Dustin Howes: 0:26

Hey folks, welcome to Affiliate Nerd out. I'm your late nerderator. Dustin Howes Spread that good word about affiliate marketing. You're gonna find me here every Tuesday and Thursday around 12.15 Pacific time. We're now with industry legends and folks that are talking about affiliate marketing, so please consider subscribing. You can find us on any podcast format you want as well. My nerd guest today is Stephanie Robbins, a dear old friend and CEO of Robbins Interactive, and we're gonna talk about the Amazon ecosystem matching up with Affiliate Marketing. Stephanie, welcome to the Nerditorium.

Stephanie Robbins: 1:11

Thanks so much for having me. I'm super excited to talk about this stuff.

Dustin Howes: 1:15

Awesome. We have gone back at least 10 years, I want to say, since we've been in a group and I've always had great conversations. You have consistently had the best hair in the industry and absolutely.

Stephanie Robbins: 1:34

Best hair awesome.

Dustin Howes: 1:37

Always a pleasure to see at a conference. So, stephanie, I are gonna be talking to Philly. If you want to jump in that live Q&A and nerd out with us, please drop something in the chat and don't be shy. But without further ado, stephanie, who are you?

Stephanie Robbins: 1:55

Wow, that's a terrific question is to kick it off? That's awesome. So, mom and a wife and a business owner so I've been in digital marketing my entire career we won't talk about dates Fall in love with Affiliate Marketing over 15 years ago. I just love the relationship aspect of it and, honestly, like the ROI for the clients is just you can't beat it. You know the performance model, so I fell in love with it early on and then I just stuck with it. Met some really great people. The first conference I went to was Think Tank, so I was really spoiled.

Dustin Howes: 2:35

I remember the.

Stephanie Robbins: 2:35

Think Tank days where it was like at the Ritz Carlton and stuff like that, and I just met great people that were just so welcoming and I've never been in an industry where there is so much, where people really just want to like lift the industry and it's like less, not to say that it's not competitive. It's obviously gotten more competitive but people really do like to share the knowledge and, as I was initially getting into that, I was just blown away with how helpful people were and, like you, doing this type of stuff of like, really just sharing the knowledge and just wanting people to be better affiliate managers so that the industry as a whole is lifted. We've come a long way from the dark days of Affiliate Marketing.

Dustin Howes: 3:16

Absolutely. I like being part of the solution and the industry is going in the right direction. We are gaining a lot of steam right now according to the billions and billions of dollars coming through the Affiliate Channel channel wide. My guest today is Stephanie Robbins. You can grab her profile. I'm going to drop a link in the chat. She's also got something to share with us a little bit later that you can find in the chat. It's a great resource for what we're going to be talking about. If you would like to be in the seat where Stephanie is and come be my guest, I am always accepting new applications to join me. Go to dustinhowes. com slash nerds and drop some information and just let me know what you want to nerd out about. So, Stephanie, tell me about Robbins Interactive. You've been doing this quite a long time, so what do you do and who are you servicing out there?

Stephanie Robbins: 4:16

So I always refer to myself as intentionally small. So I'm the only manager and then I just have support, help on top of that and I just I really love the client relationship and the affiliate relationship, so I just decided to stay small. So, in order to do that and do it efficiently, I really honed in on the health and wellness space. So that's really where I serve. I like to work with like small to medium sized businesses or small to medium sized departments of big businesses, but I can, I like when it's an affiliate program that either hasn't launched or is kind of been neglected, where I can really make an impact, and I think that's why I've always worked with startups. I think I'm a masochist that way.

Stephanie Robbins: 5:01

So I just I really like it when people get excited and you kind of find that in like the smaller size companies.

Dustin Howes: 5:09

I don't see that as masochistic. I don't know if that's the word. I mean, that's that's the exact place that I want to live as well. Once a company gets over 200 people, my personality and my mindset just doesn't mesh as well with doing enterprise level clients so that I stay away from them all together. You know they might have more money and but it just isn't worth the headache in my mind.

Stephanie Robbins: 5:39

But I tend to move fast. You know, that's just like my personality is like I want to get it done. I want to get done. I don't want like 20 layers of approvals to get it done.

Dustin Howes: 5:47

For sure. The red tape is just so annoying, and I mean the gratification of it all. Working with startups is there's so much. They need so much more help that you can provide and just makes me feel so much smarter working with startups and a lot of it's an ego booster, right.

Stephanie Robbins: 6:08

And then that's fun too, because you end up especially with affiliate marketing, because it kind of touches everything and because I come from like a general marketing experience, like I don't didn't just do affiliate marketing, I love to be able to help people with like interface navigation stuff or general marketing tips, branding things of that nature. So it kind of allows me to kind of like dip into other areas as well.

Dustin Howes: 6:31

Gotcha, well, I've traditionally known you to have one or two clients and like hold on to them for a very long time, and that's never how I've worked. I'm a traditional job jumper. I like getting in, providing a bunch of value early and then moving on and getting into my next challenge. So is that still the way you kind of interact with your clientele? You're trying to do it for the long haul.

Stephanie Robbins: 7:00

I get attached. So I would say overall, like my base is like long-term relationships. You know I have relationships that are, you know, 10 years plus. I have started doing some like kind of high level consulting, simply because I fill up so fast and I have a hard time. Like I'm definitely like a little bit of a people pleaser. So you know I don't like to say no to people if they need help. So a lot of times I'll do some high level consulting and then kind of, you know, as an interim, while they're hiring somebody, and then even help like train that person so they get up to speed.

Dustin Howes: 7:36

Something else you mentioned is like doing this as a freelancer and not really wanting to expand into that agency life. And there's been so many agencies you know folks like Sarah Bundy and Mike Nunez like starting off on their own and then like expanding and making a huge agency and eventually, you know, settling that off and that has its appeal, of course. But I'm in the same boat of like I like being on my own island and doing my own thing. But what makes you make that decision of, hey, I'm not going to be hiring people, I'm just going to do this on my own and max my hours out where I can and still live my you know my parent life.

Stephanie Robbins: 8:20

I think like it's different, different answer depending on where I was in my life. So, like when my kids were little, it was absolutely a focus of like I really just want to focus on being there for my kids. So in fact, for like the first six or seven years of my business, I was part time. I wasn't even working full time because I wanted to like max out the little human time.

Stephanie Robbins: 8:47

And now I kind of played with the idea and I've had employees at different times. But you know, my husband is like this amazing manager, like amazing manager and I think in watching him I realized that's not necessarily like where my gifts are. Like I do, I love to mentor people. I love other humans, Like I love mentoring, like content affiliates or influencers or even like other people in the industry, but as far as like day to day managing is just not what lights me up.

Dustin Howes: 10:02

For sure, and my wife and me are the absolute opposite, because I'm in the same boat as you. I want to be on my island and she's a great manager over doing her full time job.

Stephanie Robbins: 10:14

So to each their own, and sometimes I get a little envy, as I was like, did I make the right choice? And then I'm like you know what I did? It was the right choice for me.

Dustin Howes: 10:23

That's awesome. No regrets Like I have none. This is. You know I'm broke sometimes, but it's a fun journey. I love the challenge. I got to have it like gambling in my blood. It's just got to be there. So what about today? I want to talk about you know Amazon Associates and leveraging the API that Amazon has, and I would love to hear about you know what all of this is, because it's hard to explain for me to explain to people. I think you're better students since you're living in this world so much. So tell us about that Amazon API.

Stephanie Robbins: 11:04

You know it's so interesting because, obviously, like none of this is I'm going to say this and it's not proven, but it sure seems coincidental. So, as we know, like Shopify launch, shopify collabs and then, like right on the tail of that, amazon comes in and it's like ta-da, we're opening up the API for Amazon Associates, which is super exciting. So I think there was maybe possibly a little competition that forced their hand on that. I'll never know if that's just you know a real theory or not, but they did kind of launch pretty close together. And I just think it's so exciting because, as an affiliate manager, I feel like competing with Amazon, just like retailers.

Stephanie Robbins: 11:42

I think it's feels like so difficult, right, like they want to go to Amazon because they can. You know the affiliate can get a commission on, you know, the entire cart. It's obviously got great conversion rates. You know it's got that instant gratification of like you know I can get it within a couple hours. You know it's hard to compete with that. And then, on top of that, it's like shoppers want options. So if you're an affiliate, like the more options you can give them, you know, the happier the shopper is going to be. And then Google came in and was like, hey, shoppers like options. So it kind of started to feel like, okay, I guess we just have to accept that we're going to have to, you know, dance with Amazon at the same time. But we had no control over it and we had no reporting and no transparency.

Stephanie Robbins: 12:28

So Amazon opened up their API and allowed companies like Levante and Refersion, which are the first two to launch I think Refersion was the very first one to launch and then Levante was kind of like right on its tail, essentially Okay, that we're able to take that API and import it into what feels familiar to us, you know, as an affiliate network. Now Levante feels more like what we're comfortable with because they handle all the payments, they have a marketplace, which is absolutely amazing. So it's. It gives us like, not only like who our creators are, but now we can control the commission, which is a great deal for affiliates too, because everyone knows, you know, particularly during, you know, covid not that we talk about that too much anymore but like Amazon can switch the commissions in a heartbeat and really mess with an affiliate, and you know it's just not cool, right, like, as managers, we know like you don't do that, like you don't do that in Q4. You don't do it when it's hot, but you know there was nothing an affiliate could do.

Stephanie Robbins: 13:31

Well, now they're working directly with the brand. We actually have control of the commissions. We can increase the commissions, we can offer bonuses and we can see who's performing and like work closely with those, whereas before it was like we just kind of knew like, okay, here's an influencer we know they're going to have Amazon links, and then we kind of esoterically look like well, it looks like sales, you know, peaked at this point. So it was probably due to the affiliate. You know it was all very vague, but now we have the ability to like truly have those relationships and those metrics. So it's an exciting time. And then, like I always say, like it shouldn't be in replacement of your traditional affiliate program with the networks, to me it's like you're working both of them.

Dustin Howes: 14:16

Absolutely, and I Amazon's like last straws with YouTubers, like dropping commissions down to 1% at one point almost fueled this need and necessity for what Lavanta is doing out there. So really impressive of the work that they're putting together and turning the tides to what Amazon's machine is doing. And just recently I think it was earlier this week I saw Amazon send me an email like hey, we're turning up your commissions 3, 4%. How's that sound Like? Start driving traffic Like, please.

Stephanie Robbins: 14:59

Interesting. I haven't heard of that yet. And do you know that Amazon is actually giving a kickback to the sellers as well that go through Lavanta? They actually give you 10% back of that commission, so. And you could even just say like, hey, I'm just going to do a 10% commission I mean there's some kind of restrictions to that and like literally not have to pay any commission as a brand. Most brands are obviously doing their own on top of that, gotcha.

Dustin Howes: 15:29

Gotcha yeah.

Stephanie Robbins: 15:29

So they're really invested in this as well, which is nice to see, because, I have to admit, when it first came out, I was like are they going to take it over? Is this just like a test? Like how's this all going to go? But they definitely seem like they're in it for the long haul.

Dustin Howes: 15:45

And you really don't know what they're going to do. And when you build your own product over an ecosystem that exists already and they just decide to shut that portion of it down, then you're out of a business all of a sudden and that can always be scary. That was one of the weird things over at WP Engine. If WordPress ever shut down, wp Engine is just toasts like all together.

Stephanie Robbins: 16:10

Yeah, that's scary yeah.

Dustin Howes: 16:13

Yeah, but luckily the business has legs and you can build your business around that part of the world.

Stephanie Robbins: 16:21

Yeah, so I think Amazon shutting down anytime soon.

Dustin Howes: 16:24

Yeah, we'll see. We'll see. These affiliate programs that we're building are coming to fight. So yeah, that's true, we'll see. Well, hey, we've got a nice comment in here from Bradley, bill and Barry at home in this group at the moment. I love hearing that this job can be as a freelancer long term. Brad's in the game himself right now and, stephanie, I guess you had some heartfelt sentiments there that resonated with the crowd, so that's great. Then we have Eric Nagel jumping in careful dust and that email says receipt of this email and its contents cannot be shared publicly. Oh, whoops, what email is that he just told me about? Or I mean, maybe it does, if I received the email too. Maybe this is talking about the Amazon email that I sent out. Hopefully Alexa isn't listening to me in the other room.

Stephanie Robbins: 17:27

Oh, she's always listening.

Dustin Howes: 17:28

She sure is, she sure is. I always love that debate where people say she's not listening to you all the time and you just say how does she know when I say your name? To wake up.

Stephanie Robbins: 17:46

And doesn't like is it just my household? But sometimes Alexa just like butts into our dinner conversations. Oh absolutely Wait. We didn't tell you to turn on.

Dustin Howes: 17:56

For no good reason. Yeah yeah, so nosy, very nosy, all right. All right. So Amazon's there and you mentioned something about like traditional networks and working with this Amazon API on LaVonta or Creator. Tell us what this mix is? You said you should be doing both essentially. How does that work?

Stephanie Robbins: 18:21

And I should preface this Okay, okay.

Stephanie Robbins: 18:24

Obviously, if you have a consumer site that is very new and you're killing it on Amazon, then you might not be ready to do a traditional affiliate program on your consumer site. But overall, if you have a consumer site that has enough revenue and enough brand awareness to justify a traditional affiliate program, I always say, like, give your customers both options. Whereas before in the affiliate space we were just like discouraging any links to Amazon Because we lose the customer, right Like. I mean we don't like lose, lose the customer, but we don't have that direct relationship when they go through Amazon and you know the margins are tighter because Amazon takes a lot of its cut. But I think giving those options.

Stephanie Robbins: 19:14

We're like still want to make the direct to consumer site like the sexiest option, but if somebody's going to go to Amazon, they're going to go to Amazon, like if they want it in their four hour time span because they don't live in, like you know, the rural area like I do, then that's what they're going to do, so you might as well give them that option.

Dustin Howes: 19:35

Absolutely and maybe the biggest benefit of having both of these. Yes, you are paying out more money and commissions to that affiliate, but the lifetime value of that customer that you would have just lost to Amazon is now being captured in your email. Is that right?

Stephanie Robbins: 19:53

Well, no, Amazon never gives you the customer email, but you do have the relationship with the affiliate. So Amazon's not fully, you know, opening the kimono by any means.

Stephanie Robbins: 20:03

I see you know they're not they're not giving the customer data but they are giving us the affiliate data. And then I think you know information is power. So you know, if you see, like OK, this affiliate promoted both the consumer site and the Amazon site and you know you look at the difference in the metrics, you know that's great information for a brand to have as far as where they want to be putting the rest of their advertising money in.

Stephanie Robbins: 20:27

And you know, I think it's just if you can make that consumer site just a little bit sexier, like hopefully it has like different products that aren't available on Amazon. I mean, you know we're dealing with the beast that's Amazon, so you're never going to like undercut Amazon or anything like that. You know to risk that relationship. But I think there's a lot of things you can do, like gift with purchase and things of that nature to really like maybe appeal of coming over and that way you completely own the customer relationship. But in this way it's just making the customer happy. Either way, beautiful.

Dustin Howes: 21:02

OK, gotcha and your names in this whole section. Lebons is coming up and getting a lot of publicity in this arena, but there are some big differences between these networks. You mentioned Fersion as well. Fersion's been in the affiliate game for a long time, but they jumped in very early with this API. So can you give us a little bit of distinction between the two of like creator connection and Avante here?

Stephanie Robbins: 21:32

So for me. So I have worked with Refersion before and it is a good network and I'm pretty sure they're the preferred choice for Amazon. They were the first ones to launch, I think, the first ones that got access to the API.

Stephanie Robbins: 21:44

But don't quote me at that. I couldn't be not 100% sure on that. What I find is Refersion has dramatically scaled down their team and the Levanta team is really amazing with support and getting input from the managers as far as, like, what features we want to see, what data we want to see, and they have the marketplace, which has been a game changer. So recruiting is a little bit challenging because it's so new. So affiliates are like we have no idea what you're talking about. Like we're already an Amazon associate. Like why do you want us to sign up to this other network? I mean to me I was like oh, this is going to be such a no brainer. I'm basically just offering you more money, You're already going to send it to Amazon, like now.

Stephanie Robbins: 22:28

I'm just saying, like you have choices and we're going to offer you more money, but there's still like an education with it for the affiliate side, and Levanta is doing a lot of work, a lot of work, front-end work on that education, which makes our recruitment a lot easier. So they've done a great job of like bringing in really large online publishers that are really hard to crack, especially if you're working with a small to medium-sized business, and already they're already bought into the LaVonta, you know concept, which just makes recruitment so much easier Because, as you know, there are like some larger publishers that they only send traffic to Amazon, like either they're gonna send it to Amazon or they're not gonna send it to you, and you still wanna be able to work with those guys and tell them about new product launches and then send them to put you higher up on Alistica, et cetera, and LaVonta really set that up to make that easier. And they also set up where you can do flat fee bonuses and things of that nature as well.

Dustin Howes: 23:28

Great, great. And so if you're making a decision on like one of the other, like what's your decision? What's your like go-to solution right now that's your favorite, in one way or the other, I feel like it's so obvious it's LaVonta, like I'm definitely a earlier adapter with.

Stephanie Robbins: 23:45

LaVonta. I talked to them before they officially launched and I was like you've gotta be kidding me. This is actually happening. Like I was so excited about it.

Dustin Howes: 23:53

Oh, fantastic, and that brings up our and I thought that was version early too but yeah, I definitely have the preference of LaVonta. Fantastic and that brings up our second one, and that brings up our sponsor of the day. They are unofficial, but I thought it would be nice to have up here.

Stephanie Robbins: 24:08

I didn't have a profile with the doll set. Oh no.

Dustin Howes: 24:12

There's been a great mistake here as I upload this new file.

Stephanie Robbins: 24:20

It doesn't even have my great hair in that picture.

Dustin Howes: 24:21

I just ruined my own joke by a wrong photo. This is insane. I'm the worst. So you've been working with LaVonta for a while now and hopefully they're graciously giving you some commissions there as well to work with them.

Stephanie Robbins: 24:44

Oh, I mean, it's our affiliate space, right, of course? I'm an affiliate of LaVonta.

Dustin Howes: 24:49

Beautiful, beautiful. All right, I guess I'll skip this joke today, unfortunate. Oh, there was another joke, no, it was a tattoo of LaVonta on the dolphin? Oh, I think. And I just shot myself in the foot.

Stephanie Robbins: 25:11

Well, we would have gotten in trouble with the animal rights people, so it's probably good that you didn't do it.

Dustin Howes: 25:16

Most likely. Anyway, if you go to LaVontacom and use code DUSTIN20620, whatever you're doing as a product, so give that a run and see how it works for you. Really low obligation to get with it and really high upside as well for getting in on that. And moving on next topic, like there's no segue to this, but Shopify Collapse is another topic you wanted to jump into and really want to get into. You wanted to jump into and hear what you're and how you're using it right now.

Stephanie Robbins: 25:56

So Shopify Collapse has been interesting and I think when we initially started talking about because you were so booked up with GAS I was just starting to play with it. There's a lot of things I really like about Shopify Collapse. I think it is really great for, particularly for, like, startups. I love their discovery tool. Like, I don't know how much you've played with it, but their discovery tool is amazing. It's basically like having. It's not the same size as a grin or an aspire, but it's like having that type of tool already built into Shopify. It's free, which is amazing.

Stephanie Robbins: 26:34

They didn't even take any commissions on it. The URLs are crazy friendly. If you really want to work with influencers, I think Shopify Collabs is a great option One. The URLs are super friendly, but also you can set it up where they essentially get them set up to send free product and stuff like that to them which is really great because, as you know, as a manager, sometimes that's the hardest part.

Stephanie Robbins: 27:07

It automatically generates the coupon code, which is a big deal with influencers, because it's hard to get people to click, even with all the technology allowing us to add links. I think it's a great tool. The only negative experience I've had with Shopify Collabs is their marketplace. I have actually turned it off in all my programs. I don't think they're doing a lot of monitoring for compliance and things of that nature. As far as letting people in, I didn't have any fraud experiences, but I definitely had people posing as content affiliates and it turns out they're just putting up the coupon codes because it's coupon code-based tracking. I like it for recruiting people in smaller influencers who aren't already in all the networks and they want something that's really simple to sign up for, really simple to understand, because the link is pretty. It's not like, oh, how do I grab this? Or go there. They make it really straightforward. I think it's a great tool, awesome, but for smaller, more like micro, medium-sized content influencers.

Dustin Howes: 28:20

Okay, gotcha. That's a great way to dip your toes into the influencer space and try to get some steam in that area, especially since a lot of content influencers in that space want upfront fees. You can probably get away with some hybrid deals and some maybe even a fit straight up commissions.

Stephanie Robbins: 28:42

Yeah, I think it is nice if they're existing customers, they tell you as part of the sign up you can do your own sign up questions, you can add fields. I mean there's a lot of. It's a really robust tool and pretty amazing that Shopify is offering that. And then from the billing standpoint, some of the really influencer-friendly tools like Refersion and Post-Affiliate Pro is an accounting nightmare on the back end, but with Shopify your commissions just get added to your bill.

Stephanie Robbins: 29:14

Okay, excellent, so that's a nice feature for, like you know, dipping your toes in, as you said.

Dustin Howes: 29:19

Excellent, and do you have to be a Shopify customer to use this platform?

Stephanie Robbins: 29:24

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Dustin Howes: 29:25

Okay, that's what I thought. Okay, so Shopify specific stores that want to get into the influencer space. Go out and give it a try. Is this an add-on, like for the store? It's an app, the thing is what they call, it right there are apps, no widgets.

Stephanie Robbins: 29:42

I'm pretty sure it's app.

Dustin Howes: 29:44

I don't have any clients on Shopify. I don't uh oh really. No.

Stephanie Robbins: 29:48

Shopify is just like taking over the world. But you know, shopify really launched with the focus of entrepreneurs. I mean they've obviously expanded, like there's so many people on Shopify now, so many businesses on Shopify. But I think this Shopify collabs was like an extension of that, of really wanting, like small businesses, to be able to take off and not have, you know, any obstacles to their success and be able to leverage affiliate marketing.

Dustin Howes: 30:16

For sure. And the Shopify thing, it's just a matter of you know to work for Vellusion. And then I had it took on BitCommerce as a client. So I tapped into those way before the Shopify and I never got. I never ran into a client, ironically enough. So that is weird yeah.

Stephanie Robbins: 30:38

I'm trying to think like I have. I have a single client that isn't on Shopify.

Dustin Howes: 30:42

Wow, that's funny that checkout process.

Stephanie Robbins: 30:46

man, it's like Amazon, right, like they just make it so easy for customers so it increases your conversion rates.

Dustin Howes: 30:52

For sure. It looks like you turned on Kristen Bigtime Evans to it. So I was talking to a client about Shopify collabs. Great timing. Thanks for chiming in. Thanks for listening. Evans Appreciate you. She's I mean, she's just the best.

Stephanie Robbins: 31:08

You weren't talking about somebody supportive of the industry.

Dustin Howes: 31:11

I know right she is. That's why she's a two-time guest on affiliate nerd out here, Just a great time. All right, Stephanie, where can people find you? Where's we wrap this up?

Stephanie Robbins: 31:26

We didn't even talk about Amazon creations. We didn't Creator connections.

Dustin Howes: 31:30

No we didn't Going back to it. I had a tab up, I thought we were talking about that, and then we went into a different, no, so creator connect.

Stephanie Robbins: 31:37

I'm just going to go like super fast.

Dustin Howes: 31:40

We don't need to go super fast. Take your time.

Stephanie Robbins: 31:42

So creator connections is Amazon's own. So Lovanta is obviously like a third party working with the API. Creator connections is part of Amazon and run by Amazon. I believe it's still in beta, but my experience with my clients is, if you tell them to ask, they let you in, okay. So I don't think it's like super hard to get into.

Stephanie Robbins: 32:07

All right, it is a little bit clunky, but if you're looking for Amazon lives or if you're looking for more Amazon reviews or micro influencers, it is a great tool. It is like smaller influencers. It's a completely different way to manage programs because you can't like reach out. You basically create a campaign and then people decide if they're going to apply. So it's much more like organic in that aspect, and you don't even have the ability to like reject people. So it's like you put it out there and anybody can join, but you do have the option of whether or not you're going to send product. So that's kind of like where your control is there. It's not. I don't feel like it's for me yet. I'm still feel like I'm in the testing stages with it because it's so new. It isn't like a huge revenue driver because it tends to be like smaller, but I feel like from a brand awareness standpoint and like getting videos on your product page and things of that nature. It's a really amazing tool and once again, it's like free with your Amazon seller program.

Stephanie Robbins: 33:19

So, you're not paying extra for it. So, like you know, give it a try is kind of my thing. The downside of it is it's a little clunky, right, it's new data like. It's hard like all communication you don't get an email address. All communication is handled through a messenger and it's like if you have more than one campaign going like you can't tell from the messenger like which one they're talking about. So it kind of makes for like a little bit of an awkward communication cycle there.

Stephanie Robbins: 33:51

But I still run programs because I think it's a really great tool and it doesn't take a huge amount of effort as far as getting influencers into the program. So the first one I ran was for a really small company and within 48 hours we had like 500 influencers signed up for it, and this is a company called Brushy. So it's a really cool little tool. Give them a little plug where it's like a mini toothbrush that's prepasted flaw so like, like just a cool little perfect. Amazon purchase, right. Like you're probably not going to like buy it direct to consumer, you're going to probably just add it to your Amazon cart. And you know it did great with them as far as like the brand exposure and just low risk. I mean, if they post and you know they don't get any sales and you don't pay any commissions.

Dustin Howes: 34:44

That. That's absolutely something I would buy on TikTok. If a Tik Tok influencer did 30 seconds brushing his teeth, little thing I would instantly buy that. I buy something every day on TikTok.

Stephanie Robbins: 34:58

And here's the thing like that's who I was like recruiting for Lovonta to are those Amazon fines, Amazon hacks and there also a lot of them are in Amazon creator connections as well. So if you have like a really focused Amazon product. It's a great tool.

Dustin Howes: 35:15

Gotcha All right.

Stephanie Robbins: 35:16

I had a blog post about that. I think you're going to include that has like kind of more detailed information about the pros and cons of it and whether or not it's the right tool for you.

Dustin Howes: 35:24

Absolutely, and it's a. It's a bit of a long URL, so I put it in the chat. It's robinsinteractivecom. That's Amazon creator.

Stephanie Robbins: 35:34

Connection connection. Should I download shorter URL A dog count.

Dustin Howes: 35:38

No, no, I mean SEO value, that's you're doing it just right. But but I should have put a dozen howes. com slash stuff or something. I didn't. I just didn't have my stuff together today. I'm sorry about that, but you don't. Who does have their stuff together? Right, it's the Lovonta.

Stephanie Robbins: 36:03

So there it is.

Dustin Howes: 36:06

I don't know why they're tattooing dolphins, but it's great publicity, especially for Stephanie Robbins here promoting them heavily. Dustin howes. com slash the font and use code Dustin 20 to save 20% when you sign up. Go give it a shot. It could improve your business dramatically. All right, so as we wrap up here, Stephanie, how do people get a hold of you and who are you looking to work with and service here?

Stephanie Robbins: 36:37

LinkedIn is. I'm very attentive to LinkedIn messages and connections, so that's always a great connection. Obviously, in my website, which we just put in the chat is another great way. Or srobbins at robbins interactivecom. So that's like the longest email address. So that's where I was like I should have gotten a shorter URL.

Dustin Howes: 36:55

I did that when I bought performance marketing managercom and then I ended up having to buy like perfmmcom so I could just shorten the URL for my email address, but that turned out to be a big hassle. But anyway, you've been a fabulous guest. Thank you so much for being here. My guests next week on affiliate nerd out Mike Carney, one of the best in the business for affiliate recruitment or not recruitment, but like affiliate manager and setting them up with jobs. She's got about that job market that's going on right now and some good tactics for affiliate managers to get hired. And also Igor I always mess this up.

Stephanie Robbins: 37:40

Oh, that's a tough guy.

Dustin Howes: 37:41

Yeah, igor is a brilliant mind in the email marketing industry. He talks about email farming and funnel systems. He's just one of those incredible, probably the biggest name in the game for when it comes to joint ventures JVs and really excited to have him on Thursday. If you would like a quick resource, if you're trying to start up an affiliate program and you want to checklist, I've got one for you. Go to Dustin howes. com slash checklist. Go check it out and be a part of my community by clicking this link up here. This QR code goes directly to performance marketing managercom and you can join up there. Stephanie, thanks so much for being here and I can't wait to see it. Affiliate summit coming around.

Stephanie Robbins: 38:33

Yeah, sooner than we know right.

Dustin Howes: 38:35

Absolutely.

Stephanie Robbins: 38:36

Awesome. Thanks so much.

Dustin Howes: 38:38

Awesome. Take care, Steph. Thanks.