Affiliate Marketing Made Simple: Meet Geniouslink

Dave Jackson [00:00:00]:

Your podcast is still kinda small, but you'd like to generate some sort of income. For that, I recommend trying affiliate marketing. And one of the biggest programs is Amazon Associates. That's the good news. The bad news is their terms of service It's all over the place, and today, I found a tool that I absolutely love that takes the headache out of affiliate marketing. It gives you a ton of data to let you know what's working. Welcome to Profit from your podcast. Proven strategies to turn listeners into a livelihood.

Dave Jackson [00:00:39]:

Here's your host, Dave Jackson. Oh, today, we're gonna have some fun. We're talking affiliate marketing, and it's a tool that makes it so easy. I'll give you a little story. I've been kicked off of Amazon Associates twice. Once was I used the wrong link, and you can't embed things in an iframe. And I accidentally did, And they kicked me out, and that was all she wrote. And then the other one, I believe I put the phrase support the show above a link to Amazon.

Dave Jackson [00:01:18]:

Not allowed to do that. And I got a very sternly written letter from them because I was using a link shortener called Switchy, which I love. And the problem with that, that breaks their terms because People can't tell that they're going to Amazon. And I'm, like, yeah, but they kinda figured out when I click on it. Doesn't matter. Don't argue with Amazon. And so I found this tool. It's called Geniuslink.

Dave Jackson [00:01:45]:

Now I do have a referral link. If you go to, support this show .com/geniuslink, all one word. This will take you over to the site, and it really is a peace of mind. It's really awesome. So here's an example. If you're doing an affiliate, You can like, it told me, it's like, hey. You're getting a fair amount of traffic from France. You should sign up for Amazon's France affiliate, their Amazon Associates, as well as the UK.

Dave Jackson [00:02:17]:

I've signed up for all of these, and The international traffic across multiple programs can boost your commissions a lot. And so I was, like, alright, that's kinda cool, and the fact that it Automatically switches to whatever country your visitor is coming from. If you're a content creator, you can save time and earn higher commissions from your content with links that are automatically localized and affiliated. And then if you're an author, You can increase your sales or your books, again, with localized links. And so just some of the features here, again, automatic affiliation. So And this is, we'll be talking about this in a future episode, but you can automatically monetize through, we already mentioned, Amazon, iTunes, Walmart. And you just put in whatever code you got from those companies, and they will make the the affiliate link for you. And you can make choice pages.

Dave Jackson [00:03:14]:

And this is where I went, oh, because one of the things as you might imagine being a podcast guy, I sell a fair amount of microphones and stuff. My favorite affiliate program is Sweetwater because I just love the company. And even though they have an affiliate program, it's not tied into Geniuslink, or so I thought. You can make these things called Choice Pages. And so for me, you know, Sweetwater gives you more warranty, the same price, the same free shipping, and they give you candy. But, nonetheless, some people are just trained to use Amazon. So I can make a choice page and put the link to Amazon. And then because Sweetwater isn't listed, there is a place to put in your own link, which I then put in my affiliate link for Sweetwater, along with it ties into B&H.

Dave Jackson [00:04:06]:

It ties into Best Buy, all these other companies that you can sign up for their affiliate, and then you get insane reports. You can see, well, are people clicking more on Amazon, or on Best Buy, or on Target, or Walmart, or whatever they're doing. It's really cool. If you're not sure, you can automatically route a percentage of your clicks to different destinations for the same audience segment, better known as good old fashioned AB testing, and so you can compare landing pages and storefront performances. So if you wanna do your own stuff like that, that's cool. You can boost conversions by routing visitors, again, based on their language, their different operating system. If you want to if your person is doing Facebook ads, you can retarget visitors going to any destination. Even if sites you don't manage supports, you know, Facebook or Google AdWords, you can do that.

Dave Jackson [00:04:58]:

It is g t GDPR safe. And if you use links to monetize your content or market your business, Geniuslink offers a collection of features that will help you save time and real, basically reveal important insights. And the ability of these choice pages, It's really cool because, like, I might send somebody to a Sweetwater link, and they go, I don't know what a Sweetwater is. So what do they do? They just manually go to Amazon and then search the thing. Well, now you can say, hey, here's this tool. It's the Elgato Facecam Pro, and then they've got a link there to Sweetwater, Amazon, B&H, whatever. And so now whichever one the visitor is more comfortable going to or if they wanna do a little price comparison, They can do it there, all of those using your affiliate links. And so it's I was really you can also use vanity links.

Dave Jackson [00:05:55]:

This is where, for me, the product kinda takes a step back. So let's say the new well, there's a Elgato prompter came out. So I can make a Genius link that's genius link /elgato prompter. Boy, if somebody Else has already made that exact link. I can't use it. So then I might go el gato dash prompter or el prompter or things like that. So that's one part of my I get it. You can brand it with your domain.

Dave Jackson [00:06:26]:

So if you don't want it to say genius link slash whatever so I have, for example, support this show .com/genius link. That is something you could do with a domain. It's It's really cool. You can also do UTM tagging if you're a person that works with Google. The engine is insane in terms of just the different reports that you can chew out of this, and I was just amazed at how much traffic I'm getting. And you're like, okay, Dave. Enough of the selling point. It takes you also, next to nothing to get up and and running.

Dave Jackson [00:07:03]:

Oh, I forgot one thing. They have a YouTube optimizer where you can go in and give Geniuslink access to your YouTube channel, and it will look through your, basically, your notes, write your description of your videos, and turn those links into affiliate links. It's it's really cool. There's a WordPress plug in. There's a JavaScript enabled that you can throw on your website. The thing I love if if you are referring people to a dead product, maybe they're out of stock, it will alert you. How cool is that? You're like, okay, Dave. Great.

Dave Jackson [00:07:38]:

Great. What how much does this thing cost? What? 30, $40 a month? Then this is when I was like, you gotta be kidding me. $6 a month for 2,000 clicks a month. Now I, right now, have, I believe, 60 links on this. And I think yesterday, I got 20 clicks. So 20 times 30 is 600, I think, for the month, something like I'm gonna be nowhere new for that. Now what's interesting is what happens if I go over that. Now there is another plan that you can automatically buy that has more clicks enabled for it.

Dave Jackson [00:08:14]:

But if I go beyond 2,000 clicks, I can pay only for the clicks I use. It's a whopping $2.50 for a 1000 clicks. And then if I want to, I can, you know, as always, save if I do, like, a volume thing. And so, like, for instance, if I know I'm gonna do more than 2,000, I could sign up for 3,000 clicks, and it's a whopping 850. And I know you're gonna go, yeah, but, Dave, if I'm only earning 4% on the sale, how many sales do I have to have to pay for that $6? I'm like, for me, The headache that is Amazon Associates, having that, just put the rest. Because what it does, These links that when you put them in and somebody clicks on it, it takes them to a page that says, hey. This is an affiliate link. You're gonna be going to Amazon when you click this link, and that way, you are completely in compliance.

Dave Jackson [00:09:06]:

It's kind of been given the green light by Amazon. So I just as soon as I started playing with this, I instantly signed up. You can play with it for 14 days for free, but I was, like, oh, I am using this. And when I saw that I could add Other affiliate links that aren't kinda built into it, I was like, this I I'm home. I I love my Switchy. It's a great tool, and I still use that for maybe counting inbound links, and it makes QR codes. It makes smart pages and things like that. I'll have links to that out in the show notes as well.

Dave Jackson [00:09:36]:

But in terms of my affiliate stuff, I am Geniuslink all the way. Again, the link, it's my referral link. You don't have to pay anything else by using this. It's just a way, and I think I get a discount on my next month or something like that. Go to support this show .com /geniuslink. And, of course, for more information on how to make money with your podcast, Check out the book, Profit From Your Podcast, by going to profit from your podcast.com/