Jordan Buckner (00:00)
Affiliate marketing has quietly become one of the most powerful growth channels for modern brands. So instead of paying upfront for ads or partnering with large creators, communities, and publishers who promote those products, you can actually find a lot more affiliates, usually in the small to medium size. You can still do this with the larger ones, but publishers who are then promoting your products and earn a commission when sales happen.

And this is really powerful for emerging brands, especially in the CPG world that can help unlock new audiences and really build trust through those authentic recommendations. So today I want to talk with David Abbey, who's the founder of Endlss to break down how affiliate marketing actually works, why it's growing quickly, and how founders can start building their affiliate program to drive real results. David, welcome today.

David Abbey (00:48)
Thank you very much, sir. Pleasure to be here.

Jordan Buckner (00:50)
So I think affiliate marketing, influencer marketing, UGC content has just been in the atmosphere for a number of years. There have been brands who have tried it, some have had success, some have not. And I wanna talk today really to break down what makes a really good program and how to actually use this to scale your business. And so maybe just to open up, I'd love for you just to describe like.

What is affiliate marketing? Is it different from influencer marketing and what the world looks like?

David Abbey (01:22)
Yeah, that's actually a great place to start. I think that the term influencer marketing has just become marketing. And I think the term influencer marketing is a pretty large umbrella. And in there, you've got creators. I like to think them as everyone is a creator because they're creating some sort of content. I like to think about influencers as people who are getting paid. And you said that in your introduction, it's like a paid campaign or I'm paying Jordan. a thousand dollars in video, whereas an affiliate is someone who's going to be really happy to represent your brand because A, they love it, B, they get commissions and C, they get gifted products. And in that, right, they're all creators, but influencers are 250,000, 300,000, 500,000 followers. You're going to have to pay them to play. Affiliates are 150, 100 and even less that are just excited to be working with your brand.

And then the other term that kind of gets interchanged in there is an ambassador. An ambassador program is a collection of affiliates and brands can have 500 affiliates and four influencers or 40 influencers and one affiliate. And it's, again, it's what's gonna make it work really well for your brand, but that's the nomenclature and that's kind of who's who in the zoo as you think about it.

Jordan Buckner (02:39)
Yeah, you know, I like to think too a lot of times when at least I think about influence marketing, it's about awareness and visibility. Whereas affiliate is more around how can I incentivize and drive sales and get actual customers, right? And so there's different roles that they play. I think for a lot of smaller brands, they're like, I just need revenue. If views bring revenue, great. If someone's selling it brings revenue, great. But I think as you're kind of thinking about the larger marketing.

flow from how someone understands and hears about your brand, right? A lot of times it goes from awareness to someone considering your product, actually the making the decision point and what's gonna get them to order. And there's different types of content and different types of relationships and offers and deals and things that come into play as you're kind of moving throughout that sales or marketing funnel.

David Abbey (03:27)
⁓ I completely agree with you there. And just to add, there's been a, I'd say a bigger shift in the last two years of more and more brands actually going towards an affiliate and going towards those micro nano because they're relatable. And if I follow someone, say Jordan, you've got 2 million followers and you're like, it's so hot. love this Stanley. I know you're getting paid. I know that you're getting thousands of dollars for that video. Whereas if you're a friend of mine and you just happen to have a link to it, I'm more inclined to buy from you. And that's a very big.

difference and a very important one you said there is affiliates are really focused on revenue. Influencer paid campaigns are focused on awareness, likes and engagement. And I think there's a big difference there.

Jordan Buckner (04:07)
So I know a lot of brands have tried some version of influencers and affiliates, but as you've been working with brands, how do you think about setting up goals for what the program should accomplish? Is it setting like revenue marks? Is it setting certain numbers of creators? Like how do you think about like getting started and what it's gonna do for you and your business?

David Abbey (04:30)
Well, I think the first thing out of the gate is like, what are you doing? What is your strategy? Are you going for awareness? You want to be a household name and then you're going to go pay, or are you trying to build a program that is really like an always on revenue engine? And those aren't the same thing. And if you go into this being like, I'm going to try to do both, where you're going to fail spectacularly. Whereas if you can build a really good ambassador program and be like, I'm going for an always on.

revenue engine orders are going to be coming in. The byproduct of that is a community. It is UGC and it is your brand continually getting in in front of more and more people just under the size and scale of someone big. So once you were like, okay, I'm going to, you know, I'm a D to C brand. I mean, I'm wearing a built hoodie. It's like a very great example of a, of a D to C brand. They're like, look, I'm going to get, I want to build up to a hundred ambassadors. The 80 20 rule is

probably going to apply. So once I know what I'm going to do, then it's figuring out like, what do my ambassadors look like? And it's not necessarily a follower count. I think the one word that I would say is critical is alignment. When people like, if someone comes in and they say, I've tried affiliate influencer before and it didn't work. My first guess is who are the people, were they aligned with your brand? Did they make content that kind of resonates?

with you and it kind of really complements your brand and is their audience the right people? I don't want to be a jerk in saying this, but chances are if you've tried it and it failed, that's probably it. And so you're like, okay, I'm going to build an always on revenue channel over the next three to six months. I want to build up to a hundred ambassadors. I want them all to

If I'm a healthy lifestyle, I want fitness content, I want regular posting, want like sunshine and outdoors and like this. And once you figure out that is, then you can start to then build the structure into your program. But that's the core of it all from the beginning.

Jordan Buckner (06:25)
And then just in terms of expectations, right? Like a lot of people watching this, they're probably under five, $10 million in revenue. And they're like, okay, how much is this affiliate channel reasonably going to build for me? If I'm thinking revenue, it?

$10,000 a year kind of additional revenue directly from the program knowing it has these other halo benefits or can this get to like a hundred thousand dollar program? Of course it depends on like the brand, but like for those who are just kind of starting out with this that maybe like don't, they're not household names already kind of what, what can they

David Abbey (06:58)
it's a question. It's a very, very similar to like, long is a piece of rope? I've seen wildly successful programs and the ones that are the most successful are aligned from a brand to a, creator. Like they're one in the same. They're lockstep. the most successful programs that we see on our platform, they've brands have, you know, 500, 750 ambassadors and they're doing about a hundred thousand dollars a month.

and that is in commissions. So that is they're paying people after the sales have come in. But you should also understand this isn't gonna be an overnight success. Like the days of a product going viral on TikTok I think are kind of gone. So it's about building up a steady thing. So it's like, what am I gonna do in my first 30 days? I'm gonna get a handful of people, you you're gifting product and you're gonna start to see a little bit of traction. You're gonna see UGC start to surface and organic.

And then, know, first 30 days, next 60 days, now you're gonna start to see who's gonna perform. So some people that are actually gonna work up a little bit, and then you can actually start breaking them into tiers and then be like, hey, these are my stars. I'm gonna give them a little bit more commission. I'm gonna restock them with more product so that they can continually create UGC. They're continually getting my brand in front of their audience. And then you get into 90 days. Now you might even have taken some of those VIPs and moved them into a paid tier where you're boosting their content.

and now you're gonna start to see the engine run. And I don't wanna give you a dollar figure because it'd be very different if you had a $15 product versus a $100 product. But the point is that if your cost of acquisition based on a commission rate at discount is less than your other ad spend, if you're gifting ROI is positive, like I'm giving Jordan a product and he's getting two sales, and if your conversion on the website is strong.

Those are the metrics that are going to be more important in the early days than I made $100,000 because you're like, look, I got, started out with five people. I got to 20. Now I've got 50. I've got some really good people. I'm boosting the content. Um, and just for anyone listening to this, if you're taking someone's piece of content, you're going to put some ad dollars behind it. The industry standard is 10 % of the ad spend. So it's like, if it's a thousand dollar ad spend, you're giving them a hundred bucks. They're going to be pumped.

So now you're like, okay, I've got great, my cost of acquisition, I'm getting a solid gifting ROI, my conversion is there, my organic content is there, I'm boosting it. Now in those 90 days, now you've got a little bit of an engine running and then you can start to duplicate the process. And then you'll start to get your thousand dollars, $5,000, $10,000 a month. And your goal at the end of this is to be a predictable revenue channel. You're like, I know if I spend X on meta ads, I expect this. And I know if I have a hundred people and...

You know, I'm giving away this much product per month. I should be in this ballpark.

Jordan Buckner (09:40)
I think that's a good way of thinking about it because I feel like when most people fail, it's because they are thinking about it as one-off kind of gifting instead of building relationships over time. so talking about like, ⁓ kind of touched on there, but like what's that ultimate vision for these affiliates? Is it like someone who's getting your product, like using it every week, every month over the whole year, like for those VIP customers, they're like actually people who like love your product and they're just sharing about organically.

David Abbey (10:06)
Yeah, so the again, the best ones that I see a they're passionate about your product. They love your product. They're super happy to get in there. It's a little bit different. Of course, if it is a physical good, you don't need to send me a Stanley every month. I'm sure my wife and my daughters would appreciate it, but I'm good. But if it is a consumable product, the best thing you can do is always make sure that they have product available to create content. I mean, the other one that's just really pulls people in close is like, Hey, Jordan, we're

you know, some new flavors. Can I get some feedback from you? Or we're launching and only my VIPs get to launch with this product. You can reward these people in different ways without it just being monetary. That actually goes a really long way. even on the monetary side, think about a super simple tier structure. My base tier, everybody gets 10 % commission. My middle tier, everybody gets 15. My VIP tier, everyone gets 20. And then I've got some people that just...

outperform everything. I'm getting 25 because the amount of new customers they're bringing me is totally worth it and their content is like you and they're like, hey, you know, we really appreciate everything you've done. We're moving into the tier number two. In tier two, you get a t-shirt, you get monthly res or products restocked, you get more commission, you get to, you know, be involved in the flavor council. I don't know. But things that don't cost you money, but really start to strengthen that community.

And those are all the things that start with just like, what is my plan? Who do the people look like? And then what do I want to build it on?

Jordan Buckner (11:34)
I love that. And, you know, I think as we're kind of building out this program, I like that idea of, you know, having a goal of creating a base, right? It's building 50 affiliates over your first 30, 60, 90 days to like have that strong base to then see who are the people that are going to perform, who are the people who love your product and knowing that like,

not everyone will love it and want to use it and feel natural talking about it. then others are too. So let's talk through like how to actually find those people who love it. I don't know, like in my mind, I see it as ⁓ maybe two overlapping Venn diagrams. On one side, it's like people who are good at storytelling and selling. And then there's people who are good at, who actually like love your product. And it's finding that overlap in the middle, right?

David Abbey (12:23)
You're close and there might even be a three or four sided Venn diagram there. And I'll talk a little bit about Endless on this one specifically, because we see it coming a few different ways. If you're a brand that does have some social engagement already, your warmest market are people that are already tagging you. And in the Endless product, when you sign up, you type her in, Ed built, let's pretend.

And then we actually will pull up a social feed of everyone that is tagging your brand over the last three months. So the moment you sign in, you're like, oh, here's X number of people and you click on the report. then one of the features that everybody loves and analysts, we have what's called the performance report. So now I got everything about Jordan. I've got his engagement, his authenticity, his growth rate, his hashtags, his people that look like him. I've got his audience breakdown and I got all his content. I'm like, Jordan is already a customer of mine. He's already talking about my brand.

He's already tried my products. I'm gonna message him. Hey Jordan, it's David from BILT. We'd love to have you in our Ambassador program. One word, one keyword I might highly recommend when you're first starting and you are engaging a warm group, we would love you to be a founding ambassador. You're just adding one little founding word there. That really makes people feel super special. And it's such an easy one. So there's your warm market.

I've seen brands do it really well both in store and online is putting it on your Receipt whether it's a Shopify thing that comes or if it's even in story, you hey, we're starting an ambassador program You can apply here. No in Endlss. have our application for me fill it all out And when someone applies you can ask them personal questions like are you a customer? Do you know do you do this? Do you do that? But you also again get that performance report. So even before you're approving them

you're saying, if I'm gonna give Jordan some free products, because there is a cost to get associated to that, does that work? So this is a way for you to capture warm people in two different ways. on the, so that's inbound and warm. On the outbound thinking about just someone who's totally cold, there's two channels. One, you can use that listening feed again, but put in a hashtag, hashtag healthy meals. It's a pretty common one in the Foodbevy world.

Now here's a list of absolutely everybody using the hashtag healthy meals. Hey, Jordan's David. I saw that post you put up with hashtag healthy meals. I'm from blah, blah, blah brand. I really like your content. I'm starting an ambassador program. Would you be interested in a conversation about being a founding ambassador? Jordan's going to get that email. I was cool. on the other side of that, we have a discover feed where I type in a bunch of filters. So I'm looking for people that like healthy lifestyle that have this many followers that live here and do all these things.

And it'll give me this monster list and sometimes can be thousands. And you start building your list and then you actually start doing outbound like sales. It's the exact same thing. And that's how you start. But the other thing is that is then going to come down. So you say you get 10 people, you give them all product, they all make content. The thing is influencers follow influencers who follow influencers. And all of a sudden I see that, you know, this person is talking about this brand and I'm like, those products are really cool. And I go here.

What was the first thing I'm gonna do? Go to their website and see if there's an ambassador link in the bottom of their website and I'm gonna apply. And now you actually start to take your customers who are already talking about their product, who are actually pulling in other people. And again, it's this flywheel and it doesn't happen overnight. It could take 30 days, it could take 60 days, it could take 90 days. But once all those things are running, that's how you start scaling your product and start scaling that revenue.

Jordan Buckner (15:49)
I love that. Have you found any insights on finding people who make good affiliates? So in terms of who have actually a good conversion rate of like, at least sending people to your website, right? Like it's up to you to make sure your website is actually converting those people. But have you found any ways of filtering people who are good at like, who have an engaged audience who want to listen to them?

David Abbey (16:11)
⁓ it's hard to say that, but I would go back to that word. I, that one word I said earlier alignment, right? If, ⁓ like ketone IQ is a product that I absolutely love. Right. I think it's arguably one of the best supplement products out there. If I was following a creator who was not a fitness person and was like, yeah, ketone IQ, I'd be like, what is this versus ketone IQ? It's performance, right? It's.

all of their creators are fitness. They're like, look, when I'm working out and I'm tired and I don't have time to go to the meal, I take a shot of ketone IQ. I'm like, huh, I resonate with that problem. And I think that's an important piece. And that's where if people just spray and pray invites and gifting all over the internet, you're going to find like, oh, I gave away 40 gifts and only one person sold something. I'd be like, well, who'd you give the gifts to? And it does take a little bit of extra effort.

But it's worth its weight in gold when that engine starts running. So that would be the thing is when you're reviewing someone, if you want to work with them, go look at their content and see. It's kind of like a very nice visual resume. Would my brand fit with this person? Does my product fit with their lifestyle? Do the engagement or comments fit?

And all that data is visible in Endlss You're not digging and trying to that it's all right in front of you. So it's quite easy.

Jordan Buckner (17:34)
I love that. And so let's say you're starting to reach out, you may reach out to 200 people who get 50 to sign up as an ambassador. So how do you then start to, one, kind of create the right framework for them to post? Are you sending them like, hey, post this style of content or are you relying on them to just post whatever they want? And then two, how do you start to like build that relationship with them?

David Abbey (17:59)
Great question. So the first one in the micro nano world, you know when I say micro nano world I mean kind of sub a hundred thousand followers It's kind of a Tall ask to give them creative direction. I can't giving you this product for free. Can you please make this video exactly like this and say this? whereas The authenticity is kind of what the value is of them. So I would I would say you find Jordan. He's great

You send them a message, hey Jordan, know, it's David here. Love to be a founding ambassador. We're launching our program. Would you be interested? Yes, great. Great, I'm gonna send you some products. You know, I've seen, if you can actually reference, hey, I've seen some of your content before. I really liked the box opening you did with this brand. I really liked the way you incorporated that product. make the person feel like you actually care. I think that can go a long ways because a lot of brands will spray and pray.

and they'll get the same template a hundred times. And then again, you only have to do this for the small group. That is really the start of that relationship. As the brand, like, hey, if you can actually demonstrate that you've gone through his content, you do know why he fits the brand. Like, hey, look, I trust you're gonna make amazing content here. When you do get into a paid campaign down the road, so imagine...

You know, you've worked with Jordan for months and you're like, Jordan, we have relaunched a new product. I'm going to pay you $500 a month to make specific content for me. Now you can kind of give them a creative brief. This new product, it's got this flavor profile, or we want to really hit on these points. It's a different ask than just saying, here's some free product. you make content around it? Um, so that would be, and then that's the relationship. And one of the

Jordan Buckner (19:19)
Yeah.

David Abbey (19:37)
There's a brand that uses Endlss. They've got hundreds and hundreds of creators and they've actually organized their tiers in a way. It's clever. It's like operational logistics. So he's got everybody grouped into buckets of like when to engage, when to send gifts, when they create content. So he's actually able to communicate super effectively to 600, 700 people to keep everybody engaged, to keep that relationship close. And it's actually.

brilliant application

Jordan Buckner (20:04)
I love that. That's a really great way to think about it because I think it's like maintaining that relationship and thinking about it as a relationship, especially as you're starting to grow with them is so important versus just like ⁓ a mass email to the ethos.

David Abbey (20:17)
Yeah, and also

if your relationships are living in DMs and an email and in WhatsApp, it gets a pretty, pretty messy, pretty quick. We've built a whole communication product so that you can actually really manage, makes it easy to stand on top of those things. I guess is a better way. You can still forget about people, but we try to make sure you can talk people in because at the end of the day, these are your sales reps.

They are representing your brand. They're getting in front of new people every single day. Treat them as best as humanly possible and they'll treat you great back.

Jordan Buckner (20:47)
I love that. So in thinking about kind of gifting and scaling, right? Like how do you think about when you should send another product to an affiliate? And I guess, right, like the water bottle example, if you have just one, right? It's maybe, you re-engage with them every couple of weeks and like, hey, we'd love for you to like, is, we see people who post a video twice a month, three times a month can really grow their revenue, kind of communication like that. Or if you're a consumable brand, do you recommend sending like,

more product every month for three months to see what traction they get, any best practices.

David Abbey (21:21)
⁓

On the physical good one, it's a little trickier. mean, the hope, know, Stanley, they've done a great job in here. He has one is if it's a product that is just used in their daily life, it's less, probably less nudging, be like, Hey, can you make a video with your Stanley? it's probably always there. But it really depends on what the product is, the category and is there other things you can do along with it? If

I mean, think here, if it's a product that has a very specific application, you can always just send out ideas like, hey, send them creative ideas like, hey, just sending out some ideas for some videos this month. know, idea one, idea two, idea three. The consumable product one is a lot easier, obviously, is let's say in your, and this goes into your strategy. So you've got your base tier, in base tier, you get a free gift, you get 10%.

commission and your audience gets 10 % discount. To move into tier two, you have to get five sales in a month and then we move you up. And then in tier two, you get 10 % discount for your audience, 12 % commission, and you're eligible for monthly restocks. And then if you get five sales in a month, you move up to tier three and you get 15 % commission and you get monthly restocks. And then maybe they get your flavor A and flavor B, or if you're a makeup company, it's like give you the whole palette.

And it's gamifying their activity. It's like, if I do, if I, and people love that. And that's why we all play candy correction. That's why we all play, you know, whatever the block game is. People want to get to the next level and they want to know how they can get there. It's simple. And there's some really great brands that even on their ambassador page, like you go to the website and you click on the ambassador page, instead of just jumping straight into the form, they've

spent a bit of time and actually built a page like, hey, welcome to our ambassador program. You know, we've got tier A, tier B, tier C, and we've got this, the community, Bob, and we know, and we repost our content and we boost ads and we whitelist, and there's a lot of fun stuff here. People are gonna go like, okay, this is kind of cool. Like, A, I like the brand, I get free products, I can make money, I can upgrade, I get restocked, and people get excited about that.

Jordan Buckner (23:27)
I love that. think that's amazing. David, thanks so much for being on today and sharing about affiliate programs. I always love your expertise and you know all this because you run Endlist, which helps to organize, manage and scale affiliate programs. And one thing I love as well is that you are giving out, you know, a generous free tier of the platform. So you can sign up 50 affiliates at no cost to get started. so like for all of our list, yeah.

David Abbey (23:52)
to the food baby

Jordan Buckner (23:54)
Just for food, bevy people. So I appreciate that. And so just, you know, I highly recommend that you try it out, get on the platform because it's like a platform doesn't make it, but it helps you organize everything. So you can actually run your affiliate program seriously and get everything done in one place so that you can run it and you don't let it try to overrun you.

David Abbey (24:13)
Couldn't agree more. Well, thank you very much for having me. We love working with you and obviously all the brands that from Foodbevy that we work with are fantastic.

Jordan Buckner (24:20)
Awesome. Thanks so much, David.

David Abbey (24:22)
Alright, enjoy your day.