Ever wondered how to take your e-commerce store to the next level by harnessing the power of affiliate marketing? Get ready to learn from the innovative mind of Noah, the founder of Social Snowball, as he takes you through the intricacies of this game-changing marketing technique. Gain insights into the world of metrics and revenue sharing, and discover how Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) can determine the health of your Shopify App business – a stark contrast to the e-commerce health metric, contribution margin.
Noah’s journey from an e-commerce background to the world of Software as a Service (SaaS) is a captivating one. He shares his experiences, challenges, and the pitfalls he encountered along the way – offering valuable lessons for those considering a similar transition. We delve into software development, discussing how it can enhance affiliate marketing, and how complacency can lead to larger companies missing out on the latest trends. We also explore Social Snowball's progress and the unique solutions it offers to its users.
As we look into the future of marketing, we explore the potential of AI-influencers and the customization of affiliate sign-ups using AI. We discuss the implications of long-term contracts in the app market and how customer retention should be merit-based. Noah also shares insights about the significance of correct terminology while discussing different types of marketing partnerships, setting the stage for a clear understanding of the marketing landscape. Join us for a remarkable journey into the world of e-commerce and how affiliate marketing, with the help of innovative software, can significantly elevate your business.
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Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to e-commerce gold tropical edition. You're joining me today with Noah from social snowball. Noah, give everyone an introduction as to who you are and what you do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm the founder of social snowball, which is an affiliate marketing platform for e-commerce. I've been doing that for about four years, but we launched two and a half years ago officially. Before that, I come from an e-commerce background. on the merchant side of things. It was building stores, running ads deep in that whole world. Then we could dive more into this, but basically it was just pretty fed up with the existing affiliate marketing solutions for Shopify. That's what led to the idea of social snowball.
Speaker 1:Yeah, man, what is an affiliate marketing? How do you describe it? What did you call it?
Speaker 2:Affiliate marketing software. What does it do? In general? affiliate marketing software, an affiliate partnership, is basically just a partnership with. it could be a creator, it could be a blogger, it could be a customer, just anyone who's going to be able to refer you sales and you only pay them on a performance basis If they drive a referral. if they refer a customer, you can pay them like a $5 commission or 20% of the sale commission, whatever it is. Software is needed to facilitate these partnerships, basically because you have to give them codes and links for attribution and for incentives. You have to track all their sales. You have to give them a sign up form to onboard, You have to turn a customer into affiliate post purchase and welcome them to the program. You need to send them emails. You need to send them commission payments. Sometimes you're going to send them gifts. Essentially, social snowball is the software, the control center to manage and maintain that relationship.
Speaker 1:We're on a limited timescale today, folks, because I've just been informed that Noah has in fact eaten at what we call a warong over here in Bali. A warong is essentially a place that does not prepare their food in a particularly sanitary environment. In fact, chicken is left out often for days, washed by hand in the local gutters, Oh for sure In buckets on the side of the road, just in the sun, sweating. Yeah man, I've seen some incredible things in the way that that food is treated. If Noah runs off screen very, very quickly, you know where he's gone and I'll have to carry on the show solo.
Speaker 2:But let's pray that he's okay, I've been on a room vendor for the past five days. My roommates and I literally have just been trying all these because we've just been getting really into Indonesian food After so much like mediocre Western food. We're just like, screw it, let's just only eat Indonesian food for a while. But there are some pretty Westernized warongs, which is the ones that we've been going through transparently, except for some exceptions.
Speaker 1:But Dude, you either have a stomach of steel or you've been incredibly lucky and I would go and buy a lottery ticket because, if it catches up to me and my fiance had food poisoning not too long ago and honestly, it was the worst I've ever felt. I would rather have taken a pill and just blacked out for four days. So just pinch of salt, my man Pinch of salt.
Speaker 2:I did get Bali-Bali when I first arrived. Yeah, i fully did not shit solid for like almost two weeks, maybe Maybe two full weeks, of just pain every time I eat, no matter what I would eat. But then I feel like I got over and I think my stomach is like used to the Bali food. Fair enough, you can eat anything. Maybe I'm just lucky. Maybe I'm just lucky If that's the case.
Speaker 1:You can eat off the road if you want, because it is serious out here Potent stuff, anyway, enough of that. So, social Snowball, give us a quick back story as to Because you're a young guy and it's an innovative tool And we had a chat last time about some of the difficulties when building an app And I just want to give. I mean, most of the listeners are brand owners, right, and they think they've got a tough job with building up products and they do, but they also don't necessarily understand the complexities of SaaS. It's not all 92% margins, folks, It is. It can be tough. It's a tough world out there. So just give us an idea of some of the things you've overcome on this path to your app.
Speaker 2:I mean, dude, it's just so different from like, because I'm coming from the e-commerce background And that was my only professional experience of any type back then, so I just kind of assumed everything would be similar, like if you start a business. It's kind of a similar roadmap And I just could not have been further from correct, just could not have been. I mean, getting the product built, like you know, my e-commerce brand was like I'll hire an agency that builds apps, i'll have them build an app, i'll tell them what I want it to do And they'll just build it exactly how I want it to work. And then to get customers, i'll do the same thing that I always do to get customers I'll run ads, they'll sign up, put in their credit card, they'll pay me for eternity because it's recurring revenue, and then I'll just keep doing that And I'll just keep getting customers and my MRR will just skyrocket because they always pay me every month because it's software And that's what software does, right? It's recurring. That's the dream I've been sold. So that was like my mindset going into it. And then I mean there's so much, so many smaller stories to dive into here, but basically, like everything, obviously I was completely wrong. So like hiring an agency to build the product, i found an agency. They told me they could build me like the MVP of a minimum bible product in three months And I basically first red flag right there big red flag And it was also too cheap. Like I was just paying this out of pocket as well, so I couldn't like spend too much money, but like the price, the price tag was too cheap And anyway, like I just gave them like a really detailed Google doc When you're mind just slightly more.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a pretty Nath Mikey's name. I saw the gold, but it's it's not premium.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I just gave them a Google doc of everything I wanted to do, like down to details, like you click this button, this happens, whatever. And then that was really all I could do. I don't know how to code, i don't know how to even talk to a developer, so that was just it. And then, like I said, they told me three months and it took 15 months before I ended the contract early with them because it still wasn't complete And it's still like it was full of bugs, it wasn't working, it would crash, like just everything that could have gone wrong went wrong. And again, 15 months, like over a year, of just like me kind of just waiting and following up with them, and every month you know how it is, they're like you know, oh, next month, one more month, we're almost there, just have to do this XYZ. So that in itself was a disaster. And then I thought like okay, now, okay. Then I finally fired them. I got a contractor to like a very senior contractor that used to work at Yahoo to come in and he was way more expensive. But I was like I need someone who actually knows what they're doing, and he got the app from broken to working enough that we could submit it to the Shopify app store like there are no like bugs in literally like two weeks, like that just kind of was like a learning lesson for me with the difference between a bad and a good developer was. So we submitted to the Shopify app store, we launched And then dude I mean the rest, like I still kind of was with the mindset, oh now I have working app, all I have to do is run ads. And like we did try running ads And like I mean it was just disaster after disaster with that, but essentially we still didn't have an app that was really like could compete in the market with other affiliate marketing tools for another, honestly, like a year and a half after that, and that year and a half consisted of more bad developers because that one good contractor only stayed for a couple of weeks. So I mean my whole. I mean there's so much to dive in here, but my whole mindset with it was way off. And now I shifted completely after many, many falls to the feet, like falling on my face and learning curves etc.
Speaker 1:Not all developers are created equal folks. I've worked with my first sharing. Before I got into any of this e-commerce stuff, i was working at an app development agency. This was back in 2017. And I was I came in as a sort of onboarding stroke, sales, kind of a multi role And we had these developers, two banks of developers. One bank was front end and the second bank was back end and they sort of sit and at the end was their scrum master. And we get calls that come in, people like yourself wanting to build an app, and I take those calls and I write down the requirements and it wouldn't be much more than that. And I go over to the lead developer and I say, right, these are the requirements. They want it on these platforms. This is a sort of functionality they want. How long is it going to take? roughly every single time, no matter what I said in that conversation, hano Amigo would say 300 hours. Every time you say what? 300 hours. No matter what how much it takes to build flavor 300 hours. How much to build Facebook 300 hours. No matter what I said, it was always 300 hours And that just gives you some insight into this was a professional agency, app development agency. You know, minimum viable product would cost you 60 K. Oh, one platform from these guys. So I mean, it's just, it's just guesswork, until you get to a point where you have a fully functioning technical specification, which was often hundreds of pages long, as well, as, you know, wireframes and all the other things that go into this. You know, and it constantly changes, and then if the client changes their mind about one thing, it can affect the whole thing And it's just like, my God, it's an absolute minefield. So I get your mentality running into it like, oh, just build, now you'll do this.
Speaker 2:It's unfair Because, like having an ecommerce background, it kind of tricks you to that like marketing is what the biggest focus of a business is And for ecommerce, like you see, like if you're on ecommerce Twitter, like marketing is the hottest topic because it's like exciting and it's fun And it is where the founders usually obviously there's exceptions put the most of their focus into. With software, at least for me, like now obviously, like before I didn't really know what I was doing, but now, like almost all my focus goes into product because that's like the most important and fun. In my opinion, exciting part of the business And like that was to. That was like a big mindset shift for me that I had to learn, basically shifting from an ecommerce business to a software business.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and there are tons of like minefields as well on there where you might build your app. And then, because you're on a budget, because you're prelaunch, you build your app in a certain way And then you go great, we got to that milestone And now we want to add this feature. And your developers turn around and go, yeah, that's going to be really fucking difficult to do, because you've built it in this way. Yeah, exactly, and you just don't get that in ecommerce, where it's like, oh, i've got this product and I want to iterate and do five more colors in a slightly different shape of this product, like cool. And the fact is like yeah, no worries, yeah, you can't do that in software, can you?
Speaker 2:No, definitely not. I mean, well, you can, but you not always. And there's definitely been a lot of things that I wanted to build really bad. And then just the way our database was structured didn't make it impossible, but it just made it way harder than it seems. Just random little things can feel so easy to someone who doesn't understand what really goes into it. And then just because the way we structured some, just the way a developer that we hired from Upwork three years ago structured something it's going to be hard to build today. So it's just a new set of challenges. I'm definitely not saying ecommerce is easy There's a lot that goes into that but it's just different challenges. So I kind of had to learn those new challenges and new areas of focus, pivoting from two completely different business models.
Speaker 1:Man, it's so true, And actually I think where you get some benefits in SaaS is obviously in the margins and in the recurring revenue. But you also you lose. I mean, some things are just on hard mode. Customer service is one, and I remember from from from back in the day, another company that I was working with. It was a SaaS tool. The customer would come in and they'd have this problem. In your case it might be that they're manually reaching out to influencers and it was taking a team of five ages to do. You know X, y, z I'm sure you can give a better example And you said great, i've got this solution, it's going to solve that problem for you. And you solved that problem for them really, really well. And then a month later they've forgotten they ever had that problem. They're like why can't it do this? Why can't it do this? I'm pissed off with this. It's limited. Why can't I do this? And you go well, yeah, but you've gone from zero to 10 in like a month. Now you want to go 10 to 100 in month two. It's not how shit works, like there are so many things that you just psychologically and nuanced with SaaS that you just have you found that is customer service, customer care, a difficult thing, definitely.
Speaker 2:I mean, i would say customer service, specifically, is actually a lot easier with B2B just because, like there's more reason and like there's just more reason than logic, like I mean any e-commerce founder operator, whatever, knows that like there's just always there's a guaranteed going to be some customers in their you know, live chat or whatever email that I just can't reason with them. They're just completely insane. And like you just have to deal with that. It's part of the business. With B2B. There's some of that, of course, but people are a little bit more reasonable and you can mess up a few times And as long as you were like communicating people are understanding, they get it. They're a business owner, they know how hard it is, they know that you're going to mess up here and there, they get it. Like okay, like we, you know we, this, this one feature isn't working today. We're going to fix it as fast as possible. Like they get it. Like if, if a product, you ship some of the product and it doesn't work, even if you offer a refund, like sometimes, like they're always going to freak out on you and like curse at you and there's nothing you do, like that's, that's more rare with B2B, but then as far as like the never ending treadmill of new features like that is definitely how it is And that's like the biggest reason I think that I'm so, or one of the big reasons I'm so focused on products, is because it's like it is. What drives the business forward. Is, you know, like people, when someone's making a decision which affiliate marketing software I'm going to use, it is like, of course, reputation matters and brand matters and content honestly does matter and everything does matter. But at the end of the day, it's not just acquiring, it's acquiring and retaining that customer. It comes down to the product. Do you have the features we want? Is yours the most customizable? Is it the most configurable? Can we do anything that we want? if we decide to pivot our strategy later, can your app still support that? So little things like that are definitely a never ending treadmill. But you know, once you figure out a group, that you could really release and ship these things fast. That's when it becomes fun because, like right now, you know we have like a really strong team and I'm sure it's only going to get stronger, but it feels strong now, at least compared to what we have had in the past, and we definitely get these requests out for new features really fast or feels really fast, and then when we show someone like Hey, you requested this and we actually built it, that's a loyal customer. Then Like that's kind of how we've won people over in the long run is just like okay, yes, we don't have this feature now, but close your eyes for two weeks and open them again and you'll see it there, and like that definitely goes a long way.
Speaker 1:After a decade ago, when I was messing around with Magento, we were quoting apps at 60,000 per platform iOS, android, designed and developed, starting from and companies were buying them because it was such an incredible return on investment. Now, in today's world, in the world of Shopify, tapcar exists and it flawed me when I heard that they were going to offer you the ability to have an app in under four weeks. Not only that, that, they design it for you at least the first version and show it to you with a business case without you having to spend a penny. Seriously, you can go and check it out push notifications, retention, loyalty it's all at your doorstep. Yeah, 100%. You see that a lot of the only with like incumbents. So someone like Clavio or Mailchimp So they actually did it to Mailchimp, didn't they? Mailchimp got complacent, they won the market to some degree and then they were like ah, cool, we're like the kings. Now It's only downhill from here. There's someone like Clavio came along and was like no, we're going to outwork you, we're going to out hustle you and we're going to get there. And now they're kind of doing that. And you've got people like Sendline, sendline, sendlane, coming in, true, and like trying to dethrone them. So it's like, yeah, there's always that David and Goliath thing and you're moving fast and trying to get rid of them, which is awesome. I think that's how it's got to be done Since capitalism.
Speaker 2:Yeah, literally.
Speaker 1:But why everyone gets so complacent. I wonder if it's just. You become a bigger ship, you become more corporate. Things take longer. You have longer processes. It must be something to do with that.
Speaker 2:It's harder to move fast. I think when you're a big company, there's just like everything you just said there's more processes, there's more there could be like politics in the company. There's just like random stuff, that like. When you're a small company, a team of five people like you just do the work, you manage yourself, like everything just gets done. There's no like hierarchy or I don't know. It's just less simpler, i think.
Speaker 1:Yeah, 100%. So how long social snowball been going now? So we launched two and a half years ago. Can you give us a quick rundown of the business currently, how it sits in terms of, like, any financials you want to share or any size of company you want to share, to give people a paint, a picture for people about what this company looks like right now? Totally.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we have just about exactly 1400 brands using the product.
Speaker 1:Holy shit, yeah, congratulations. I told him last time when we met for coffee he needs to raise his fucking prices.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a work in progress. I mean, yeah, So we can talk about that if you want. But so yeah, 1400 merchants. We have a team of eight full-time team members and we're hiring our ninth. Now I don't share revenue anymore. I actually used to share revenue, Something I've been going back and forth on. I just feel like there's no need for people to know anymore. I think when we were doing smaller numbers, I was like it was fun to share it And like that hype from people on Twitter because they're like rooting for me and stuff. But I feel like we've gotten to a point where it's just like I don't need, like I don't really want to tell people. I mean I would tell you, but I just don't want to like say it on a podcast.
Speaker 1:Yeah Yeah. There's definitely a culture at the moment of some people who are running apps with, like, their MMR number or MRR Yeah.
Speaker 2:MMR.
Speaker 1:New number and just like like sharing that very openly. And then there's others that just you know, you do feel need. I don't know whether I would or not, but actually the metric that I find most important maybe yourself.
Speaker 2:I think it is the most important metric.
Speaker 1:Well, maybe for your pocket or for the companies, just for the company, like with.
Speaker 2:MRR is how we hire people and spend money on marketing and anything like it. All comes from that. It's like the health of the business is.
Speaker 1:MRR. That's interesting. Let's look at that as a contrast to e-commerce. So what's the health metric for e-commerce? What do you say? It's kind of fun.
Speaker 2:I don't know. That's a whole can of worms. I've definitely not qualified to say Well let's say it's contribution margin. Let's work off something like that.
Speaker 1:Ultimately, the bottom line is the P&L. Right At the end of the day, that's any business That is the magic number But if you were to look at, you know your monthly P&L or your contribution margin. So when you're looking at MRR, what are some of the levers you have available to you to influence that number? Like, what are the main things you can do to make that go up? Acquisition and retention.
Speaker 2:I mean, if we can solve this merchant's issue that they're dealing with, because we have really good support and we jump on a call with them and they were really frustrated but then we fix it for them and they're happy. That's, you know, however much a month of revenue that we aren't going to lose, and that's something I can control, you know my team can control. And then acquisition obviously it's a little bit less straightforward. Oh, i would say retention is equally less straightforward, because it's more than just support, it's obviously product as well. But acquisition, i mean that's obviously a huge lever. Like we're pushing content out into the world so people can discover us. We're trying to be in as many places as once. And then when someone's ready to make a decision on which affiliate marketing software they want to use, we want them to know about us, we want them to have heard about us. We want them to know not just about our content as far as, like influencer marketing strategy and referral strategy, but we want them to know that our product is really strong, because we're loud about our product releases as well. So those are the levers that we have the most control over to make that number go up.
Speaker 1:All right, let's double click. I hate saying that on acquisition then. So you said then if someone is looking for X, you want to be in that consideration. It makes a lot of sense. But that's technically a little bit further down the funnel than discovery, where a lot of brands in e-commerce plays obviously discovery and they nurture from that point down the funnel. So do you play a little bit further down in that funnel?
Speaker 2:We do. But yeah, we do. Are you saying like we do the awareness and the nurturing?
Speaker 1:Yeah, So, like in what you just said there, for me was like someone has a need and you want to be there to be like hey you want this thing or you're trying to solve this problem. We need to make sure we show up as a solution to your problem, whereas do you go one or two steps further back in that purchase journey and say, hey, this could be a problem for you that you don't know about yet.
Speaker 2:Yeah, definitely That's part of the content strategy. The content strategy is education on the problem, because if you have been using spreadsheets your whole life to manage affiliates, let's just say, and you've been sending payouts manually through PayPal, maybe you didn't realize how much better it could be. You might be just cruising along doing that and not even realize that you could probably scale this way higher and save tons of human capital, hours of actually doing this work, if there was a software that automated all the stuff that you're doing manually. So maybe you didn't know it was a problem. So, yeah, i mean, that's just one example too. There's a lot of little problems that we're solving right, but yeah, it's definitely just part of our content strategy is just education on the problems, case studies on how other people have solved it. Strategy in general, obviously, product updates, stuff like that. So, yeah, it's a little bit of both. But even if someone wasn't looking for a solution, we still want to be putting content in front of them and educating them on problems that maybe they are facing, maybe they're not, but maybe they have a friend that's facing it all. Everyone who does e-commerce is talking to each other, so we just want to be out there as much as possible.
Speaker 1:Yeah, content's huge. I remember when I first started in SaaS, we were made to read a book by the Hathaway Group I don't know if you've heard of it called Spin Situation Problem. Implication Need Payoff. I've heard of it yeah, yeah, so it's a methodology for selling early SaaS, still somewhat applicable today. But you essentially present a situation. You present a problem associated with that situation. You set an implication for the problem of that situation. Then you set your need payoffs and that need payoffs generally as part of what you can solve. So, for example, we had the software. We were doing was automating service engineers who used to go out with paper. So the situation would be what would happen if a service engineer bought their bit of paper back to the office and had missed some information or had a coffee saying on it you couldn't read it properly, something like that. The problem with that would be you wouldn't be able to charge a client, or what implication of that is? well, the company's going to lose money. How many times could that happen over a month? Okay, and the need payoff is. Well, our solution is all digital, so you don't need the paper. Or if there was a fire in your office? So the idea being is that you have all of these scenarios around the situation. They don't actually know it's a problem. Yet That makes sense. You solve all of those and then you present those back. This was back in the day when most of these conversations happened over phone and demos. Today it's a little bit different, especially in the Shopify world. I mean, how have you adapted to that? Because I know for me, when I'm exploring apps and when I'm installing apps on the store, i'm opening up six tabs, i'm typing in a key search, so I'm into the app store. I'm finding the ones that have the best reviews. I'm opening five, six of them and I'm going to try each one. Within 10 minutes of trying each one, i'm going to know does that work for me or not? The things that I'm looking at are is there a support agent online? What happens if there's not? What's that look like? The application is easy to use. You have to fuck around with the theme code or anything like that. Can I just plug it in? There's a number of criteria to make me even try. Literally yesterday, i was trying different apps for a particular thing. Is that just because I'm? is that a certain way, or do you think most people do that? I think a lot of brands do that.
Speaker 2:Or maybe the smaller ones. Maybe I think it's well, i think it is the smaller ones, but I think it's also when you're those Shopify apps and correct me if I'm wrong, but I'd imagine the Shopify apps that you're doing that type of tests to aren't like a full platform. I'm trying to think of the best way to word this. Maybe it's like an upsell app and it's like adding something to your post purchase page and thank you page, et cetera. Maybe you just want to see how easy this is to set up an upsell but, like the relationship that you maintain with the app is a lot less. It's just different than the relationship you maintain with the platform that you use to manage influencers. That is like a it's not I don't want to say more important, but kind of more important decision And I feel like the decision making process for a platform like social snowball it takes a lot. I mean, I'm sure we've had people do that. I know I'm positive we've had and I'm sure we've gotten customers from that. But I think just reputation and brand and hearing like if you were to make a decision on such a like on a platform like social snowball, i feel like you're going to talk to your friends in the e-com. You're going to dig around a little deeper than just installing the app, clicking through it, seeing if live support is online and then uninstalling the five out of six that didn't make the cut. I think it's just different. But I would like to, like I genuinely would love to hear from you, like is it all apps that you're doing for that Like for something like social snowball? would you do the same type of decision making process or would it be a bit different?
Speaker 1:Rewind really is table stakes for any e-commerce store. It backs your store up consistently and it offers you an undo button just in case something was to go wrong on your store which, let's be honest, can happen. And it also provides you a staging environment so that you can have a carbon copy of your live environment to do all your good testing on your QA, try new ideas and not have to worry about breaking something on the live environment. Check code conflicts, app conflicts, everything in between It's a must-have going to stall it. So for that particular one, it was for an event ticket booking system. So the company in question was a museum. They have a shop, but they said can we do events through? So can we like do private tours and things like that through this platform rather than using Eventbrite? And I was like I don't really know, it's not really what shopwise geared for, but I think why not? There's a few options available. Most of them are crap, Not crap, but didn't fit the needs of me or them, and so just try a few And got one that ultimately was okay, but I had to work with the live chat to get it where I needed it, and so I think you're right. Like something like Influencer. There's probably a team within a brand that's already managing this. They have processes and they're going to do proper due diligence on what do we actually need. If we're going to have a meeting about it, they're probably going to refine it down to a few. They'll probably go to your website and others. So I guess it's a different consideration. So that's the app portion I wanted to do on the show. So that was kind of maybe for people who are out there building an app or looking to build an app, which isn't our usual audience, but I thought it'd be interesting because I have you here just to discuss that. Is there any tips to someone who might be sitting there thinking I'm going to build an app around the Shopify ecosystem? Like, what would you say to yourself if you would start this again? Good, question.
Speaker 2:I think just a lot of stuff I said is the biggest focus is product, not marketing, and marketing and products kind of overlap when you're working with software. Second thing is just like you want to set yourself up for success in the beginning, which I really didn't We had to rebuild a lot of things, and I'm talking technically, like we had to rebuild a lot of things that were built poorly. Make sure you're working with good developers And obviously finding a technical co-founder is the best way to go if you trust that person, because the technical co-founder doesn't have to be a great developer. But if you are going to like you know I'm assuming these people are non-technical. Also, if you are going to launch a software company and you're non-technical, like there are some websites that make it like they vet developers before you can hire them. So, like the one that I've used that I actually had a good experience with was lemonio. I don't know what their exact process, so definitely do your own due diligence on this, but they definitely vet developers pretty extensively before you could even talk to one And like for me not knowing how to vet a developer and not having other developers on my team that could vet developers like we do today, like that's actually really valuable for me. So I would look into resources like that. But I can't emphasize enough how important it is that the infrastructure for this business is sound and technically stable, even when it scales And when you change your mind and you iterate and you pivot like you want to, you want to build something that's really going to last And, honestly, to this day, like we still are rebuilding stuff and restructuring things from the mistakes that I made back then. So I think that just I can't emphasize enough how important that kind of stuff is You're talking about the architecture of the solution, right? Yeah, i'm talking about like literally, like, just like technique, like all the only technical stuff. like not not talking about how you like position yourself, i'm talking about like the database structure, like the like little things that I have no insight on, like those really really matter.
Speaker 1:Yeah, i think so. I think there's to add to that. just my own little experience would be find someone that can architect the solution, like you said, and make it scalable, but also find someone that either knows exactly what they're talking about The thing I don't know if you share this but developers they don't know everything about every platform, so they're always going to have a bias towards what they understand and what they know. So I remember you saying that you use AWS service or something like that, which are a scalable solution. We used to use them a lot with Magento. you don't have to worry about servers with Shopify, but there are tons of other options. but it depends on the person who speaks to you, right? That technical director might just be really well vetted in AWS, whereas another one might know like their own database system, and then I want to build it out on like some kind of cloud based infrastructure that they build from the ground up, but it just really does depend. So you just got to be so careful about who you choose, like you said. And then also money wise, like what would you say is a minimum site requirement to do this properly?
Speaker 2:So the awesome thing about finding a technical co-founder is that it's basically free because you have someone with equity in the business who's building it for you. If you're literally just paying a freelancer I mean, every app is different, right? And the most important thing, i think, is that you are shipping an MVP like a minimum viable product, like you want the first version of the app to be the absolute, absolute, absolute, absolute minimum smallest version it could be. That still provides the value that you're going for, not a feature more, not one customization more, not a pixel more like that's, i think, the most important. That MVP threshold is going to be different for everyone depending on what the app is, but I would just give a number like $50,000, something like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, i think that's about reasonable. I used to think it could be done on Lex, but I just don't think you can. Even if you're not paying yourself, i think it's still. You still have to have cash in the game to be able to start one of these things and do it. Well, okay, final, final question before we move on to the actual influence part of this. You know what I'm going to throw up on there, just checking.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, so good.
Speaker 1:We're going to do it.
Speaker 2:We might have to hit another room after this.
Speaker 1:I'm vegan as well, so.
Speaker 2:I know right.
Speaker 1:But I still got sick, So in fact it was from a cafe just over here, like, yeah, you're going to avoid it. It's given me serious hallucinogenic nightmares. Right, i forgot the question. Anyway, it's, let's move into the segment about influences, because we often get the take from a brand like, oh yeah, we use influencers and this is the things we're doing and this is how we're doing them. But you might be able to give us a unique perspective on, like, the macro, because you see both sides Right. So do you? who do you pitch to? You pitch to the brands, right, but isn't there an equal amount that you need to pitch to influencers, or do they just get plugged in by the brand?
Speaker 2:Yeah, the brand makes the decision, The influencer goes along. Obviously, influencers have preferences and that is a decision. That's a decide that could be deciding factor for the brand. But it's the brand's decision because they're the ones paying. You know who pays, the one who pays, the one who makes the decision. The influencers kind of have to go along with, or maybe the influencer, if they hate a platform, be like I'm not going to work with this brand. But it's still the brand's decision. So we only pitch the brands.
Speaker 1:Give me a rundown of the actual solution then, just so I've got some some ammo to fire at you. What are the features and functions of the system that you're offering?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So there's really like two main use cases, but it's all around affiliate. So it's like let's. I'll talk about the first one. Let's say there's an influencer you find on TikTok that you really want to partner with. Okay, so how are they going to sign up to a program? Okay, you have to either like add them in or create a signup form. So maybe you create a signup form. You want it to look like the rest of your website, so you have to customize it. And then you want to put it in the footer navigation of your website. So you create a signup page. Now influencers that you want to partner with can go there and sign up. Then, when they sign up, you know what is what means that they're in the program. How are you going to track their sales? How do you make the partnership official? They need to have like a code or a link or both that they could go and share with their audience. So the software needs to generate a code and link, and then they probably want to track their sales as well. The influencer wants to know how they're doing, so we have to give them a dashboard where they could log in, they could see their code and link, they could track their sales. And then you know, obviously the brand wants to track the sales as well. So we have to give like reporting to the brand on all the stats of the how the influencers are performing. And then beyond that, it's like you know, obviously we have to pay out the influencers. Like the brand has a send payment, so there needs to be software that allows you to send payments to the influencers. You know you might want to send a gift to an influencer, because how are they going to get make content if they don't have a product? and manually creating orders and Shopify is not a very scalable process. So we have, you know, functionality to automate gifts. And maybe after an influencer starts killing it, you want to reward them with a higher commission. So we could create tiers that after you know any performance milestone. But let's just say, like, after your first 20 sales, instead of a 10% commission you get a 15% commission. So basically just stuff like that. It's really like our software comes in. It begins when you have an influencer that you want to partner with And then it's, for the rest of your relationship with them, everything you need to do to manage them, to track the other performance and just kind of like, keep that relationship healthy and live, communicate with them emails, sms, whatever you're going to do. Social Snowball is like the control center where all of that lives. So that's like that's big use case one. The second big one is like turning customers into affiliates, so like instead of just like giving customers like, oh, i like that.
Speaker 1:It's a good feature. I like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's really powerful And so, instead of because you know, the alternative is like one of these like refer a friend programs where it's like, oh, give your friend a coupon, the $5 off coupon, and you'll get a $5 coupon. But like that's making a lot of assumptions. What if you have a brand with out a lot of LTV? someone doesn't want to coupon as an incentive, but that's the only incentive that these programs offer. What if? what if you just do have a brand without a lot of LTV but this particular customer doesn't feel like buying again in the near future because they don't need to like you still want, they still might love your brand, that you still want them to drive referrals, but the coupon incentive is broken or at any loyalty incentive points. like any of those people, it's assuming that people want it, but it's really more of a loyalty play than an acquisition play and referral program should be just focused on a customer acquisition. So, essentially, when you turn customers into affiliates and you make that user experience really smooth, your customers are equipped with incentives that are actually aligned with the end goal of driving customer acquisition and revenue, because people want cash and even after people have received just three cash payouts. they still want cash. After someone receives four coupons, they might not want another coupon because they don't need it.
Speaker 1:Especially if you're selling something like a fucking sofa or something. Say that again Especially if you're selling something like a sofa. You know Right, How many coupons do you need?
Speaker 2:But if a sofa, the AOV is so high, you could offer like a $300 commission, like that's a real incentive. So we're basically just kind of like rethinking the traditional refer a friend model by turning customers into actual affiliates And the incentives is just one piece of it. The affiliate model is a scalable customer acquisition engine, Just revolved around customer acquisition. Instead of like a refer a friend program that's like is this a royalty program? Is this customer acquisition Like what's really going on here?
Speaker 1:How close is it to a pyramid?
Speaker 2:scheme. Turn with your pyramid scheme? Not at all, because with a pyramid scheme there's like levels, so every customer is an affiliate. But if they refer a friend that to buy and that customer also becomes an affiliate, they don't get any piece of that.
Speaker 1:Maybe you should put that in, maybe We actually have gotten requests, but I don't like MLM Fair enough. Okay, that's, that's sick. So how many? how many influencers on average does a company have? But what's the average number in?
Speaker 2:your solution. So I mean it depends on so many things If they're turning customers into affiliates, like we have brands like with around a million affiliates because, all of their customers are enrolled into the program, but obviously that's like on the very high side. I suppose they're not all active as well. Right, right, right In that case, yeah, but obviously if a brand is like just partnering with influencers and doing outreach, maybe they're onboarding like a hundred a month or something And they're just like reaching out to as many influencers as possible, anyone who replies that they're interested maybe they're sitting during a seating campaign they'll just onboard them into the affiliate program. So you know most brands that are doing that strategy ballpark like a hundred a month and new influencers or something like that, maybe.
Speaker 1:So you know the brand, you know the brand industry that they're coming from and you know the influencers they're working with. Are you able to right? So say, i'm like a I'm a brand that sells iPhone cases, right, for example, and I'm like I'm an established brand and I'm using like my 500 influencers that I've built up over time. And then I'm in another brand and I've got I sell smartphone cases, but maybe or maybe I sell a different accessory, maybe I sell smartphone charges, right. Can I get access to those influence? Is there rules around that? Like, can you, because you know, like, oh, i know who these influencers are and I know the industries that they work well in. Like, are you able to?
Speaker 2:package that up. It's a good question. It's a really good question. So what you're basically describing as like a marketplace, essentially affiliates can see other similar brands offers. We actually very intentionally do not offer that Interesting And the reason why, although there is some value that could be created from it, the way we view affiliate is as an owned audience channel and essentially an owned customer acquisition channel, and I think that that holds more more more value than a lot of people are thinking and especially looking forward. Like brands are kind of getting fed up with the unreliability of acquisition channels that they can't own, like Facebook and Google, and we are offering a channel that they do own. So every affiliate that a brand on boards that's their owned audience and we respect it that way. So imagine a brand works really hard to onboard an affiliate on TikTok and like an influencer and then the influencer signs up and then, as soon as they sign into social snowball, they see like oh my God, this other brand sells the same product and gives double commission. I'm going to hop here. This brand lost their owned audience channel, like their owned audience member.
Speaker 1:And they brought that person in right And they were the ones to bring it to the platform. They were the ones that worked hard.
Speaker 2:It's like when you have an SMS list, like those customers are in, like getting sent other offers from other similar brands because you didn't opt for that. It's they're your customers, they're your subscribers. you own that, so you protect that for the brand. We view an affiliate list the same way that every brand views an email and SMS list. We own it, it's yours, use our platform to manage it, but we're not going to shop it around to other brands.
Speaker 1:What about? is there ever a situation where you might go out and partner with some of these agencies? I don't know if they exist anymore, but these influencer agencies have rosters of talent And then, like, pull them in. there's, you know, like on Facebook, where you can get like pre-made audience. it's interesting to look like things like that. Is there ever a situation where you think what I'm trying to understand is like I get where you are, you kind of automate and you are the, like you said, control room, control center for all these operations to happen, and happen with a lot less manual effort? But is there is the evolution? I'm trying to understand what your evolution is? is it that you offer these like audiences pre-made? Is it like where do you go next now? Now you've got the kind of box ticked on, cool, we'll automate a lot of this for you. we'll make it a much cleaner process, like, where does it go?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, i don't. I mean the pre-made audience thing. Well, so we do work with agencies, but like influencer agencies. But it's not in that way, like essentially influencer marketing agencies that are maybe doing this outreach and finding influencers as a and managing those relationships as a service. They need a platform to deliver those services. So, similar to how a retention agency might be like okay, you're onboarding to my agency, do you not have Klaviyo? Okay, install Klaviyo. That's part of the process. We have agency partners that are like okay, we're going to build out an influencer program for you. Do you have social snowball yet? No, okay, install, and that's a great partnership. But We're not like, we're not like, we're not. We're still not like building any sort of customer or acquisition engine around like bringing influencers into the program. It's still just brands and the brands. It's like BYOI. I guess I kind of just came up with that BYOI, bring your own influencer. But I mean as far as like the direction we're taking the product moving forward. I mean one there's a lot more to build. For just our affiliate product I do think we have the buck sticks to an extent, but there's a lot more to build and our roadmap is overwhelmingly packed And we're building cool stuff. Like we're, you know, we're building new things that have never existed before. Like we just came out with this really cool new affiliate link that basically lets affiliates offer a discount to their audience without the risk of it ever leaking to a coupon site, and that doesn't exist anywhere else This type of link. We called it a safe link. So we're like, we're building a lot of cool things, but it's all. They're all circling back, for now at least, they're all circling back to our core affiliate products, because there's a lot more to build. And you know, we have our finger on the pulse really well with the stuff because we have, like I said, 1400 brands using this, sending us requests, talking, i have a lot of really close relationships with a lot of these, especially bigger brands, and I tell them, like, send me feedback all the time. If they haven't sent me feedback in a while, i'll ask them for feedback, because this is how I learn. You know, we solve one problem, like the coupon codes leaking. We solve one problem, and then there's still 20 other problems that they're actively writing to me about being like Hey, your affiliate app is great for this, this, this, but it would be awesome if it also did this, because we're having this problem. So we have our finger on the pulse so well with the stuff that we kind of just have like a seemingly never ending roadmap of just ways to make the best affiliate product possible. And before we deviate too much, we definitely want to keep building what we have and use the momentum and traction that we have so far to just push and push and push. But beyond that there's definitely like other products I see as shipping that are all complimentary. So you know, for example, like we don't have anything for influencer discovery, we could build a whole product around that. That would be a great way, that'd be a great complimentary standalone product to our affiliate product that maybe some people will just use that by itself because they just need that And that's cool, like that's awesome. But it's if we do ship those standalone products, they're all going to be around the same kind of partner marketing worlds that we're operating in.
Speaker 1:Have you seen this whole thing about AI influencers? I know, i know when I say AI influencers, she clarify. picture Kim Kardashian And she does a pre-made video where she'll walk into her kitchen nothing in her hands but she'll put something in her hands, place it down on the table, pick it up again, show it to the camera, say something and walk off. And the promises and I don't know if it's there yet you'll be able to, for a fee, ai your product into that and get to say whatever needs to be said on the script, which will then be approved by their team.
Speaker 2:And then he's say right now, but is it actually Kim Kardashian that went like this, or is it is Kim Kardashian would do?
Speaker 1:the original video and then AI would be able to make it, say whatever and place your product into that. So if that's actually, a thing I think I saw on Facebook watch and it was some guy talking about how it's going to become a thing. But is AI even on your radar?
Speaker 2:Not terribly. I mean there are like well, that's awesome, by the way, like that's just cool. I've never heard of that. Yeah, that's just like a smart idea. I mean, ai is on our radar. Like, for example, if we were to build a discovery product, like we could use AI to, like help find the best influencers and, based on their social media profile, based on what they like, like we could look at the other posts and whatever, pre write them a message. You know email that's ready to send.
Speaker 1:You got a ton of data right. You're, you're, you're. You also have a database of value that you can tap into to like train AI, because you know, turn on certain companies, like you know male, female split, you know, you know, you know tons of data points that potentially you could leverage.
Speaker 2:Yeah, i'm trying like honestly, i haven't even put that much thought into like what data we do have and where we can use it in that regard, because we're just so focused on like less AI related things. But, yeah, i'm not, like I'm not one of those SaaS founders that's like oh, we're ignoring AI, like we're not chasing the shiny objects, like I honestly think AI is sick And I think there's a lot of potential, like even to customize the affiliate signup form that you add to your website, something that I have our customer success team do is like if someone's like, oh, we want all these crazy customizations and needs to look just like this figma, whatever, and you, it's too much to do with this our drag and drop builder We have like obviously you could add custom CSS and customize it however you want. And what I've been doing like I just tried this one day and it worked really well is I just like copy and paste all the HTML from the like the source of the figworm, the actual signup form, like in social snowball in the editor. Yeah, paste that into chat, cheapy T. I'm like read this. It's like, okay, i read it. And then I'm like Give me CSS that I can add to this that would make the spacing like this, the colors like this, the background like this.
Speaker 1:Etc, etc. It's a real seriously.
Speaker 2:And then this and then this is okay, and then the right CSS. I copy it, paste it into the social snowball field This has, add your own custom CSS and then it looks exactly like how I just Shit. It's like cool, i'd like. My idea with that is like we could put a chat bot on the editor page for the sign-in form. It's like tell us what you want it to look like and then it'll. Oh my god, it'd be really easy to build and just fun. I don't know if it'll bring any new MR, but it's just like a fun little magical user experience.
Speaker 1:Yeah, would you blow people's minds? imagine, like some like mid to junior, like Juniors, a mid-level Person at a brand who's like, yeah, i'm gonna set up to see it, we've got to set up an influence program for us and they're like, oh, we need this design. Oh, usually we'd have to give that to our bank of five offshore developers that we use for our Shopify. And you're like no, no, no, just just write what you want Yeah and they're like oh, I've done it. By the way, I've custom this is done. Yeah, exactly as we want it, that's sick. It is cool. I'd I'd pay a serious premium for that. I mean, it was crazy. I think at the moment just slightly off topic is like anything plus AI is commanding a serious premium. So just for example, for this, that use a tool called buzz sprout. Right, i'm going to the bruzz sprout. I've just paid 30 quid a month in addition for it basically to watch the episode and then like spit out all the chapters with the title Like what did you talk about? what? time $30, but that saves me an hour, right. So it's like I mean, i swear there's a print. I'm, you know, you're a small team and you've got a huge amount of customers, so there's only so much you can run after, right.
Speaker 2:But no, i know, i actually am happy to hear that you think it's a valuable feature. No, no, no, like I might have to prioritize it, oh for sure. Yeah, i think that's a crazy feature.
Speaker 1:I think that's a huge like. I think people would run to try it because the thing is like I have a semi-technical background, right, i knew that was possible, but you're the first person that's actually told me a use case of how they've used it.
Speaker 2:Okay, i've never actually tried to get chat GBT to make or change code because I actually thought it was more complicated than that dude, anything that's like, because every app like if you want to customize things more than they're built in no code editor, which every app like clave, your building emails, whatever, like, there usually is a field for custom CSS.
Speaker 1:Including Shopify. Shopify in the theme, right, so has a custom CS. Oh yeah, you can do this anywhere.
Speaker 2:You can do this anywhere. Yeah, you just like copy the source HTML or whatever.
Speaker 1:If you've just heard a load of bangs around you that's developers taking a shotgun out because this is, this is wild stuff.
Speaker 2:Here I mean this if you're a developer, you've got to be shitting yourself right now I feel like a very basic like HTML Shopify front-end, front-end Yeah, maybe but then you've had some glory is so you've probably got like a retirement home and everything already set up.
Speaker 1:You've had had some good time.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, you had your go. Do you have you seen rep low? Yeah, i think so. You know how, like cuz. So I don't really use Shopify tools Much but, as I told you, like, i'm sitting here with my girlfriend and my friend and they're both like in that world And whenever they're installing apps like I always love to see the user experience and my buddy installed rep low, literally, like a few days ago, because I was like, oh, i've heard good things about this and they do something really similar And actually that is really cool. They like you. Basically I'm gonna butcher this and if they are listening, i'm sorry but like you debt. You put in some infra that connects your shop by store it like reads your reviews. You put in like details, you like pick a, a landing page template and they're all really nice and then it writes the whole like designs and writes the whole landing page for you Reviews included like fake reviews based off of what they think customers are gonna say that questionable. I thought that was a really cool idea, like in he. Like you know, i'm always like whenever someone experiences like a magical user experience and is like wowed by a SaaS product, like that sticks with me because That's what I spend my day and nights trying to figure out how to do at scale. Yeah, so watching him set up the app, do that AI experience being like dude, this was this is unbelievable. I'm like okay, so this, they're onto something with this. But anyway, the reason I'm bringing it up is it's similar to what, like he just wrote a prompt, like I wanted to look like this and You know, have these sections in this review and I want this part to whatever, and then it's you know, a minute later It was there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I'm right. Just, I think, spend more time playing around with this stuff because it is crazy. I wonder if it will get to a point where I'm like I need this app built for Shopify. Yeah, that's scary to think about, isn't it Right? Um, what's the future of influencer marketing then? How long have you been in the influence of marketing game?
Speaker 2:So the reason actually built social snowball is because I was like dabbling in the game already Beforehand, like that's kind of how the idea came to be. It was mostly with like smaller influencers, like which I think is kind of the future already, but, like you know, my customers, like micro influencers in general, i was partnering with a lot of those friend either brands I was working with and basically using like the technology that is kind of Not really meant for those. It's like the more traditional affiliate, like publishers and media buyers. That's what most affiliate platforms were meant for. So that's kind of how social snowball came to be. I was like, okay, an affiliate platform needs to exist That's just focused on this more modern affiliate hundred percent creators, customers and ambassadors, influencers, you name it, not the publishers and media buyers, because they already have a hundred platform. I win is the main one, i think. Other dude, when is one of them?
Speaker 1:and I remember their model because we used to have a client use a win and I and and I was looking through their Their financials, right, and I could see this Chunky payment every month to go down to a win. And I said, guys, what you know, what have you actually got going on with a win? Like what, what have you are set up? and they were like um, you're, we're not sure, like an agency that we had when we first started our Sign us up for this thing and I so you don't know what you're actually paying for here. They didn't have the logins right, so I logged into a win and then I said to them that you want me to cancel it and I contacted They really said we want to cancel this because we don't even know what the fuck is. It's probably like some black Friday deal from like three years ago That we needed to promote you for some reason. You and they're like oh no, you can't cancel this, you're in a contract. Oh God, they contracted them down and I'm like this is in house, house works anymore.
Speaker 2:You don't tie companies into like Six years, but people that's like a thing still like really, yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean, believe me, i we are very month-to-month, but there are platforms out there that do it for sure.
Speaker 1:I get it. I get it, but I feel like, yeah, with customer attention should be based on the merit of your platform, not the tightness of your legal not because you're forcing, like sound okay in the first place.
Speaker 2:Yes, i guess, like I kind of I'm like I've been in this asking long enough where I kind of get it. It's like oh, we'll give you a discount if you commit to a year. It's like yearly pricing is almost similar.
Speaker 1:I think nearly pricing is kind of okay because you're giving a discount upfront If someone's commit for a certain length of time and that helps you, it helps them, right Cool.
Speaker 2:I think another thing that we've explored and actually done like very, very few times like, oh, you want us to build you a custom feature? That's like not something we're already building? Okay, we'll build that for you, but then you have to commit to like you're staying on the platform because that's expensive for us to build that. So those are the scenarios, rob done it. But yeah, i mean, there's a ton of apps, even Ecom, sass apps, that that's like the only way they do business is just through contracts.
Speaker 1:Ma'a crazy. I don't know they're gonna survive that much longer than with people like you offering such a better, it's only changing so it is still called influencer marketing.
Speaker 2:You said, ambassador, before people say so many words. You know they call themselves influencers.
Speaker 1:I guess it's a question if I said to many of the People in the local area to you actually, in fact, the gym that I train out here is just just like a. That's even worse. Okay crossfit gym, body fat is a premium gym, but yeah, like it to a penny out here. But you know what would you call it? I guess it's a content creator now, maybe even just creator.
Speaker 2:I mean, there's so many words like I don't really think too much, honest to be really honest, like No, it's just like are you gonna insult them? if I got you all you an influencer.
Speaker 1:They can be like, not since 2016. Oh, i'm a creator.
Speaker 2:I Mean creators, definitely the buzzword. Now. Yeah, i don't know if it's the more the brands that like it, if it's like the sass products that like saying it, or if it's the Creators themselves, that it's probably the creators themselves. That's where it stems, i would imagine. But I mean, i think it's me. All these words are very similar. I mean an ambassador I view more as like an event, a customer That's an evangelist. For the most part the words are used interchangeably though, like we'll be on a call with a brand and they'll be like oh, we want to set up two programs and so it's just no ball. This one for ambassadors and this one for creators and this one for customers, this one for influencers. I was like I could have had another brand say those exact same things. They mean a different thing for each word. Like it's, it's. There's no like rock-hard definitions. I mean, i think, the umbrella I like to put the umbrella word of mouse Over all of it. I mean word of mouth. When I'm saying like a word of mouth, marketing, that includes influencer marketing, ambassador marketing, referral marketing, whatever else there is.
Speaker 1:I'm back to. The kills me. We need to change that. In fact, can you change out on all of your? We don't even use that word. Thank you, yeah, you're good.
Speaker 2:We really try to stay. We try to use the word affiliate as much as possible because, at the end of the day, that is what our product is. Yeah, you could use it. If our affiliate product for customers, which is not traditional, you could use our affiliate product for influencers, which is Somewhat more traditional now, but usually, again, affiliate meant publishers and media buyers and yeah, yeah, but we like to use the word affiliate because we're not talking about who the person is, we're talking about the structure of the partnership.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it comes from affiliated, doesn't right? I'm part of this or I'm ready to do this.
Speaker 2:I guess it applies across all. I still don't like it.
Speaker 1:I don't like affiliate. It's got, it's got. A sour taste to me. Affiliate marketing, affiliate. I don't know why it sounds shady, because Like.
Speaker 2:Okay this is actually pretty funny. I went to affiliate world Dubai because I was like, oh, really world. I was like this is literally the place for you to be. I own an affiliate marketing software Like I should for sure be here. And then I realized why affiliate has bad tastes and people's mouths, because I didn't do any research. I literally just booked flights and I get there and it's just all scams. Yeah, everything in there was shady and I was like what the hell I was trying to? my plan is like I'm gonna talk to. I was expecting e-commerce, brands, agencies. I'm like I'm gonna sweep the floor. I'm gonna talk to every human being in here. I'm gonna sell them on social snowball and we're gonna have like attributable Customer acquisition from this event and there's literally no valuable conversation. I mean maybe one or two, but almost everyone there had some shady offer that they were trying to promote. That was like some testosterone supplement or like dating scam.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, well, like those. What are they like? set up machines that you see at like 1 am On those shopping channels 6x back in 40 minutes.
Speaker 2:That's like a weird dating Websites or ads, probably like I don't even know. But then the other side of it is people that have like some sort of audience, but it's not influencers. It's people that like have like email lists that are like they like trade these emails.
Speaker 1:Like the whole world, I didn't know about.
Speaker 2:People like trade these email lists and like send offers to them, but they're all like shady, i don't know who's on these lists, that's just buying all this weird shit, but it's a whole world. Anyway, that's what affiliate means to a lot of people, so that's definitely part of the narrative that we're trying to change.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's where it comes from. for me, i think of it as like almost like programmatic advertising, affiliate websites, and yeah, there's like there's literally a whole industry, like you said, in London I used to work alongside a company called Mobster MOBSTA. actually, i probably shouldn't have showered them out. I'm not actually going to continue that story. That was probably a bad move. But yeah, anyway, you saw my similar practices playing with the line of what's legal and what's not, and packaging updates or in selling it. But in this case they're saying it's people like the Guardian or you know they're selling it's a huge, huge publications and things like using these like proprietary data tools. It's all wrapped up in a nice bow and everything. But then you kind of scratch a few layers and like ah, not sure about how you are getting all of this and what you're doing with this kind of Cambridge analytical kind of style of shit. but they might have changed since I this was years ago, so don't see me mobster if you still don't see me, but anyway, yeah, so I just wanted to wrap up, really and just sort of get your final overview on influencer marketing, ambassador marketing or anything like that. Like, where do you think brands really fuck up with it. Where do you think like? have you got any best practices to share with brands?
Speaker 2:Yeah, i think. I think like one strategy that I've been seeing more and more and more brands do now like this is super new and brands are just catching on. Basically, like brands will recruit a ton of creators a ton but these creators might not even know about creating content or how to like or even have their own, even have that much of a social media following, and basically what they do is they have every creator go out and make their own page with the brand, like with the brand's branding. So if it was like I don't even know, like what's a random brand, amides.
Speaker 1:The water brands are crazy.
Speaker 2:Crazy. So if Amides I might be butchering that name it's trying to go viral and go crazy on TikTok and get a bunch of e-commerce customers which I'm sure they are They basically would get a ton of creators and each creator would make like a new TikTok page. So one would have at Amides, one would have at Amides underscore, one would have like underscore, like they would just make a bunch of pages that are like representing the brand And then they'll each just post like the brand provides every creator with content that they've shot, that the creators can take, mix together, repurpose, do whatever they want. But it's literally like they don't even have to shoot the videos And these creators are just posting like 10 TikToks a day on each account. So imagine you have like, let's say, a thousand accounts of this, which is a lot, but it's like possible, right? A thousand creators. They're each making an account. You have a thousand accounts running, each posting 10 TikToks a day with content that you already know works well on paid or that has worked well from other influencers, and they're just like kind of like taking clips from it, stitching it together, getting creative. Like a few a day are gonna go viral. Realistically, like that's an unfathomable amount of content And if you just do that at a huge scale like you could make a ton. You could generate a ton of customer acquisition for a brand just from that strategy And it's like a super new strategy. But I've seen a lot of brands doing it And I think it's sick. I think it's super cool, so that's like a new strategy. That's like I don't wanna say that's the future of influencer marketing, but that's like one maybe more up and coming And maybe it'll be a bubble, but it's something that I've seen brands do successfully.
Speaker 1:Yeah, sounds sick. Who's the top earner? Not name, but do you know you're like top influencer, top earner? Who's the who? Like what kind of figures You're looking? five figures, six figures, seven figures, eight figures. The influencers, Yeah, do you have?
Speaker 2:any data on like For a program like that?
Speaker 1:you're saying No, like just in general, like on your platform are you able to see, like, oh, that's the person that's earning the most money, like last month, and like what kind of money they were earning?
Speaker 2:I'm sure I can see that I don't like our product analytics game is definitely a little weak right now. I would imagine If you had- to hedge a bet. I don't know. Maybe, like I'm sure, for like our really big brands, they have like some big partnerships. Maybe they're the influencers are making definitely five figures a month. I really don't know where in that five figure, but I don't think any are making six figures, any influencers. And I don't think any influencers I mean I know a lot of influencers are making less than that, but I'd say the biggest ones are, i don't know, 10 to 30, maybe K a month something like that Yeah, still a living in it, people time yet Right, he's no signalling to me that he needs to run to the bathroom fairly quickly.
Speaker 1:Probably something to do with the people. I'm actually hungry, so we should go hit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, let's go grab over on yeah lovely.
Speaker 1:I'll give up veganism for a day and just have some of that nice roadside chicken. Oh yeah, dude, it's been a pleasure and I look forward to hanging out a bit more in Bali and, yeah, we'll put this episode up. Any final thoughts for anyone listening where can they get you, where can they find out more information?
Speaker 2:Best way to contact me is just Twitter. My username is Noah Tuck, but it spells a little bit weird. There's no H, so it's just NOATUCK. Hit me up there. I'm always on Twitter almost too much, and if you wanna check out socialsnowball, it's just socialsnowballio.
Speaker 1:And he said for everyone that messages him on Twitter he will be with you with a custom feature of your liking in his app.
Speaker 2:For free, for free forever And you get lifetime access for free.
Speaker 1:He's always being his prosta.