. And, you know, we as lawyers tend to talk legal jargon. 

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I've kinda found my space trying to bridge that gap between the people that do affiliate marketing all the 

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time. I just wanna know how does this apply to me and the legal side of it, which is a little bit more 

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technical and tricky. Wow. That that's amazing. What what maybe an interesting 

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question is kind of like, what's a legal area that people in affiliate marketing get 

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wrong? What's a legal area that's, like, underutilized or 

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underrated to be focused on it? And something people need to be really mindful of. I mean, for me 

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right now, the biggest legal issue is obviously the FTC disclosure stuff. 

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That's kind of the place where we know that there are clear laws, 

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and now we've been given clear guidelines, but still people don't quite understand on a day to 

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day basis how it applies to them. And it's the thing from a legal standpoint 

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that kind of applies to all of us equally that we all need to understand. Yeah. 

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And and maybe, like, helping people understand what went down. I know you and I have talked 

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about it, but what happened, and and what's going on with the FTC's guidelines and rulings lately? 

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So the FTC, we've always had, like, this law, and that is basically this 

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you know, you have to tell the truth in advertising. And it's just it's always been, like, a very 

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specific law without a lot of examples. And over the last, you know, twenty years, 

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the FTC has given us more and more examples in different ways of how that applies to 

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affiliate marketing, how it applies to influencer marketing, and we were left kind of piecing some things 

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together. We were piecing together lawsuits and settlement agreements and frequently 

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asked questions and Twitter chats with the FTC and kind of, I won't say making up our 

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own guidelines, but kind of making up our own best practices and saying, well, this is what they said. 

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This is probably what that means for us. But just recently, the FTC has now come out 

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and said, okay, we're gonna make this super clear. Affiliates, this applies to you. 

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Influencers, this applies to you. Affiliate managers, this applies to you. And 

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so what they've done now is really clearly delineate. It does apply to us. 

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We're all responsible. We all play a very specific role in it, and there will be 

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ramifications for those of us who don't do what we're supposed to do. Yeah. It seems like they have upped 

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the ante on the clarity and the severity of the FTC guidelines from what 

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it seems. Yeah. They've just made it very clear now. You know, they they had not really used the 

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words influencer and affiliate before in the guidelines, and now they're using them a lot. 

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They're giving us very specific examples about if you do a blog, if you, do a 

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video, if you are promoting as an affiliate, if you're promoting as an influencer. And then they also 

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started talking about intermediaries, which they don't use our terminology, 

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but what they explained was affiliate manager, outsource program manager, agency, 

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those kinds of things. And, you know, what they were saying was that if you are this middleman 

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between a retailer and a publisher and you play any part in recruiting 

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these influencers and publishers, giving them links, negotiating the contracts, If 

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you play any kind of role like that, you're now just as responsible for 

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the disclosures as what the retailers and the publishers are. Yeah. For those following at 

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home, affiliates and influencers need to disclose they're getting payment, receiving 

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a commission from a brand or an advertiser. And what 

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used to be allowable is is, in some cases, not, and the clarity needs to be 

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there. And there's a lot of specific legal language and definitions. It 

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has to be what? Unavoidable. Right? Right. That's their big new thing. In the past, they always said 

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clear and conspicuous, and people still found a way to get around that. They would say, well, 

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it was clear and conspicuous. You just had to read to the bottom of the post in order to see it. Well, that 

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doesn't count because people don't read to the bottom of the post. People don't watch till the very end of the video. 

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People don't click to read all of the comments on videos. So they said, okay. We're gonna change it. We're gonna 

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say unavoidable. Unavoidable means just that. You cannot watch a video. You 

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can't read a review. You can't look at a sponsored image Yeah. Without seeing that disclosure. 

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And maybe jumping to kind of the next phase of this. Right? So where everyone's 

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making sense of it. They're getting counsel from you. They're getting counsel from legal experts. They're getting 

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counsel from affiliate leaders. Where do you think we're gonna land on the 

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FTC ruling? Like, you've written up some really clear, helpful 

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material. How do you think it really, like, just materially impacts the the 

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advertiser or the agency, the influencer? I think we're gonna see more procedures 

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put into place by the retailers and by the agencies where there's a lot 

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more documentation going on, you know, whether it's using databases or spreadsheets or 

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whatever it takes for them to be able to start documenting. This is the education that we gave 

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the influencers. This is what we include in all of our standard contracts. This is how we 

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monitored. We probably will see some letters coming out from the 

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FTC before too long of people that are not in compliance. They'll probably go after a few big 

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guys just to say, hey. We put out these guidelines for a reason. Yeah. And now we're gonna 

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send you some letters, and then they will publish that stuff on their website. And then all the rest of us will go and read that, 

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And we'll say, okay. Well, now we know that this really is happening, and there's money at stake here 

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and legal fees and things like that. So I think it's just a matter of time. I think they're giving everybody 

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just a little bit of time to get used to the new guidelines, but, you know, they wouldn't 

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have put them in place if they didn't think there were problems. Yeah. Absolutely. And then 

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maybe looking back over time with the FTC and disclosure for affiliates and 

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with influencers, How's it like, maybe just cutting to the chase of, like, how severe 

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has it gotten? Like, what are some of the penalties have you seen in this space where big brands have 

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had their, you know, their wrist slapped and they've had to make corrections or they've been fined? Like, 

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what kind of things can happen if you're out of compliance in your legal and affiliate 

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experience? I mean, just from the start, you're gonna have to hire an attorney. So you're gonna be out your legal fees. 

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You know, probably even if you did nothing wrong or if you were in the gray area, you're gonna have to hire an attorney for 

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that. Then you could be sanctioned, so there could be tens of thousands of dollars in fees 

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that you have to pay per occurrence. So if you're a retailer and you worked with 

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twenty five influencers and none of them did their disclosures, you're gonna get fined for every one of those. If you're 

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an influencer who repeatedly does it, you could get fined for every one of those. And, 

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also, you know, we've seen, like, with with a lawsuit with Legacy Learning Systems, which was a retailer 

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that was paying affiliates and the affiliate wasn't disclosing it. There was also just a lot of 

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red tape put into place then for the retailer saying, you know, well, going forward, you are gonna 

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have to do this, this, this. You're gonna have to comply with this. You're gonna have to start keeping all these records. You're gonna 

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have to notify us of any changes of address with your company. You're gonna have to notify us of other things. 

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So, you know, once you get in trouble, then they're also watching you more closely going forward, a 

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lot more scrutiny, and just a lot more administrative work for you to do as well. Yeah. Have 

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you got a sense that brand rarity and impact and other technologies that are already 

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monitoring can are thinking about this or may have some 

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type of solutions in place to address some of this stuff? I think that they're trying to make 

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it a little bit easier. I've seen a number of solutions technological solutions where they're trying to 

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make it easier if people are using specific terminology. So they 

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are able to look for certain words. I've seen somewhere they can read images in 

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case you're using images for your disclosure that they can also read the text on that image to make sure that you're 

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disclosing properly. So I think those kind of technical tools are 

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going to be necessary, especially for big brands that work with a lot 

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of different types of endorsers. When they say endorsers, I mean, they're talking about everything. They're talking about 

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the influencers on social media. They're talking about the bloggers that are doing, 

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top ten list of things. They're talking about the product review and comparison sites. They're talking about this 

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whole realm. So, you know, it's not just so easy to say, well, we just won't work with influencers anymore. 

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Well, we just won't work with, you know, the this type of affiliates. That's not gonna help because you'd be 

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missing out on so many opportunities. Anyone who's getting compensated. Exactly. 

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Yeah. So it applies to, you know, it applies to all media. They're just giving us more specific 

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examples now because we are a newer medium, and so they're giving us, 

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you know, some more specific examples. And in the scenario where 

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an advertiser and agency documents coaches, provides the get 

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counsel. Just throwing out a hypothetical here. And let's say ten 

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percent of your influencers and affiliates don't comply with 

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that or five percent of them do. You know, I don't think we know the 

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exact answer of what would happen or if the FTC is gonna smack the risk of 

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a ten million dollar a year e d two c econ brand. But what do you think 

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plays out in that scenario? And in this case, the legal area, it sounds like all three are still 

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in the same boat and and at risk. And what are you seeing and what how does that, like, 

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scenario play out? So they're looking for kind of a reasonable 

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nest. And so I think, you know, if you're a retailer Mhmm. Who has signed a contract with 

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an agency and part of that agreement says that the agency is going to monitor the 

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disclosure. And then the agency is working with the influencers and affiliates, and they've put a system in 

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place. Mhmm. If the FCC FCC comes along and says, oh, look. We saw these TikToks that were not 

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disclosed, or we see this, review site that's not disclosing, and they go to everybody in that 

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chain, the retailer's gonna say, okay. Here's the contract we have with the agency where they are 

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taking responsibility as the experts for this. The agency comes in and says, you're absolutely 

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right. Here is the email that we send whenever somebody joins the program explaining to them the 

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FTC disclosure. Here's the monthly newsletter that we sent out reminding them of the disclosures, and here's 

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our spreadsheet that shows that we've been monitoring ten percent on a rotating basis 

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auditing this stuff periodically. The FTC is likely gonna come in and say, okay. 

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That's all great. But ten percent isn't really enough. We would really like to see you doing twenty five to 

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thirty percent, like, whatever those numbers are. In that case, I don't think you're gonna get fined. I think the 

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FTC is gonna send you a letter back that says, okay. We see that this was reasonable to 

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you as a small agency or whatever, but we really think you're gonna have to step that up a little bit 

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more in order to catch more of this. Yeah. That's super informative and awesome and and super 

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helpful. And switch maybe switching gears a little bit. You know, you when you got into this 

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space, I I know there's so much happening with the FTC, and then there's lots to talk about there. There's 

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also a lot of exciting things happening with the PMA. Maybe an interesting segue of all 

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your work with the PMA, maybe a little bit about the the work being done on the toolbar 

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and desktop browser data that's happening. I'd love to hear your thoughts on on 

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that and and kinda what you're working on there. Absolutely. This whole area 

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of affiliate marketing, it's like Groundhog Day. When I first 

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started in affiliate marketing, there was so much talk about toolbars, and they're killing the 

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industry, and they're stealing everyone's commissions, and we hate them, and we're not gonna work with them anymore, and 

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lawsuits being filed. And then, you know, everybody kind of got together and said, yeah. This is bad. This 

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isn't happening. Every network said, nope. We're not letting them in our programs. We're putting this in all of our terms. 

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And it all just kind of played out like that for, you know, maybe a decade or more, but you 

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really didn't hear anything. And then you started, it was almost like a little whack a mole. Like, every now and 

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again, you'd see a pop up of, like, oh, does so and so have a toolbar now? Oh, wait. Do they have a 

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toolbar also? Wait. But they're a really reputable company, so is it a good toolbar? And then, you know, is it started percolating, then it became, you know, okay. Well, if 

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toolbars are back, 

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what does that mean for the rest of us? And then that's when the discussions really started 

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happening because it went from just there are a couple toolbars out there and then, you know, the 

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network saying, well, maybe we'll let them in if we test them and they meet x y z. Or the retailer saying, 

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well, maybe we'll work with them, but only on, you know, this kind of basis or that kind of basis. And 

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then publishers started finding out and saying, woah. Wait a minute. What does that do to my 

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commissions? Am I losing commissions to them? Am I not? Are the networks monitoring this? 

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Like, what's going on here? And so that's where the kind of the PMA came in. But a lot of 

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times, when these complaints start happening, when there are big changes, they start coming to 

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us and our members start saying, have you heard about this? Have you talked about this? Is the PMA doing 

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anything about this? And so we started, you know, and luckily, we have a lot of people that have been 

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here since the first time this all happened. So we could kinda say, okay. We know where we've 

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come from, and we know what the evolution has been in the industry. Now we just have to 

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figure out how do we continue that evolution that's good for all of the 

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players and the consumers and the industry as a whole. And that's 

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where the problem comes in that those are not all aligned. And so trying to 

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figure out how do we weight each of those is what is really 

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difficult right now. Yeah. For sure. For sure. And those not as, you know, 

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versed in affiliate marketing. You have the brand advertisers footing the bill, 

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spending the money, wanting to get placement, the partners or influencers or publishers out there 

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who are promoting those brands, the networks, and the agencies kind of in the middle supporting 

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and and tracking and promoting those. And for twenty plus years, you've 

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had some affiliates partners have launched browser plug ins, browser extensions, 

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toolbars that consumers opt into, hopefully, 

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to say, hey. I'm okay if I I purchase a pair of pants or a short, you 

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know, swimsuit or or running shoes. That cashback will be 

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logged as my in my browser program or my airline miles will be logged 

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just so those uninitiated, what what Trisha was sharing. So to your point, they're 

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getting other partners that are promoting maybe higher funnel partners like content 

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discovery, maybe some elements of search are not our newsletter are not getting credit 

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in a last click attribution model, whereas the toolbar is getting a 

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lot of that credit or claiming that credit. Is that is that an accurate way of phrasing the challenge that that 

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toolbar represents for the industry? Yeah. There's a really big difference between 

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a consumer who downloads a toolbar that they think is just gonna show them the weather every day, 

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but it turns out on the back end, it's overwriting every affiliate link that they click on versus 

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somebody who downloads a toolbar that they know is going to show them the most recent 

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coupons or show them what the cashback they're gonna get if they make a purchase that is actually 

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encouraging the sale and that might be helping that sale along or benefiting that retailer. So there 

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that's the other thing about these, you know, the toolbars and extensions that there's a really big difference in 

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the value that they provide to the retailer and to the consumer depending 

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on what type they are. So, you know, there's something to be said for the consumer 

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part of the journey, which is, you know, I own a cashback site where I don't have a toolbar. And my 

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husband called me in at Christmas when he was working on my twenty one year old's computer, and he said, 

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mom's gonna kill you. And she was like, oh, no. What'd I do? And he's like, you're gonna have to tell your 

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mom what you did. And she was like, what did I do? And he turns the computer to me. 

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He goes, she has the Honey toolbar installed? And she was like, yeah. I get coupons. I'm like, yeah. But 

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that's what Sunshine Rewards does. And she's like, yeah. But they don't pop up and remind me. And I'm like, 

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what? Like, you train I remind you every day. Great. You train 

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her. Like, it's one of the same rules. For you to go to college, and yet you don't use it. But 

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that for me was a real moment of, like, this is some a kid who understands 

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affiliate marketing because her mom's been doing it in front of her face all these years. She has a blog where she puts an affiliate link. 

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She gets it, but she's a consumer, and she is the target demographic 

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of consumer for a lot of the online shopping now. And so, you know, to 

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hear her say, yeah. I love Sunshine Rewards, but I just don't remember to go there. I don't remember to 

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go back. They don't give me as good a coupons. They don't always, you know, have what I'm looking for. Like, 

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I hear that and I think, yeah, I can't tell her not to use that. So if I can't expect my own daughter 

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not to use these toolbars when I know that it's saving money and helping her, how can I say, well, for the good 

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of the industry, we need to get rid of these toolbars? Because I, you know, I see it firsthand. 

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Yeah. So but then, you know, I own content sites. So I own content sites that I know are 

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losing commissions because at the end, somebody will have that pop up and and that toolbar will 

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end up being that commission. So, you know, I feel like I'm sitting right in the middle of it, and I 

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can see it all around me and I can see every perspective. But until we get, like, 

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the really smart people together and start taking the data that we 

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can glean from all different perspectives and the different opinions and putting everybody 

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into the same room to try to figure this thing out. I don't think we're gonna come up with a 

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solution that makes everyone happy. Yeah. Is the problem and trying to kind of 

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summarize it for the audience. It sounds like it's a problem of there's 

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unclear standards. There's claims both real and probably unreal 

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of certain partners, affiliates, toolbars are taking credit where maybe they shouldn't 

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be, and that could apply to other partners. There's a whole spectrum of toolbar 

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types that go from the nefarious that you alluded to earlier to the super 

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helpful for the user and, like, fully, you know, incremental, we'll say, is the 

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most extreme, assessment. Like, how would you kind of summarize the 

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challenge that you're trying to tackle with with the elevation of this issue within the PMA that we're all 

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working towards? Because I think it's an interest interesting one of, like, there's the what's the end goal solution, 

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but how would you kind of summarize the the problem for those, especially uninitiated 

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to toolbars and affiliate marketing? There's too much anecdotal evidence 

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and not enough data to support anybody's belief. There's 

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anecdotal evidence I know they are probably overriding. I know that that is probably 

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a returning user and not a new user. Like, there's too much anecdotal evidence that we all 

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rely on in our arguments, and we're not seeing enough actual 

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data driven results to be able to make decisions that are 

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going to be best for everyone. And that's brilliant. Why do you think we're lacking that 

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data and it's more emotion and opinion and hypothesis based? Some of it is 

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just no one's pushing for the data yet. If no one is requiring a toolbar to 

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differentiate between their toolbar traffic and their on-site traffic and their newsletter traffic, if 

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no one's requiring that, why would the toolbar offer that up? Why would they 

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come to the network or the retailer or the PMA and say, oh, yeah. Seventy percent of our 

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traffic comes from the toolbar and only thirty percent from all of our other sources. Why would they offer that up if they didn't have 

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to? Until we give everybody a reason to actually start measuring 

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all these things and sharing it, most people aren't just gonna voluntarily, number one, take on 

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the cost of figuring out how to measure these different things. And number two, share anything 

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that's not in their own best interest. Yeah. I love that. And I I think that 

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it seems to be a movement over time of this industry Because 

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when a entity says, I'm not gonna because 

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when a entity says, I'm not gonna share you the full transparency, 

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I would imagine that might lend itself to, oh, I hypothesize that this is happening. I'm worried about this 

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happening. I I claim this is happening. When in fact, we don't we need to find and see 

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that data and have it be more transparent. And the more competitive that things 

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get, in the industry, the more that everyone 

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needs every nickel and dime. You know, in those days where we were in the heyday of affiliate marketing and all you 

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had to do was put up a website with ten coupons and you could stay at home with your kids and not have to 

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have another job, like, that was the heyday. You didn't care so much if you were losing twenty percent of 

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your, commissions to toolbars or whatever else because you were making enough money and 

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you didn't care. And then now that's different. It is very competitive. You don't just 

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have some coupon sites and some blogs. You have influencers. You have all those different social 

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media. You have technology. You have cart technology that are affiliates. You have, you know, basically every 

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part of the consumer journey, there's an affiliate somewhere in there. And within each of those, 

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there are, you know, maybe fifty or a hundred or ten thousand affiliates of that certain type. So 

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the more competitive that it gets to split up that affiliate pie, the more we're all gonna kinda be at 

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each other for, you know, what we each think we deserve. Yeah. That's such an 

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interesting point. And it sounds like there's been a lot of con good conversation with 

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PMA. Maybe maybe, I feel like people are starting to come out of the woodwork 

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sharing information about the survey that you put out asking for information, like, how important 

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this is to you. Maybe kind of wrapping up the thought of that exercise, 

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like, what was your reaction to some of the response from the industry, maybe 

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initially, and then maybe where do you think where do you think we're heading with that? So I love 

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that initially, everyone wanted to take the survey and give us their opinions and kinda tell us what 

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they were doing. But then I didn't love, even though I expected, that when we actually got on 

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the calls with everyone, everyone said, yeah. But we're not actually gonna give you any data because it's either 

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proprietary or we don't feel confident enough in it to share it or it can't be measured across different 

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agencies anyway. So what's the use? Like, basically, everyone wants to be a part of this. Everyone 

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wants to try to help, but no one really wants to share their data. So we're just gonna 

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have to keep going at it and find different ways to get it. And it's gonna mean having 

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more conversations. It's gonna mean talking to the networks and saying, you know, what is it that you do have, and is 

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there anything additional that you're willing to put into place? It's gonna be case studies where maybe we 

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don't get all of the data that an agency has, but they're willing to do a case study on one 

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particular merchant or one particular toolbar or something like that. So, you know, we may not be able to 

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get all the data that we were looking for, but knowing that so many people want to be a part of 

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this and want to help make a change in this area, I think there will be people 

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that are out there thinking right now creatively about what they can contribute and 

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ways that they can figure out a way to be able to get this data and share it. 

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Yeah. That's super interesting. I've I've had some recent conversations around, you know, various 

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partner types and the challenge of incrementality, which opens up a 

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whole another question and a whole another can of worms, which is similar but very different 

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to the attribution challenge and the crediting and the multistage of how 

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that have you seen anything interesting or valuable to kind 

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of try to unlock? Was this partner bringing incremental value in in our my 

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definition being, like, if this was removed, then this channel or level or partner was 

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removed that that advertiser would have gotten that sale anyway. So in the absence of 

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it, is it truly incremental? Is it bringing value to to the advertiser as a new 

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Udolphile customer or a purchase? And so, we haven't talked about this a ton, but I'm so 

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curious because it does kind of dovetail off of the concept of toolbar 

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incrementality. There's so many questions that advertisers and folks outside of it looking in sometimes 

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go, why would I want that? And so there's this balance of trying to look at the data 

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to determine. Have you seen anything you find interesting in helping determine and educate that 

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and saying, hey. This is bringing value. This is not. I think at the start, 

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people define incrementality differently. And so you first have to start by looking 

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at your business and what your business needs are because you might be the type of 

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business that doesn't get repeat customers very often. You sell funeral home caskets. 

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How many times is somebody gonna come buy buy and buy one of those same things from you? Hopefully, not very 

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many. But, you know, you sell tennis shoes, you want them to come back and buy them every two to three months. 

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So depending on the type of stuff that you're selling, are you a subscription service, 

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or are you a stand alone product? Do you something that people is something that people buy regularly or something that's a 

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once in a lifetime purchase for them? You know, those types of things is very different what someone might 

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consider to be incremental value. Then you're talking about, you know, is the customer is it 

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incremental? Then when you're looking at the sales Mhmm. There's a difference there too. Is this a person who you 

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just want to come back and buy over and over and over again because you're something like a Shein 

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where you're selling, you know, very low price stuff, but you want them to buy something new every single month? 

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Or are you somebody or your customer somebody who might only make a purchase once a year, but 

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when they do, you want it to be an eight hundred dollar purchase instead of a four hundred dollar purchase. 

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So is it the average order value that is incremental to you, or is it 

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the number of purchases, the number of times that person comes back that's incremental to you? And, again, 

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there's no real agreement because everyone has, different business purposes and what's 

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profitable to their businesses or not. Yeah. I I think it's such an interesting point, and I 

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come I make that point often myself, I feel like, because it's I think it's 

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easy and it's natural for us as humans to kind of try to develop rules and pattern matching 

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and we and the concept of benchmarking, I mean, it's often things like 

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that can actually get people into a lot of a trouble when there's crowd or group think involved, 

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and it's like, oh, well, coupon and deal doesn't work or cashback doesn't work or I need 

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that three to one LTV ratio or I'm not gonna pay for return customers. Like, there's all these myths 

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that come along with our performance marketing role. It's like, are you really looking at the data 

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objectively? Going back to your point earlier. Or are you coming in with some 

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bias that needs to be tempered in your measurement of the experiment, in your 

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measurement of the campaign, in your measurement of the channel? That's super interesting. I was looking 

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for discounts for, a Broadway show that I wanna take my mom to when we go for 

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affiliate summit. And I went to a coupon site to look for discounts. I kinda Googled it, clicked 

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on the link, and then they didn't have any coupons for that particular 

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Broadway seller, but instead they said, here are coupons for all of their 

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competitors where you might also be able to get tickets on sale because that merchant doesn't 

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have an affiliate program or doesn't allow affiliates into their or allow coupon sites into their 

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program. So instead, there's a website now with your brand on it and then 

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coupons to all of your competitors. And so when you say, like, I don't wanna work with coupons. I don't wanna work with 

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cashback. How many sales did you just lose because somebody has put up a site 

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and is now sending your traffic to your competitors. Again, it goes back to, you know, 

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what in the end is what are you looking for and what are you gonna lose if you don't work with 

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certain affiliates? I love that. Yeah. Maybe that's a maybe a good segue 

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to kind of wrap up and think about, like, I love what you were able to do with your 

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blog, you you know, helping moms connect. I love what you've done with Sunshine Rewards. 

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You're a true affiliate marketing leader and entrepreneur. You're leading and educating a lot of 

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people in the space that are that are steeped in it, but also getting to know it for the first time, 

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which there's a lot of folks that are still, unaware. What are some cool stories 

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or maybe, like, a a an interesting takeaway that you found from that from the blogging and the Sunshine 

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Rewards experience. I'd love to hear maybe some, like, ahas or takeaways that you've had over the years 

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through that. I think I would never encourage anybody to start a 

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cash back site because they're so much work and they're so involved. And yet, 

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owning the cashback site was what has allowed me to get to know the industry so well. 

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Because when you have to work with every single network and every agency and 

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thousands of different merchants, and you have to know how to, append sub IDs for every 

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network, which is different for every network, and you have to know which ones have coupon feeds and APIs and 

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which ones don't. And you have to understand transaction reversals and cookie 

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links and, you know, the payment cycle of every different network. As a cashback 

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owner, you have to know all that minutiae about the industry. So, like, I 

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wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy to own a cashback site, but at the same 

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time, you know, if you're gonna if you're gonna learn everything, sometimes it is 

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just in affiliate marketing, it is just doing the hard things and having to kind of 

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go through it and do the hard things and learn it all and then decide, you know, okay. I'd like 

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this part and I don't like that part and that's not for me. And then you, you know, you have a better idea 

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of where you wanna end up here because there's so many different directions to go. You could just be doing 

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social. You could just be blogging. You could move into the agency side. You could move to work for network. There's so many different 

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directions to go. So I think, you know, for me, it was just doing the hardest worst 

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thing first. And then from there, I was able to figure out the stuff I actually like. 

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That's awesome. What's your hope for the industry and affiliate marketing over the in the future? What are 

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you what are you hoping it gets to? What are your maybe some goals with the PMA? I 

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hope that there will no longer be a negative stigma 

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attached with affiliate marketing just because there are bad players. I hope 

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that if you've had a bad experience in affiliate marketing because you worked with the wrong agency 

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or you were on the wrong network or whatever, but that doesn't keep you from coming back either as 

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a publisher or a retailer. I hope that, you know, eventually, every retailer will 

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wanna have an affiliate program. Will they work with every single affiliate? No. But there will at least be 

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that possibility out there because the more retailers we have in the industry, then 

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the more entrepreneurialism we'll be able to have with the affiliates because there are 

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more opportunities for everyone to make money in different ways. I love it. Here's to the entrepreneurial 

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spirit. Here's to affiliate marketing as an industry and and continuing to make it better. I 

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think that's what this is all about and really appreciate the insights, Trisha. This is awesome. 

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Thank you so much. Thank you.