Dustin Howes: 0:26

Hey folks, welcome to Affiliate Nerd out. I am your narrator, dustin House. Spread that good word about affiliate marketing. You're gonna find me nerdin' out every Tuesday and Thursday right here on LinkedIn Live and wherever you get your podcast. So please consider subscribing my nerd guest today, brandon Pierce consultant. Is that the best way to put it, brandon?

Brandon Pierce: 0:51

Um, yeah, I guess you could say that I wear many hats.

Dustin Howes: 0:54

Many hats. He's joining me today. He's a fellow SEO and affiliate nerd Having him on. Thanks for joining me in the Nerdatorium today, brandon Sure thanks for having me. And speaking of nerds, what is this hat Like? It is a perfect fit for this show.

Brandon Pierce: 1:14

So SERP means Search Engine Results page. So it's basically my thinking cap. You know, part of my goal with working with my SEO clients is to always have ranking them at the top of the SERP in my head. So you know I'm digging it literally Like wearing a hat that says SERP on it. I know it's silly, but it actually works.

Dustin Howes: 1:38

Now, do you have an affiliate hat as well, so that you take this hat off and you put that on when you do your affiliate work? Is that how it works?

Brandon Pierce: 1:49

Well, in a way it's all one and the same, isn't it Like we're trying to help our clients? You know, the e-commerce brands rank their products through the affiliate programs and sometimes helping the affiliates rank higher in the SERPs does that. So a lot of my work would surround. You know the principles of SEO, including getting them to rank Beautiful.

Dustin Howes: 2:15

All right, more on that a little bit later. We're gonna dive in here, but if you would like to ask any questions to me and Brandon, we have a live Q and A going on. So please drop a line in that chat. Make fun of Brandon's face if you like and take it easy on me. Of course, you guys know how sensitive I am, but without further ado, Brandon, who are you?

Brandon Pierce: 2:39

You know, I ask myself that every day. It's like an existential crisis question Should be. I would say that I'm someone who enjoys having fun and just having like living my life searching for the light. You know, the things that remove stress and fine balance and that sort of thing, yeah, and work and play just sort of are part of that balance, and the things that I'm passionate about are the things that I do, and I'm passionate about SEO and affiliate management, and so that's why I'm here.

Dustin Howes: 3:16

I'm here now with you All right and beyond. I like the work-life balance and the laughter, but your expertise comes where and like. How did you get this expertise to begin with?

Brandon Pierce: 3:30

Sure. So I would say that I'm also an eternal learner and that I feel like the moment I feel like I'm an expert is when I'm kind of not Okay and we can explain. We can go into that a little bit later as well, but I have a lot of experience in e-commerce SEO. I've worked for it with SEO e-commerce agencies. I've built and worked with affiliate SEO sites myself. They're a ton of fun and, of course, on the affiliate management side of it it kind of came as a hey, we need some of the fill this role and you're our SEO, can you do this? And that's kind of how it started for me and I just love it. I love it so much the relationship building, the how it ties so well in with SEO stuff. It's just, it's a great bridge and it works really well together.

Dustin Howes: 4:28

Beautiful, All right. Looks like you've got a fan here already, or somebody that's a big fan. Bradley's saying a big fan of affiliate and SERPs.

Brandon Pierce: 4:38

Aren't we all yes.

Dustin Howes: 4:40

We just want to be up on the top of that, bradley. I love it. Thanks for joining in and listening. Our guest today, brandon Pierce. Link to his profile is going to be in the chat. I'll drop a link to your website as well, to wherever we can find you a little bit later. If you would like to get in this hot seat and be a guest on affiliate nerd out, go to dustinhousecom, slash nerd. And if you'd like to be a part of my community, just like Brandon is, hit this QR code and come check out. Performance Marketing Manager. So, bradley, tell me about who you're servicing with this SERP technology and affiliate bridging here.

Brandon Pierce: 5:26

Okay. So I think ultimately the clients who have e-commerce websites look to me for guidance with their ranking. So the SEO bit. But also because I have the SEO experience, I'm well suited to help them recruit, because a lot of SEO is offsite sending recruitment emails to build guest posts and other link building things and so it kind of goes hand in hand in that if we send out some emails that are affiliate based, we may get more signups for that.

Brandon Pierce: 6:06

But also it opens up opportunities to do other types of collaborations with influencers paid promotions and guest post, link building and they're more likely to respond to you if you're giving them something like, hey, we've got this affiliate offer, then hey, can I build a guest post or a link on your site. So it's really helpful to those e-commerce clients that I can kind of do both of those things at the same time.

Dustin Howes: 6:32

Excellent, and the link portion, building portion of it. What is that like? Like we're trying to bridge the gap between affiliate and SEO, but when is the right time to ask for a backlink? When's the right time to ask for an affiliate relationship?

Brandon Pierce: 6:50

Okay, I think, and this is really gonna depend on and this is the thing that SEOs always say so I am so sorry. The answer is always it depends.

Dustin Howes: 7:00

Yeah, it's very much a dirt.

Brandon Pierce: 7:03

But what it depends on actually is what type of relationship are you looking to build?

Brandon Pierce: 7:07

I mean, you're not going to send an email to a publisher, like a really big one of those tier ones, that says, hey, you want my affiliate link or let's join my affiliate program, just like you wouldn't send them a request for a guest post or a link right off the bat and expect to get results.

Brandon Pierce: 7:25

It's more like you want to find that person, build a relationship with them, find out if they're interested, if they're even making edits to their site at the moment, if they're in a code freeze like you don't know this stuff. And you won't know this stuff until you get to know someone and get on a call with them, or at least get on a first name basis with them, instead of sending an email that says, hey, there, because you don't know. So I think maybe after you've established what they could be interested in the collaboration, that's when you can decide okay, how would you like to collaborate? We have this affiliate program, you can give them all the details, or we have other collaborations opportunities as well, if that suits your revenue model better, and both of them help the client out too. So it's great to be able to offer both of those things.

Dustin Howes: 8:13

Well, that is an incredible model that you have like adding both of these services at the same time, because essentially, you're reaching out to people that can make a difference to driving traffic to your client's website, and why not be having both conversations in this Now, with that, does it make any sense if you're an affiliate manager and you're trying to talk somebody into having an affiliate relationship and put affiliate links to your client's website? Does it make sense to get a direct link in there, snuck in somewhere in a piece of content?

Brandon Pierce: 9:48

So you mean like a deep link, like one that kind of already has a cookie attached to it or in some way.

Dustin Howes: 9:53

Yeah, I'm just saying one without affiliate tracking tied to it for SEO value. Can you get SEO value out of that as well?

Brandon Pierce: 10:02

You can. It just depends on how they structured the link. So there are something called REL attributes within the HTML code for a link. So most of the time affiliate programs will have well, naturally, when you build a link will have a no follow, or a lot of affiliates will put in no follow as the link REL attribute. So if they don't put that, in there, then the crawler, the web crawler, will add the authority that the destination site has.

Brandon Pierce: 10:37

Or it'll give that authority to the destination site and that's in the industry. We call that link juice and we want a lot of it Because that's how we fuel our rankings is with that link juice.

Dustin Howes: 10:50

Somebody once told me that that term makes them sick and I'm like, I really like that term. I'm going to keep using that, no matter what. We had an episode about cliches and I did not list that Because I don't think it is cliche. I like link juice.

Brandon Pierce: 11:09

Well, I actually it is cliche. It's cliche enough that at one of the affiliate conferences I went to, they actually had someone created cans of link juice and had it on the tables for everyone to drink, and I think it was like a rebranded Red Bull or something like that, but it didn't taste good. But it's good for your website, so we definitely want to have, do follow links.

Brandon Pierce: 11:35

We want to avoid no follows when we can, but it doesn't always work out that way. But that's when we can make the decision. When you're talking to the client, the prospect what kind of link structures must you have in your content? And if it's like we need it to be sponsored, we can't do affiliate relationship Well, that's when you can talk to them about that and even give them examples of how to put the link in the content so that they don't have to think about it. They just copy paste, which is one of the better ways to go about it, I think.

Dustin Howes: 12:09

Awesome. Well, whoever's making that link juice deserves to be on this show. So if you know that person, send them over my way. And switching gears, you've been managing programs for quite a while and everybody that's a consultant or been in this industry for five plus years has their favorite platforms, and I really want to talk to you through this today because I thought this is a really interesting topic of do we choose major networks or private platforms when we're consulting for clients? And let's walk through your strategy here what are some of your favorite networks to put clients on?

Brandon Pierce: 12:53

OK, so some networks are going to be better for specific niches. I personally really like human optimization as kind of a niche that I like to work in. It's for a lot of the relationships that I've built. So health and wellness supplements, exercise, fitness those sorts of clients tend to work best with and I like to use Share-A-Sale for those.

Brandon Pierce: 13:21

But of course there are other good platforms as well. One that I don't like as much but have had some success with is Flex Offers. To me, Rakuten is not that great. Sorry, Rakuten guys, if you love Rakuten, I haven't had a lot of success with you guys.

Dustin Howes: 13:42

Let's keep it on the positive note.

Brandon Pierce: 13:46

But I'm sure I'm doing something wrong and that's something I don't know if you're wrong.

Dustin Howes: 13:53

We're big fans here of Share-A-Sale and some other networks, so I was just getting a feel for what you're into. But let's start out with the pros of major networks. What do you think are some of the biggest pros for a major network?

Brandon Pierce: 14:11

OK, well, off the bat, I'm thinking you have much wider reach with a network. There's a lot more publishers that won't work on anything else, just work on. They have a very specific SOP that they follow and they only want to log into one network. So finding out which network that those publishers use and then gearing your program towards something like that is a great strategy. So that would be one of the pros. They also come with a bit of trust and credibility, because a lot of these affiliates and I've heard of them and they know that they're going to get their payments, they know that the tracking is going to be up to date and it's going to work really well. But also there's benefits for the managers as well, because it's straightforward. If you're used to working with the platform, you don't have to learn something new and you can rely on how the system works and the support that the platform gives you and the education that it gives affiliates. That's another big thing For sure.

Dustin Howes: 15:20

If you're in watching this and you're in the chats, drop us a line. What's your favorite pro for going after a major network? Or? Our next question is going to be a con of working with the major network, but I'm going to fill in some more gaps here with the pros for major networks. I think the biggest ease and biggest use case of working with the network is the payment processing Hands down. They're taking care of all the payment processing so that you don't have to deal with collecting tax info and paying out the affiliates every month or every week.

Dustin Howes: 15:58

If you're into that kind of thing, which I'm not that is the biggest headache. If you ever have to do that on a private platform Things I don't wish upon any other affiliate managers out there there are solutions, workarounds. Tupalti is one of my favorite workarounds for that on a private platform, but for the large majority of the clients that I take on, I'm trying to push them to a major network because of that, first of all. Then, secondly, the publisher pool. Whatever niche you're going after, put the client in the appropriate platform that makes sense to their vertical, where we can have a marketplace of affiliates that we can tap into when the program is ready to get fired up. Those are my two biggest pros for major networks. I think you covered the rest of it there. Moving on into the con section, what do you think of this biggest con for use on major network?

Brandon Pierce: 17:02

The clients will tell you that the cons are going to be the middleman fees, how much maybe a monthly cost that they have, or how much of a percentage of the commissions that they take. Not having the control over that, I think, is something that a lot of e-commerce businesses have trouble with come to terms with. They're already having to trust you, as the affiliate manager, to deliver for them this working affiliate program. On top of that, you're asking them to trust this network that maybe they've never heard of or that they're not quite ready to give access to maybe some of the details from their site, for example. That would be one. I think. Another con is that you can't make something that's really. You can't always customize the program in the way that you like. Some programs don't offer deep linking, for example. That's a really big con. I think that some private programs can have customized in. That's also a con for private programs that don't have that.

Dustin Howes: 18:06

For sure it just depends.

Dustin Howes: 18:08

Yeah, major networks. For the most part, I would think that they have the ability to get a deep link, but it's not everywhere. Some major networks don't have the ability to allow two tier systems, which is part of my revenue model as an agency owner and what I do in recruiting affiliates. So I hate it when they don't have the two tier capability, because I really want to fire that up and have the cost savings for the client early on and then be being paid out on the long run. So, and then the payment. The payments are really the biggest and hardest bullet to bite in this situation with major platforms, because you can get things for so much cheaper on a private platform, which leads us into like the pros of our private platform. What are some of your favorite go-tos for a private platform in your space?

Brandon Pierce: 19:13

Okay. So if the client's using Shopify, there's Affiliate Lee, which is decent, with some decent features on there. Platforms like Tune or Everflow Post Affiliate Pro is really good and has a lot of customization as well. If they're on WordPress, maybe like WP affiliate, but it needs a lot of customization to work well. And I would say if anyone's on WordPress, they probably aren't ready for the affiliate program. They should be on Shopify or on some sort of like e-commerce platform, Unless they're doing some, unless they've got a reason that they need to be on WordPress for that.

Dustin Howes: 19:59

There's some incredible stores out there that are based on on WooCommerce and you could use an affiliate WP as a plugin for WordPress. But I never make that kind of suggestion to anybody. The plugins just don't have the kind of capabilities that a private platform or a network has for you. It's not going to be bear all the bells and whistles that you need to be running an effective affiliate program and then but we're getting into the pros of private platforms. I like guys like Refersion oh yeah, that's fine, fine product over there, especially in the e-com space. I've used Post Affiliate Pro. When I was running IPVanish, we were on Post Affiliate Pro and running millions of dollars in revenue and payouts to affiliates on Post Affiliate Pro and I was just blown away that it could scale to that size Really incredible.

Dustin Howes: 21:05

But again, the private platforms can be really inexpensive, which is the biggest pro. Like, if you're trying to save dollars and dip your toes into affiliate marketing, private platforms are a really good solution. But on the flip side, like what happens when you actually do really well and you want to scale this thing and then all of a sudden this private platform is not going to scale with you as a program and now you have to migrate. So that's where I'll start with the cons Like, if you've got an established program or an established brand, private platforms probably not going to be the right solution for you. And I'm not talking like white labeling, an impact or something like that, or building something internally. I'm talking about like a private platform, like a reversion or something. Might not be the right fit, but what?

Dustin Howes: 22:03

are some of your cons with going with the privates.

Brandon Pierce: 22:07

Well, you mentioned a really big one there but also the fact that a lot of publishers won't work with them and you want publishers on your program, Like that's just plain and simple. I think that's that is the biggest draw. If I run into a client that's like I just don't want to do it and it's like, well, would you consider having like a separate program just for publishers that allows? You to have your you know, that's one thing, that you know that's one thing Rakuten does allow. So I'll give them that.

Dustin Howes: 22:38

OK.

Brandon Pierce: 22:39

And that's a that's a positive for them too.

Brandon Pierce: 22:41

So you know, and I'd love to talk to you guys at Rakuten, just to improve my they're not listening, don't worry about it, but but in any case, that is a that's a pro to certain networks that allow you to have multiple platforms, because they're they're open to the idea of you, of you migrating to them eventually. So is, if there's no way to migrate, that's man, that's a huge bummer. And if you can't get the publishers, man, you're. You're leaving so much money on the table for sure.

Dustin Howes: 23:15

Yeah, that is a great point on on the cons is convincing affiliates sometimes to join your private platform can be to pay in the ass, and especially the big publications out there, because if you think about it from their standpoint as an affiliate manager on the publisher side, they have to do so much more work pulling reports from each individual private program that it's not worth their time and a lot of times and they will just move on to a different brand that is on a major network. So you're shooting yourself in the foot when you're trying to go after the big dogs out there, which can suck. But again, if your brand is good enough, they will do it. I've got.

Brandon Pierce: 24:01

your commissions are good. You got really good commissions. You got really good you know rapport. Yeah, If you're willing, if you're able and willing to incorporate skim links and admin tad and those, then I think you're, you're probably going to be fine with some of those publishers who are in great with those.

Dustin Howes: 24:20

Yeah, it's nothing that you know, a A fill, the mate or a track andomics can't fix to from the publisher's perspective, where they get the reports done a little bit easier. But again, like the payouts, I kind of kind of a hard stance there. Well, I'm glad we worked through that topic. That's one that has been eaten away at me for the last couple of months trying to like work it in and I never want to badmouth any companies out there and I always like to, you know, tell everybody my favorites to work with. But it could be a tough subject to breach. But moving, moving forward, we're going to make you defend your post here. Okay, I've got something from one of your LinkedIn posts says somebody said UX design is all about creating digital experiences that are you user friendly and intuitive. But could great UX design be done by somebody without empathy? And you said I think the same thing applies to us in the SEO field. Now tell me, tell me what you're, what you're talking about there. Defend your posts here.

Brandon Pierce: 25:42

Okay, all right. So essentially, we're having a conversation about AI, and this is in the early stages of AI, when this post came out.

Brandon Pierce: 25:53

And so a lot of people in SEO are afraid that their jobs are going to be taken from them by AI, and so the thought is, well, can AI fill the role of an SEO? And truth is, you don't need empathy to be able to determine and have an idea about topical authority maps and ranking, and a lot of that is just analysis of keywords and search volumes and API integration. You don't need someone to build a relationship to do that. So, yes, I think there's a bit of fear related to AI, and I do think that there are certain roles within SEO that are going to be affected by AI in that way, and that it perhaps this machine could take over some of those roles.

Dustin Howes: 26:49

Interesting, and I think that's a big fear for affiliate managers as well. Like how far away are we from AI taking our role as partnership managers? It's a possibility, like? If you think it isn't a possibility, that's when it's going to sneak up on you and get you like Terminator. So what's your thoughts on that? Do you think partnership marketing has a shelf life as well?

Brandon Pierce: 27:19

I think parts of it do.

Brandon Pierce: 27:21

I think that the more mundane tasks, like managing maybe your email flows, your auto responders, your reporting, generating those sorts of deliverables that you would give to your clients those things can be affected by AI, but they can also help you make your job easier and make it make your job more scalable.

Brandon Pierce: 27:48

I don't think AI is close enough to taking over the most important part about being an affiliate manager, which is having these conversations where we're talking to each other, we're nerding out. I mean, I don't foresee AI in the near future, nerding out like this and having you know, it's just it's currently not there. So as long as there's people shaking hands, rubbing elbows, having calls like this and nerding out together, going to conferences and sharing business cards and stuff like that, I don't think that our jobs are, you know could put. I think that people who are utilizing the tools are going to be more powerful in this space and that we need to reskill and learn other things to make ourselves more valuable to our clients, like for example, learning SEO, learning affiliate management at the same time makes you more, I guess, gives you more skills, that you're more useful to a client.

Brandon Pierce: 28:49

So I think I think that's probably the best takeaway from that. Just use it as an opportunity to reskill, learn AI and use it to your benefit.

Dustin Howes: 28:57

Awesome Great points, and it sounded like that was a challenge that I couldn't create an episode with just AI talking to a made up guest. I'm going to do it. A great name Make him wear a serpant.

Dustin Howes: 29:16

I always laugh at those the videos of, like the AI that turn out to be like super creepy where distorted faces and very interesting. I'm going to see. If I can't make it an episode, I'll just make it like a 10 minute long episode and write the script and see what happens. And see what happens. It sounds like a good time.

Brandon Pierce: 29:41

The real trick would be to have to trade an AI video to have a conversation with an affiliate like an affiliate well, like called with an affiliate.

Dustin Howes: 29:52

If you can make that happen.

Brandon Pierce: 29:54

I would say that maybe we're in trouble, but like making an edited prescripted video, maybe in the future.

Dustin Howes: 30:01

So you see, I don't want to be part of the problem that starts Terminator like that somebody's going to come after me from the future and like, hey, you built out this. The guy that's watching Good reference Awesome.

Dustin Howes: 30:20

So you mentioned there that you are an eternal learner. A little bit earlier in this episode here and when we met, you had joined my course in my community and decided that you want to continue learning from others and have yourself a mentor and find others that might be doing things a little bit different than you, and you invest your time and your money into going into courses. Tell me about this knowledge quadrant that you were telling me about and how your eternal learning is like relative to this quadrant.

Brandon Pierce: 30:59

Sure, so the knowledge quadrant that I have this written down, because it's really hard to say it, and keep it in, keep it in my mind properly.

Dustin Howes: 31:07

Sure.

Brandon Pierce: 31:07

There's something called Conscious competence also known as the knowledge quadrant and basically it reveals four stages of Competence and something. So you're you could be not aware and not skilled at something. Right, you could be aware of something and not skilled at it. You could be aware of something and skilled at it. Or you can be not aware and skilled at something, so naturally talented at something. So that's the. That is the basic knowledge quadrant, and the way that I have adapted it to my learning is sort of like defining a passion. I believe, like I said in the beginning, that following passions, finding the light, trying to find things that that deliver the least amount of stress, the most amount of joy, if and like running towards those things as fast as possible, I use a similar quadrant and that is basically the way this is how I look at it. So, like you've heard about something, you're you're not sure if you're passionate about it yet, but you've heard about something. It's the first quadrant. Then the next one is you're dabbling in something, but you're not yet confident in it. So, like maybe the very beginning of your affiliate management career or your SEO career, you're not quite sure yet, but you're giving it a go, the good old college try. If you will, then You're getting the hang of it.

Brandon Pierce: 32:27

That's the third stage. This is the most dangerous stage. You're getting the hang of it. You start to get your ego starts attaching to it. You start to think oh man, I'm man, I really got this, I think I could take on the world at this point.

Brandon Pierce: 32:39

A lot of people stop and and the education quadrant they stop here is I think they're experts and they can live here for a really long time. But unfortunately, this is a mistake, because what you learn, what you know, is Limited to how much you're willing to take in new information. You stop taking in new information. You're you get stuck in that space, so you'll never improve and Maybe you're doing something wrong, right?

Brandon Pierce: 33:08

So the fourth quadrant getting into that one usually involves in my in my experience, some sort of like existential crisis, either Like like a mortality crisis in your career, like you mess something up Incredibly and you have to fix it. At that stage You're like oh, my goodness, again I need to do something different, I need to learn how someone else is doing this, or I need to repair this thing that I broke. And At that point, when you reach that, you're like okay, I need to learn as much as possible and, let's you know, always learn, because I don't ever want to be stuck in Quadrant three again. So in that, in the fourth quadrant, which is where, I would say, anyone who wants to pursue a passion and and remain in that passion in a healthy manner is To realize how little you know about something and that you should always be on a path of learning, and so the slap or punch in the face that is. That's the big key here, isn't it?

Dustin Howes: 34:03

Okay, that happens in quadrant three there right.

Brandon Pierce: 34:06

That happens. That happens on the gap between quadrant three and four. Okay the thing that makes you Stick with something is messing up and finding a way to learn your own way. So anything you learn any like. If you're skateboarding you, you learn this really cool trick and that's the only trick you do. You're confident in that one. If you want to learn a really hard trick, you got to mess up a bunch of times first, for sure, and then you get that, then you get the trick.

Brandon Pierce: 34:31

It's the the same thing with any any STEM career that you have. You have to, you have to Really put yourself through all the hard work and almost fail, and or to realize how much you don't know and then, once you've been served your failure in your face, you decide at that point Am I passionate enough to keep pursuing this or do I just let it go? And I think that's that's. That's how I pursue my, my education and my learning. So that's why I invested in your course, even with the experience I have, because there's always something else learn. You're doing something completely different than I'm doing it.

Brandon Pierce: 35:09

The methods, the tools, the Processes, the SOPs everything is catered to how you do things and it's way different than how I do it. And there's always going to be something magical. There's always gonna be little golden nuggets and what someone else is doing. So I Would I would not say to invest in a whole bunch of courses at once, but try one and go through the whole thing, try exactly the way they say it, and then Take from it what works, adapt what doesn't and then move on. Great, fine, find other education.

Dustin Howes: 35:41

That's incredibly well said, man. So often do we go to conferences and you know you'll you'll get on into a stage and watch somebody present for half an hour and you might get one thing out of that whole presentation. But that one thing you go home and you execute and and Try it out yourself. It could be a complete game changer. And that's all the one of the biggest reasons to be going to conferences and continue your Education and learning because somebody else is out there doing it better than you are right now and you could definitely learn from them if they have a tactic that is is working for them. So I commend you for you know, you know there's.

Dustin Howes: 36:27

There's this weird Feeling in that quadrant three that a lot of people get in like you know Two, three years of experiences, an affiliate manager. You just think you know everything and like you wouldn't benefit from a course like mine. But that is very far from the truth. Like this is designed for beginners all the way through veterans Just learning everything that I know about affiliate marketing, and I'm so glad you became a part of our community and have been a Helpful part of it. So thanks for for joining up, man, I appreciate it.

Brandon Pierce: 37:00

Sure, and also thanks for Providing the resources. There's just not enough resources for affiliate managers out there and, like we all have to learn, are on our own at first, and then just not enough people talking about it or doing it to learn from. So it's great to have your resources available and it's it's also good to have these, these like nerd outs, so that you know, I feel like I feel like, well, I'm working, I can listen to these and be like, yeah, I experienced that too. Yeah, I'm doing this, right, you know. So it's great the community that you're building, and I'm I'm glad to be a part of it.

Dustin Howes: 37:33

Awesome. Thanks, Brandon. I really appreciate you. All right, how do people get a hold of you, Brandon? How do people connect?

Brandon Pierce: 37:42

Best way to do that would be through my LinkedIn. I have, up to very recently, neglected LinkedIn as a connection platform, and that's to my own, my own demise, I guess. But I'm focusing more heavily on on LinkedIn and I'm currently building. I'm currently building a platform to to do more of a competitive analysis towards Looking into these affiliate programs, what they offer, what they don't offer, and make that as a resource for people. But it is a no, it's in no way near Ready to share.

Brandon Pierce: 38:20

So when it is I'll let you know, but in the meantime, come, find me at conferences. If you know, reach out to me on LinkedIn to see if I'm going to one, or invite me to one. I'd love to meet all of you and, and you know, have some fun talking about this, this nerdy, this nerdy topic.

Dustin Howes: 38:39

Fantastic. You know, this is a water cooler experience. People Are listening to this because they want to relate to what we're doing and you can easily catch nuggets of greatness here on the podcast and so glad you've been a part of it today. Mike, my guests next week are gonna be Bob Sparkin's Randy Crane. If you would like to be a part of Be in the seat where Brandon is today, go to Dustin house calm slash, nerd and Shoot out an application to meet a. If you get something to nerd out about, I want to hear about it. And then, if you want 15 minutes of my time, go to Dustin house calm slash pod. If I am not the right person to help you out, I'm gonna point you in the right direction, so please come take advantage of that. Alright, that and that's gonna wrap it up for today. Brandon, appreciate you being a guest, being here, and We'll see you out there. Man.

Brandon Pierce: 39:42

Alright, sounds good. Thanks a lot, and.

Dustin Howes: 39:46

Take care see you.