From click to conversion: Navigating Affiliate Publisher Attribution with wecantrack with Jorge Barbosa

Dustin Howes: 0:28

Hey folks, welcome to Affiliate Nerd Out. I am your Nerdirator, dustin Howes. Spread that good word about affiliate marketing. You're going to find me here on LinkedIn Live every Tuesday and Thursday at 12.15, pacific Time, so please consider putting it on your calendar, smashing that subscribe button on YouTube and joining us for some live conversations. My Nerd guest today is Jorge Barbosa, over at WeContract. He's going to teach us all about publisher additional data that they need, and I'm really excited to have them on, jorge, welcome to the Nerditorium.

Jorge Barbosa: 1:07

Thanks, it's great to be here, dustin. I'm happy to talk all things affiliate publisher related and how they can track better their data and see where their conversions come from.

Dustin Howes: 1:18

Fantastic. I see your festive right now with your Christmas tree in the background. Love the vibe. Yeah, we have a special Christmas episode that I want everybody to know about and I'm going to put up right here real quick. Our affiliate Nerd Out Christmas party will begin on Tuesday, the 19th of December, 12.15. Come one, come all. Everybody that wants to come on for a few minutes and talk about what they're thankful for is more than welcome to stop by and hang out for a little bit. So please join me then and we will have a good time. Bring your drinks, if you like. It is the season, so let's get going with. Jorge, tell me about what you're doing out there. Big question of the day for you and for others Are you ready for the holidays? Yeah, definitely, you can see I'm ready for the holidays.

Jorge Barbosa: 2:20

You look better, you're ready.

Dustin Howes: 2:23

Yeah, we went through a quick costume change, no big deal Now, Jorge who are you?

Jorge Barbosa: 2:32

Well, I'm from Portugal, actually, so that's worth mentioning. I guess here it's evening by now there is lunchtime, right but I've been working in the affiliate industry for the past years. So I was working previously for an affiliate publisher, so they had several websites in different markets, and for the last three years roughly I'm also working for Weekend Track now, so I will explain later what Weekend Track does. But basically I've been working with affiliates publishers mostly for the last five, six years.

Dustin Howes: 3:13

Okay, gotcha, and so you were a publisher yourself. You started out in this industry as a publisher, or you were working for publications.

Jorge Barbosa: 3:22

I was working for a publisher, so they had different websites. Yeah, I was not a publisher myself, but I was basically working in the marketing and pay that department for them and basically analyzing website performance and some of the topics we are also going to discuss. So I've been doing it for a while now.

Dustin Howes: 3:44

Interesting. And how did you get into that field? That's not something you jump into right out of college. You must have had some kind of experience to get you into this field.

Jorge Barbosa: 3:55

Well, actually it was an opportunity. To be honest, I was looking for a new job. I started drifting towards digital marketing in previous jobs and then I just basically I was hired from this publisher a few years back and then, once I got into the affiliate field, I never left. So it was a few years of learning, but it was also very exciting, especially once you start to see everything that's out there. It's an amazing industry and it's so huge, but most people don't even realize how big it is.

Dustin Howes: 4:33

And I think that's almost by design. Digital marketing is, in essence, trying to be native. You're not trying to be overly advertising like a hardcore for brands. You're supposed to be giving your own personal recommendations and have it being a natural thing. So that makes a lot of sense. So you got into this industry kind of just by half and sense just like everybody else in this industry. Just an opportunity it came along, it brought you into that. That's a great story, man.

Jorge Barbosa: 5:09

Yeah, thanks.

Dustin Howes: 5:11

All right, If you'd like to be in Jorge's seat code at DustinOzcom, slash nerd, drop in an application and say hey, Dustin, I want to nerd out about this. I'm always looking for guests with book through February, but let's get on the books for next year. All right, let's talk about. We can track name origin story. Tell me how this name came about.

Jorge Barbosa: 5:36

Well, name origin story. As I'm told from my friends, we all met each other previously also, so I know the co-founders very well for a few years, and basically there was a list of names. It's nothing super exciting, but there was a list of names, something that would stay on top of your mind and something that would clearly basically pass the message of what we do so we can track, and that's something that everybody remembers once they see our brand, so they land on our website and they see that basically that's what we do, we can track.

Dustin Howes: 6:13

Yeah, yeah, probably the most straightforward and topical name of any company that I've ever had on this podcast. Like it is straightforward and to the point. You guys say what you are, absolutely yeah. So tell us about what you do and who you're servicing out there.

Jorge Barbosa: 6:32

Yeah, so basically we can track is for affiliate publishers. We service affiliate publishers of any kind and we provide them with conversion tracking, attribution and integration. So basically we are all in one suite where they can connect their websites, they can connect their affiliate networks and they can get a lot of different insights into their conversion data. So, yeah, they have a reporting. They can push that data to their tools that they use, like Google Analytics, ad networks etc. And, yeah, we have some more advanced features that I will also probably get into after, but that is the core of what we do. We service affiliate publishers and media buyers. As long as they are publishing affiliate links, we can work with them.

Dustin Howes: 7:32

Excellent. So your clients are predominantly affiliates that need help about the affiliate marketing efforts, right?

Jorge Barbosa: 7:49

Yeah, exactly, you know. If you're a traditional affiliate publisher, I don't know if you have a review website or a content website or a blog. Even you have no idea where your conversions are coming from. Either you use manual sub IDs in your affiliate links, but once you reach also a certain size and you have hundreds of affiliate links and hundreds of articles on your website, then you have no clue to know which page is generating your sales or where are they coming from. And that's basically what we do. We show you exactly this was the landing page that generated the sale. It came from this traffic source. So it came from Google Organic. It came from Facebook it came from any source.

Dustin Howes: 8:37

Yeah, I think that's something we all need a little bit more in our life, especially if you're just getting started as an affiliate and you don't know exactly what is performing for you. This is an excellent tool to get rolling and get more eyes on it, to make the content or at least replicate the content that is working for you now.

Jorge Barbosa: 9:01

So it's a great service.

Dustin Howes: 9:03

Love what you guys are doing. Tell us how important is the tracking solution. I can get data in any affiliate network that I go to, but you guys are really pumping it up and showing me a lot more than what the affiliate networks are doing out there.

Jorge Barbosa: 9:19

Yeah Well, I mean, this data is important, in my view and in my personal experience, for basically your strategy, in order to decide your strategy, in order to identify what is actually working on your website or on your affiliate activities, to know which partners perform the best, what type of content, so you can replicate that content. You can, for example, push that content into additional traffic sources, like if your content is performing really well organically and you have a page that you can identify wow, this page is really as a high conversion rate I'm making a lot of sales on this page. It's good, users like it, they convert then you can push it, for example, in Google Ads, facebook Ads, and as a bonus, you get the conversion data also integrated in your campaigns. So then we push your conversion data to your Google Ads campaigns, your Facebook Ads. It opens up a whole world of opportunities. So you can then. Yeah, so you can. Yeah, so you can then sorry, just checking the STIN, because I think somehow I lost you.

Jorge Barbosa: 11:03

Okay, I'm gonna start with my little. Well, I guess Dustin left us for some time, but he will be back soon. Do you want to空 over andsound Okay, check.

Dustin Howes: 12:29

Thank you.

Jorge Barbosa: 12:44

It should be a few moments and I believe Dustin will join us again. Alright, guys, let's take a break and I will check in with Dustin and we'll catch you up in a few minutes. Hey, dustin.

Dustin Howes: 17:07

It says we're still alive unbelievable.

Jorge Barbosa: 17:10

Yeah, I also left. I stayed for a while, but then I didn't want to continue without you, so You're trying to hang in there.

Dustin Howes: 17:20

I don't know, what my technical difficulties were. But you know what? Let's keep on rolling. I'll edit it in post For those that stuck around. Thank you so much. Alright, so we're talking about how important this data is. Let's jump right back into it.

Jorge Barbosa: 17:35

Yeah, exactly so I think I was just saying about how important it is that you have an understanding of what works and what converts on your website. So if you're running media buying campaigns, if you're running Google ads, the crucial part of it is for you to know where your sales are coming from. So you can then bet extra on that content, you can improve it, you can then expand it as well, Because I believe if the content converts, that means it's helpful content, it's good content that you're creating and the user also converts with it. So you should have more of that, instead of having I don't know 50 articles and then at the end you don't know and only two of them are actually helpful in generating conversions.

Dustin Howes: 18:26

Yeah, I think that's where all affiliates kind of a problem. They have it on, especially early on in their campaigns and learning. So very helpful. Talk about those publisher pain points that you're coming across. What are some of the biggest pain points that they see?

Jorge Barbosa: 18:45

Well, some of the biggest pain points. First, one of them is time consuming to do all the manual reporting, especially as you grow your affiliate business. You start working with 10, 20, 30 different affiliate networks, you have countless accounts, and then how do you get all that data into one place? So that is the first step. You know that's I believe that's the first pain point from a publisher is to then have their own reporting all in one place. So that is something we do. We fetch all the conversion data from all the networks they connect. They can have access to all of it in one dashboard.

Jorge Barbosa: 19:25

The other pain point is exactly what we also talked about before, like tracking traffic sources, identifying where their converters are coming from, using manual sub IDs. As soon as you start having hundreds of affiliate links and you have to set up a sub ID for all of them, that also becomes quite a significant pain point. And, yeah, and basically, you have no access to session landing page, no attribution, no integration in Google ads. If you're running campaigns, you have to calculate your arrow eyes manually in the Google Sheet or something. So, yeah, I believe those are the things that we can help with and those are the biggest pain points. If I was myself an affiliate publisher nowadays, yeah, I would be spending a lot of my time doing that, while it's something that can be outsourced and I can get all that extra data and really focus on my content instead of getting all this data in one place, for example.

Dustin Howes: 20:30

Yeah, great call. And with that, sub IDs is something that goes underutilized, especially from the affiliate manager standpoint on the brand. That can be difficult for us to interpret and help out affiliates. How do you guys educate affiliates that are out there early in the journey and just starting to use your product? How do you educate them to utilize sub IDs more often?

Jorge Barbosa: 20:58

Well, that is the beauty of it is that they don't have to use sub IDs if they use our system, because we automatically place click IDs as a sub ID in their links so we can then track each sale back to the correct session from their website user source, etc. So if they were making use of manual sub IDs, they don't have to do it any longer, because then the information that you get, with the information that you place on your sub IDs, you will then get it in our system automatically. So it will eliminate the need to basically manage all of those sub IDs.

Jorge Barbosa: 21:42

But, if they also want to use it. We also have users who want to keep using sub IDs for some reason, for some other information they can define. In our system. We give them flexibility to where to place ours automatically. If it's in sub ID 1, sub ID 2, they have full control over their sub IDs and also they're reporting with us. But for most cases then what I've seen usually is you use sub IDs to identify a page, to identify a certain offer on a certain place, and then our system will provide you that information.

Dustin Howes: 22:21

Thank, you Gotcha, and taking back in on that, that last thought, the sub ID. I've got a curveball of a question. I use pretty links to cloak my links and, yeah, how redirects through my affiliate links and then they're placed all over the internet like who knows where at some point for some of these brands. Right, will it track where that click is coming from, even if it is cloaked like that?

Jorge Barbosa: 22:47

Yeah, exactly, it will track it because you're using pretty links, so our system it redirects through your website, so our system will be active on your website. We have a plug-in as well which is compatible with pretty links and most clucking cloaking plug-ins, and then that even gives you additional options, because, imagine, you share your pretty links on an Instagram post or Facebook post, you can add some utm's to it additionally, and then in our reporting you can then see UTM for campaign source, you can add your post number, post title, you know something like that and you can see exactly how many users clicked on the pretty links that you place in one of your Facebook posts, and you can also see if you generated sales or not. So it yeah, it gives a lot of flexibility. If you work with cloaked links is the best, because then you have tracking as well outside of your own website.

Dustin Howes: 23:49

That's really impressive something I've got to implement with your guys. This technology, that's awesome. And you mentioned integrations. You guys have 350 plus. I saw on the on the website. That's that's a lot. You guys are really getting after it.

Jorge Barbosa: 24:05

Yeah, yeah, most of them are affiliate networks. So we covered all the big affiliate networks worldwide. Most of them we cover already. Then we also have the affiliate software is covered, like Everflow, tune and some others, and then we also have smaller affiliate networks. We we really focused on that because we wanted our clients also to have all their data into our system, so for that it was important to integrate all those networks. Apart from that, then we have our integrations with Google Analytics 4, so you can push your sales and conversion data to Google Analytics 4. You yeah, you basically have access to a Google Analytics account, just like any e-commerce business. Then, because you can see all your pages. You can see Some of the information you see in our system how many sales were generated, what's what your commission for each landing page, etc.

Dustin Howes: 25:05

Yeah, and Google has a little bit of a fault in like they can change Updates at any point and just ruin everybody's SEO day In the blink of an eye. But when G4 was coming out, they give everybody like six months. Hey, get prepared, this is what's gonna happen. You need to like migrate. That gives you guys time to implement the the necessary updates to make this a better product. And get prepared right.

Jorge Barbosa: 25:33

Yeah, exactly, we've been working for a while on the G4 integration. It was released a couple of months ago as well, and as G4 is improving also themselves, our integration is also improving, so our attribution coverage in G4 is improving as well. So it is to me, to be honest, personally it was quite a change to go from universal to G4 and still not 100% used to it, but I think it's becoming also a great product and definitely useful for affiliate publishers. You know, especially if you rely on SEO, don't organic traffic, then you definitely need to have that also.

Dustin Howes: 26:18

Yeah, I think that's true with any software updates, right, like you get used to one way and you're setting your your ways and then they update it and you're always gonna be a little bit hesitant. But in the long run it ends up being a much better product and, at least in most cases, yeah, yeah exactly, the adaptation period takes a while once you're used to something.

Dustin Howes: 26:42

Yeah, yeah, I can't say that with all products, but I'm gonna leave their names out of this equation. So, affiliate publishers, what are some of those other things that we could track can help them with? That we haven't talked about yet.

Jorge Barbosa: 26:58

Yeah, well, so basically we can help them grow by analyzing better than data. Right, that's something we already touched. The other point is if you are an affiliate publisher, you can diversify your traffic sources, because now you can use native ads, you can use Facebook ads, you can use Google ads, because you are able to integrate all your sales and Clearly see if they are coming from those sources. You can make your campaigns profitable. You can stop basically wasting budget on Keywords that doesn't bring you any sales, but you might think that they are super relevant and it often happens that you think, oh, every stand keywords, they are really relevant for what I'm advertising, but then only three of them are actually generating 90% of your sales.

Jorge Barbosa: 27:52

Yeah, and then we'd. That's how we can help them grow, because then, basically, they can analyze their data, they can make informed decisions. Plus, they can also use Automated strategies, automated bidding strategies Based on the people that converted, because Google, then your Google ads, then, as the information of the converters, they know which users actually purchase. You can try different bidding strategies on your campaigns. Based them on ROI, etc. Or CPAs.

Dustin Howes: 28:25

Yeah, okay, gotcha, and Speaking of that, like are, do you guys have a book of consultants that are experts that we Contract that could help me, like, implement your, your service and your, your product to the best of its capabilities? Because I'm just scraping the surface with my account, can I hire somebody that's an expert in this? You guys have, like a field of experts.

Jorge Barbosa: 28:52

Well, we do some audit calls. So after a while, after you set up your account with us, and if you're running traffic from multiple sources, you can schedule an audit call. Basically, it's the same as just schedule a call with us and someone from our team will go over your data together with you. They will look at your website and maybe we will recommend something that we think we have advanced features. For example, we have also features that allow you to pull all the data from our system into an API, a BigQuery database. You can utilize that data, for example.

Jorge Barbosa: 29:35

A good example I like to give is you can sort content on your website automatically based on the conversion data, so based on clicks and conversions, or conversions where people convert the most if you have multiple deals in the same page or multiple offers. So, and then also your Google Ads account. Of course, if you're running ads, we can check your setup. We can go in your Google Ads account. We don't give advice on how to run your ads, but we can check if you're making the most out of Weekend's Rack and if you set up everything correctly. And we also give some help with looking at the data and analyzing the new data that you have access to.

Dustin Howes: 30:20

Excellent, that sounds really cool. All right, switching gears a little bit. Google's last update. How are the affiliates affected? I don't know enough about this, but I'm sure you're living this every week.

Jorge Barbosa: 30:32

Well, I've seen on the web also on some forums, I've heard from some affiliate colleagues as well that these year affiliates were impacted with the last Google update and I just wanted to touch on that point because that just highlights the importance of diversifying your traffic sources as an affiliate. Also, of course, doing analyzes on the content of your website. But this is related also with the helpful content, with the design of your website. So if you know what converts, you know what's helpful for your users, you can target better, you can create better content. So you also have less chance of being affected by a new update in the future. But I would recommend also diversification. If you have a website, if you're an affiliate, you should try, test and test and test multiple traffic sources. You never know for sure. Maybe TikTok ads is going to bring you a completely new audience. That's actually converting very well.

Dustin Howes: 31:45

Interesting. All right, so you're. Diversifying is an important aspect of this, and especially when those updates happen, you're going to get visualization on which one of your blog posts were affected negatively and positively. That's going to be a huge help for you to adjust your content in the future as well.

Jorge Barbosa: 32:05

Yeah, yeah, exactly. That's a good point that I didn't even mention that you can have less traffic, but more relevant traffic as well that can also happen, and then you know exactly how your content is performing.

Dustin Howes: 32:20

Great and, as we wrap this up, affiliate managers are the folks that watch this show the most, those out there. I'm always preaching the importance of suggesting really good tools to their affiliates so they can up their game and get better and drive more traffic to your brand, so this seems like it's right in that vein. How can this tool help affiliate managers out in Malawa?

Jorge Barbosa: 32:48

Well, it will take some of the work from them because our system will do an automatic tracking. The users will be able to access all that transaction data in our system. So they will probably ask us as well for some of the questions they ask their affiliate managers. But most importantly, I believe it will help affiliate managers in the way that their own partners, their affiliate publishers, will perform better. They will increase their performance. So it's good for the affiliate networks as well. The publisher does the better the affiliate network is doing and usually also the less support they will require. Because they are set up with us, they have access to all this data.

Jorge Barbosa: 33:38

And yeah it's a win-win situation, in my opinion.

Dustin Howes: 33:42

Agreed. And for all those affiliate managers out there this is one of my big lessons of the day as we wrap this up Affiliates out there, this is a great tool to diversify what you're doing and take better care of your website and the traffic that you're driving, so you can replicate the things that are working. But on the affiliate manager aspect, this could be a tool that you promote as an affiliate. This could be your start in the affiliate world, because if you have a big program of thousands of affiliates out there you can become an affiliate of, we can track, make this suggestion casually in your conversations and make some income. You guys have an affiliate program yourself right.

Jorge Barbosa: 34:27

We do have an affiliate program. It's on our website, so you guys can find it at the footer of our website. It's a new program. You just send us an application or, if you're interested in having a call with me anytime, we are always open for new partnership or just to have a talk and see how we can help each other. Basically, Beautiful. Ok.

Dustin Howes: 34:50

What's the best way to connect with you? Is it via email? Linkedin?

Jorge Barbosa: 34:54

Yeah, email LinkedIn on our website, but just add me on LinkedIn. My email is pretty easy, so it's georgethweekintrackcom and yeah.

Dustin Howes: 35:09

Very easy indeed. All right, awesome. Thanks for being here, jorge. As we wrap up, I want to thank you guys for being an amazing sponsor of Affiliate Nerd Out and thank you for joining me today and educating the folks out there. I want to make one more quick special announcement for all of those that are going to be here Tuesday 12.15. We are going to have a Christmas party for Affiliate Nerd Out, so be here Tuesday, december 19, 12.15. All guests are welcome. I'm going to put the link in the invite so that you can come in and be in Jorge's seat. Jump in and talk about what you're thankful for. Hope to see you out there and for those affiliate managers, business owners, all of you that are out there. Thank you for listening. I am thankful for you and happy recruiting, take care.

Jorge Barbosa: 36:03

Thank you, so it's a pleasure guys.