Using Affiliate Sales to Grow a WordPress Agency

Matt and Alex talk Affiliate plugins

[00:00:00] ​

[00:00:00] matt: [00:01:00] What is this new plugin? You’re launching siren affiliates. I’m seeing it. I’m seeing you talk about it on Twitter. We’ll get into like your marketing and behind the scenes and all that stuff. But what, what does this plugin do

[00:01:22] alex: Well, at its core, Siren, it’s an affiliate plugin. at least that’s the easiest way I can describe it to people who’ve never seen anything like it. basically it allows people to create different and varied, affiliate plugins or programs, but not just like the basic ones that you’ve thought of.

[00:01:39] alex: So you can create those. But you can also create all kinds of different ways to collaborate together That fall outside of what you might think of as an affiliate program. So let me give you a quick example Just to help with that. Let’s say like on Chris’s podcast. I talked about this a lot, but like I Let’s say you wanted to create a multiple course [00:02:00] creator program where you have a Platform where there’s multiple course creators on a single site and you want to be able to pay them based on their viewership You Right.

[00:02:10] alex: And you want to pay them a percentage of the profits based on like how many people completed their course and stuff like that. Each month, Siren is built so that you can create diverse programs in that way.

[00:02:20] matt: when people hear affiliate plugin? Immediately their radars go off, right? They’re like, Oh my God, affiliates. Number one, they’re like, I’ll never do affiliates.

[00:02:31] alex: Yeah.

[00:02:31] matt: Then there’s like that whole persona of Affiliate marketers where people might be like turned off by it What do you think that differentiator is for the way that you’re approaching this market with this product?

[00:02:44] matt: Are you are you looking at that going? You know what? I’m gonna try to flip that narrative a little bit or are you saying nah, man That’s where the money’s made whether you like affiliates or not Like I’m just gonna lean into that market and that’s just where we’re headed

[00:02:57] alex: Yeah. It’s, it’s kind of both to be honest. [00:03:00] but it’s, it’s more of the, the former, the first thing you said. So basically the, the big thing for me is that affiliates got a bad affiliate programs have historically had a bed rep, bad rep because of the insincerity of it. Right. So people who will refer your business.

[00:03:15] alex: may or may not have ever used that business. And it’s very clear that they’re just in it for the money. And, you know, it kind of creates this inauthentic experience as a result. but then on the flip side of that, another thing that a lot of people talk about is, they’ll create an affiliate program and it just doesn’t work, right?

[00:03:30] alex: Like they, they don’t see any, any traction with it, or they’ll get people to sign up and nobody will actually do anything with it. And, I’ve actually been spending a fair bit of time just creating educational resources on my website as well to like kind of combat some of those things because it doesn’t have to be that way, right?

[00:03:47] alex: This can be an authentic relationship between you and your affiliates and your affiliates can have authentic relationships with their audience and still create really meaningful affiliate programs [00:04:00] without it feeling smarmy and, and, you know, snake oil salesman like.

[00:04:04] matt: One of the things that I find, or I found interesting in that interview, and again, I’ll link it up in the show notes, and we’ll, and I actually just wanted to unpack this, this part of it. I’ve been exploring a lot. Again, back to sort of like the roots of what I did with the Matterport many years ago is exploring the, the roots of, freelancers getting into the game of, of WordPress, right?

[00:04:25] matt: Client services, designing sites, building sites, maintaining sites. And I think, as I’ve been saying through this, podcast for a while now that I think we’re going to see a resurgence of services business. I mean, I’m already seeing it, but, I think we’re, we’re going to see this again, and. What you were talking about is it doesn’t just have to be like affiliate or the way that you’ve modeled this plug in and correct me If I’m wrong, it doesn’t have to be about this Oh, I’m selling a plug in or I’m selling a product and you’re gonna get 30 percent No service providers can also use your product is is is what I heard Unpack that for me because I think a lot of [00:05:00] service providers Providers in the beginning.

[00:05:01] matt: They’re like, I don’t even know how to grow my, I don’t know how to grow my business. I don’t know how to find clients. You know, I want to partner with other people. Maybe I want to give them a cut. So let’s unpack that whole using this for a services business.

[00:05:13] alex: Oh, yeah. I just wrote like a 2000 word blueprint on this exact topic on the blog the other day So this the one of the big things about siren that makes it really powerful is you can create more than one program with it So instead of just having a single monolithic affiliate program that’s supposed to do like everything you can create multiple programs.

[00:05:35] alex: And that’s really relevant to people who are doing service based businesses because their products, the customer’s journey to the purchase tends to be, a lot longer than say you’re buying, you know, an iPhone case or something like that. you know, you can with a single interaction with an affiliate.

[00:05:53] alex: On a website, decide that you’re going to go through an entire customer journey and buy an iPhone case. [00:06:00] That’s not really the case with, with service based things, right? So, the, as a result that that process is a lot longer and there’s a lot more steps in that process. And because of that, people tend service based people tend to look at it and go, Oh, well, affiliate programs won’t work for me because I’m not selling phone cases.

[00:06:18] alex: Right. But really, if you look at it with Siren, because there’s multiple programs, all those different touch points in the journey can have a program that’s specifically tailored for that so that you can credit all the people who have helped, that customer through the journey to converting to you at the end.

[00:06:37] alex: So if you have maybe you have a, a, a program that’s specifically for podcasters who are talking about things related to your service. You can create a program for them so that whenever they talk about it, they can send a lead to you. Right. And then you can get credit for, they can get credit for that lead if that lead ever actually converts in the future.

[00:06:56] alex: And then it also gets really interesting for service based companies whenever you start [00:07:00] thinking about this, like by the vertical. So maybe I’m a web development agency and I want to go and work and, I want to serve the breweries, like the brewing industry. Right. And I want to specifically start going, I start going to their conferences.

[00:07:13] alex: I started going to those events and I started doing talks about, you know, like web development and web solutions. through the lens of what a brewery would need. And then you can take that. And while you’re there, of course, you’re looking for customers and things like that. But you could also be looking for potential affiliates, potential people who can collaborate with you who are have, a business in that niche as well.

[00:07:34] alex: But they also aren’t your competitor, right? So they’re not going to be your customer, but they’re not your competitor. These are great opportunities for people to be able to, you know, refer business to you. So you work with those people, you get them signed up on the program, and then you give them an opportunity to get a little bit of a kickback whenever, you know, they refer you.

[00:07:51] matt: just talking to, Mark Samansky, who co hosts a lot of live streams with me at the WP minute, and we’re just talking about the, The industry [00:08:00] today, right? We’re talking about, you know, I ran an agency for a decade. It’s been nearly a decade since I’ve done that.you know, I left it about seven, eight years ago.

[00:08:09] matt: still runs today. My father still runs it, still got a team, et cetera, et cetera. But, you know, I’ve, I’ve gone through the whole highs and lows of being an agency owner, being a service provider. Stuff and he’s, you know, he was telling me the other day, man, Matt, you know, the industry is different today.

[00:08:21] matt: You can’t get these customers to pay, you can’t get them to deliver content. And I’m Mark, you’re saying all the same things I struggled with 20 years ago, it just, it sounds the same. The tools might be different, right? We have whatever Gutenberg bricks elements or all these things now. yes, it’s a, it’s a lot more competitive, but what I like.

[00:08:38] matt: Particularly when I was listening to you talk about this stuff is you should as an freelancer, an agency owner, create a product that you could sell more affordably like a course, like a guide, something that’s a little more one off. There’s no commitment, but you know, you’re profitable. The customer is getting value from it and [00:09:00] it’s high ticket enough or higher priced enough, I guess, where you could pay out an affiliate to say, Hey, I’m If you recommend this course for my services, you’ll get a little money too.

[00:09:10] matt: With all that being said, is there from what you’ve seen so far, is there like a sweet spot, like minimal for a course or a guide or something like that where you should be thinking, well, it should be 200. That way you can give. 100 to an affiliate. Is there a formula you work with on figuring out like what that payout or what that price point should be?

[00:09:30] alex: Yeah. So I have a, I have a, I base it on the profit margin. so if you’ve got a really good profit margin, you know, you should be offering like 25%, 30 percent even, for your affiliates. If your profit margin is a little tighter. Then, you know, you’ve got to obviously scale down your profit, your, your payout based on that.

[00:09:51] alex: most of the time I generally just recommend for, for service based companies to, to do a percentage, just because it’s, it’s the easiest one, it’s scales well, [00:10:00] and, you don’t have to change everything. Every time you change the pricing or anything like that. and also it’s easy to plan for, right?

[00:10:06] alex: Because from a budget perspective, you can say, okay, well, I know that at most I’m going to end up losing, you know, giving away this percentage to my affiliates and the rest of it comes to my business. but what you were saying a minute ago about having lower costs, more affordable products to sell, I think is a really key component of this, for service based companies, because.

[00:10:30] alex: the way I always put it is give them something to sell, right? Like they can’t sell a custom WordPress website solution or even, you know, anything like that, anytime it gets into the realm of custom and there’s questions and there’s discovery at all, it’s going to be a real, it’s not going to be as easy, they can generate leads for you, but they’re not going to be able to actually convert for you.

[00:10:51] alex: So, by creating something that is, you know, packaged up and has a defined scope, You know, something like a website audit or a [00:11:00] course, or maybe even a build for a single webpage or setting up a site or something like that. There’s all kinds of different options here, but it has to be something that has a small fixed scope that you can charge, you know, for a couple hundred dollars, you know, maybe more, but usually, you know, a few hundred dollars is.

[00:11:17] alex: It’s a pretty good range there, and you, give that to your affiliates and you let them focus on converting on that. Then you’re able to, use that as a part of the customer journey, right? But the key thing here is the affiliate got paid. Already, right? So they got their commission. They they’re doing the thing they’re doing their conversion.

[00:11:37] alex: You’re giving them something to convert. And, all while you’re doing that and you’re building this thing, you’re building that rapport with that customer at that same time, right? So while you’re doing that. while you’re serving them and you’re getting paid for this, you’re actually getting paid to learn about this customer and learn what their needs are.

[00:11:54] alex: And that tends to lead to bigger and better projects for that customer. Or maybe you, you know, you do [00:12:00] this project and you realize you don’t want to work with this person and you decide, you know what, after this, I’m just going to, I’m just going to pump the brakes and, and move on.

[00:12:07] matt: On the website, you have two platforms siren affiliates. com You have two platforms in the primary nav woocommerce and and lifter lms technically I’m assuming, but you can fill me in. Technically, if somebody were selling a 200 course slash guide, and you were an affiliate to that, and then the person had an upsell in the back end for, let’s say that 1, 500 website build out, right?

[00:12:31] matt: Maybe they do a website in a day kind of thing, but the lead in is that 200 course. Technically, you know, if you sell that 200 course, but then that same person who bought that course buys the 1, 500 website build. Is there technically a way to glue that together where the affiliate is making money on that 1500 sale as well?

[00:12:53] alex: Oh yeah, for sure. it’s, it’s not. I mean, it’s not, that’s not the default behavior, but it’s definitely doable. I mean, if, if [00:13:00] something converts, you know, over, you can, you can, you can definitely do

[00:13:03] matt: because I can, because that’s one of the challenges and I was going to put you on the hot seat a little bit on the, on the, on the web services side is while it’s easy for us to say, yeah, you know, you make the course and lead these people in, but if your meat and potatoes is, I don’t know, 5, website, 5, 000 website, I mean, minimally 2, 500 bucks, you’re, somebody’s going to want to talk to you.

[00:13:24] matt: All right. Like they’re going to, they’re going to be like, Hey, so, you know, tell me about this service. What other sites have you built? You know, yeah. Maybe you’ll get by 25, but 5, 000 certainly you’re having a phone call, right? And, and that’s the part where. An affiliate might lose out. Is there like some kind of manual reciprocity that you have in the software where somebody says, Oh, you know what, let me pay out Alex because I can manually pay out Alex because I know that’s a customer he sent and I can manually pay him through the software.

[00:13:53] matt: Does that exist? Is that a thing?

[00:13:55] alex: Yeah. That’s an option, but technically the way I would approach this, if, if I was trying [00:14:00] to sell a 5, 000 product directly on my website and I wanted to use an affiliate program for it, I wouldn’t create a single program. I would end up creating probably two, at least two. to one of the programs would be focused on generating leads, which is more akin to the traditional affiliate program.

[00:14:16] alex: the leads, they don’t get paid for those leads until the lead actually converts, like actually makes a purchase, but they will get credit when that conversion happens. And then I also have, would have a second program that’s focused on sales, right? So it’s more traditional salesmanship. it might be, you know, doing webinars, conversion focused webinars.

[00:14:33] alex: It might be. you know, taking those calls, doing the scope or, or outsourcing the scope or doing whatever needs to be done to be able to actually make that happen. Right. And obviously those two programs are very different in terms of how much they pay out and you know, what each person gets, maybe the lead is on a fixed rate, maybe they, they get a, you know, a hard stop at 200 for a conversion.

[00:14:55] alex: It could be a percentage as well for that lead based one. It just depends on how you want to approach [00:15:00] that. Right. but by creating two programs, you’re essentially. Solving the problem that you’re talking about where, you want to make sure that an affiliate does get the opportunity to be able to actually earn the credit for bringing that lead in the first place and having the two part approach like that works really well because they need each other, right?

[00:15:18] alex: The leads. The lead generators need the salespeople to convert and the salespeople need the lead generators to bring them the leads in the first

[00:15:24] matt: And when you think about that strategy, is that program like the lead program, does that have to be free? Do you recommend it be free? Something that somebody opts into and then the upsell. Or do you think nah man, today people should just opt in for at least a hundred bucks, couple hundred bucks to buy this thing because everyone’s getting better value out of this?

[00:15:45] alex: I think that the lead program is really just for me, it’s, it’s literally just a link and affiliate link. So if I, you know what I mean? So if I I’m driving traffic to a specific landing page, it could also be, you know, like they, they fill out a form with like gravity forms or something like [00:16:00] that. And.

[00:16:01] alex: whenever that form is filled out, that counts as the lead and that awards the lead to a specific affiliate so that whenever, that lead converts later on, then they get credit for it.

[00:16:12] matt: Gotcha. Yeah, I mean, again, I think that, going back to the freelancer, especially the freelancer who, you know, might be struggling, this is a great way to differentiate yourself. Right. Using a, using a, having a program like this and then also thinking, well, let me start with an entry level course, whatever that might be, or guide, because finding those clients and networking are two components that are really hard in the beginning, but once they sort of snowball together and that thing starts rolling down the mountain, that’s where the business is made, right?

[00:16:46] matt: You know, referrals from not just customer like word of mouth, but, Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, if you’re in the WordPress space, a lot of us spend time talking to other folks in the WordPress space, we need to know who, what do you do? What do you stand for? What’s your differentiator? So [00:17:00] that when I talk to somebody else, I go, Oh, you know, go check out that thing that Alex has, or go check out that thing that Matt has or Mark has.

[00:17:05] matt: And I know where I can send you. And if I can make a few bucks off, off the side of it, even better, it’s even, it’s even better. Um,back to the hot seat for a second. I want to talk about the pricing that you have right now. Now we’re recording this May 20th. You are set to launch June, July? June 4th. 49 lifetime deal.

[00:17:29] matt: So the hot,

[00:17:30] alex: little crazy. I know.

[00:17:30] matt: seat is 49 bucks and lifetime deal. Tell me about that decision.

[00:17:37] alex: Yeah, it’s, it’s, I’ve been describing it in my internal monologues as stupidly low. and I’m aware of that and it’s not, it’s, it’s not going to be there for long. I’m going to be honest. The, the goal and the entire reason why I’m doing it is because I want to get this plugin in people’s hands. I want to see people trying this.

[00:17:55] alex: I want to see people using this. I’m interested in helping them succeed. And I want to learn [00:18:00] what. People, how people are using this so that I can build it better. And the quickest way for me to do that is to offer a ridiculously low deal that, you know, I’m only ever going to offer once I’m literally never, ever going to make this offer again.

[00:18:17] alex: and it’s, it’s just this one time, this one moment. to, you know, get people in and, I mean, it pays to be the early bird for sure. In this

[00:18:26] matt: We’ll call it Alex’s almost ridiculously free plan because I mean, it’s 49 for a lifetime deal. It’s, it’s pretty much free, at the, at that point, especially if you’re

[00:18:36] alex: Yeah. I’m basically giving it

[00:18:37] matt: you’re making money off of it. So, let’s unpack it. What’s your strategy for finding, for finding affiliates for, for this plugin, what are you doing?

[00:18:45] matt: I know you’re appearing on podcasts, of course. What else are you doing to sort of rally the troops to, to join

[00:18:50] alex: Well, obviously I’m going to come, I’m doing exactly what I was just saying a minute ago. I’m going to vertical specific conferences. In my case, that starts with WordPress, right? I’m really well networked in this space, so I’m just starting there. I’ve [00:19:00] actually already had a few people reach out to me.

[00:19:02] alex: And I’ve asked, to be on the affiliate program. So there’s, there’s that too. I’ve been noodling around the idea of creating a blog content bonus program on my site to allow people to write content on sirenaffiliates. com and get credit for whenever anybody reads their post. I’ve been thinking about a few different other ideas on top of that, that I’m, I’m not quite ready to announce or any say anything about yet, but mom, the gist is pretty much, yeah, I’m going to start by networking, talking to people, talking to the YouTubers in the space, the podcasters, the.

[00:19:33] alex: You know, the, just the, the media in general around WordPress and then, probably start branching out into more generic, places outside of this space. but really I’m just kind of, I’m starting with one. I know, and I know WordPress

[00:19:48] matt: a, you could buy yourself a hazmat suit before you go to an affiliate conference.

[00:19:52] alex: probably. I

[00:19:58] matt: the fallout series on Amazon? [00:20:00] All right. And there’s, it’s you know, they’re whatever it is. It’s there’s a utopia inside, you know, where they are.

[00:20:06] matt: Everything’s great. And then you go out to the, like this nuclear wasteland and it’s Oh

[00:20:10] alex: it’s like desolate. Yeah.

[00:20:12] matt: I know that’s not, not the way it all is, but, it’s the unfortunate stigma because, yeah, I mean, I get bombarded all the time with folks who are in the WordPress space, making WordPress products.

[00:20:23] matt: And they’re just like, Hey, you know, review our stuff. We’ll give you this affiliate link. And it’s just constant noise. and the relationship side is really. you know, where I want to exist. Like I want to have a relationship with trusted software and maybe like 80 percent of the time, not even get paid out for anything.

[00:20:41] matt: I just want to recommend good stuff. talk to me,

[00:20:44] alex: And honest,

[00:20:45] matt: No, you unpack that.

[00:20:46] alex: Okay. honestly, I mean, that’s kind of a big thing. So I’ve got a, I’ve got a guide that I wrote for, people to talk about how to build their affiliate program. And that’s a big recurring theme for me whenever I’m talking about it is Your [00:21:00] relationship with your affiliates should be focused on authenticity.

[00:21:03] alex: You should be focused on finding people who are really excited about your product, actually believe in your product and want to do this. If you’re just reaching out to people saying, Hey, you can make, if you’re just reaching out to podcasters and YouTubers, and you’re just like, Hey, I’ve got this product, you want to sell it?

[00:21:16] alex: They’re not going to be interested, you know? So, and, and, because, you know, you have an audience and you realize that that audience has a value to you and. Those people and you don’t want to squander that or lose that audience Chilling out something that doesn’t feel authentic, right? all the great podcasters and people like that.

[00:21:40] alex: They’re always authentic, right? There’s always an authenticity level to it. Even if if you think about more traditional, like bigger affiliate program, people like Pat Flynn comes to mind, right? With his, SPI podcast and all that stuff. smart, passive income or whatever he, you know, he is an affiliate marketer.

[00:21:58] alex: Like he is the first one I think [00:22:00] of whenever I think of affiliate marketing. And if you just listen to him, how he talks about his relationship with affiliate marketing, right? It’s always about authenticity. It’s always about, I use this product myself. I believe in this product and therefore I’m going to recommend it.

[00:22:13] alex: And, so I’m always saying like people, not numbers, don’t forget it. And honestly, I don’t even recommend the thing it gets me is a lot of people will be like, how do I get my first a hundred affiliates? How do I get my first, you know, 500 affiliates or whatever? And I’m like, why are you talking about a hundred?

[00:22:29] alex: You need 10, you know, because, because most, most of these programs, like if you look at almost any affiliate program and you look at their numbers, almost all of them have this same pattern where they’ll have a thousand affiliates and 10 of them or 50 of them pretty much do all of the sales, right?

[00:22:49] alex: So why are you trying to get a thousand when really what you need are 50 good ones or 10 good ones, right? So. And those good ones are the ones that are authentic and focused on those [00:23:00] relationships. So skip that bull crap and just find the people who are your biggest fans who have an audience who you can run with and run with them.

[00:23:07] matt: Because it’s also more problems. It’s when you have, especially in the affiliate side, when you have a thousand people in there, it’s just, it’s an overhead for more issues where, you know, they’re not following brand guidelines, they’re doing shady stuff with your links. You know, they’re putting your product alongside other products you don’t want to be represented with.

[00:23:25] matt: So, you know, if you, if you can cultivate that, you know, and, and, and, It almost is, it’s like the same issues. If you’re building a membership site, one of the hardest things is like engagement, getting people to come back, doing all that stuff. So, you know, if you can work closely with people who are also making money with you.

[00:23:41] matt: I think it’s just a better fit, right? It’s a better fit. It’s almost like you can almost have a mini sales outsource sales force in a way. And it’s, it’s a pretty cool thing. before we start running out of time, I want to talk about this.I don’t know what you, you labeled, you said it and I heard you talking about with Chris before too, but being able to get paid out, by contributing to a blog, [00:24:00] it sounds You know, it’s not massive payouts, but it’s like this recurring thing. Maybe the more you blog, the more you get paid out. Tell me about that model you’ve incorporated into this plugin.

[00:24:10] alex: Sure. So, this was kind of inspired by, I don’t know if you remember, it was called Squidoo. It was a, a blogging platform that Seth Godin made back in the two thousands where Yeah. So, so the, the concept was basically you publish what they called lenses and they were basically blog posts on Squidoo and, he would pay you based on the amount of traffic you got to your site based on the revenue shares.

[00:24:33] alex: So if you, if you, you know, if the, if Squidoo as a whole, the blog as a whole received a thousand dollars at over the course of a month, and you were the majority of the traffic, you’re going to get the biggest cut of revenue. Those profits. So there’s all kinds of different ways you can build these.

[00:24:50] alex: Like siren doesn’t necessarily say let’s build a blog program or let’s build an affiliate program. What it says is. It lets you break it down into three or four [00:25:00] different things that happen in different ways to pay out. And you, you basically define when a person gets credit for the traffic, for the, the customer, the opportunity you put out, how much they get paid and you put out how, that money gets divided among the people who it could, could win it.

[00:25:18] alex: So if you wanted to pay, If you had 50 bloggers and all of them were writing content on your site, you could actually set it up to where, at the end of the month, you know, whoever gets, whoever wrote the most stuff gets the majority of the, the, the revenue share for that month. Or in my case, you could, where I’m more lead focused than I am on revenue with ads or anything like that, you can go with. Basically treating it like an affiliate link. So if an affiliate sends, a person to a blog post that somebody else wrote, and that per that’s two separate programs, right? Right. One’s an affiliate program. One’s a blog content bonus program. And both of them would be able to get paid should [00:26:00] that person who visits that blog convert.

[00:26:02] alex: So you can set it up to where you can stack these different programs on top of each other and it all kind of lets you create, it lets you create this like organic, collaboration between these different people, right? Because you have affiliates who need a reason to send a link, an affiliate link or need content to send affiliate links for.

[00:26:20] alex: And then you have bloggers who are writing that content and need people to send, traffic to their content. And then, you know, you’ve got the person who’s actually running the platform itself to be able to actually get those conversions and earn that money. So you’re able to, create these different ways to, dynamically and organically, allow these people to work together.

[00:26:39] matt: a concept. I don’t want to bore the audience or you, but there’s this concept. there’s an open source side to, to podcasting that many folks don’t know about. It’s called podcasting 2. 0. There is their own podcast index, equivalent to wordpress. org having a bunch of podcasts. It’s the alternative to say, Apple podcasts and Spotify directories, all that [00:27:00] stuff.

[00:27:00] matt: And they have a whole, open source movement about improving RSS feeds and adding stuff to podcasting RSS, just like WordPress improves, the RSS feed improves. And, And the anti podcasting 2. 0 again, you go back to Spotify, Apple, YouTube, those who don’t want to enhance RSS cause they want everything on their platforms.

[00:27:19] matt: but the point I’m getting at is they have this thing called value for value inside RSS is being pioneered. You know, the unfortunate side of it is it’s, it’s being, It’s pioneered by, Bitcoin technology. So you would have to use an app that’s compatible. There’s a bunch of podcasting apps that are compatible podcasting apps.

[00:27:37] matt: com. You’ll find it. and what you do is you load up a digital wallet, you know, you buy a little bit of Bitcoin for 50 bucks or whatever. And then when you’re using these apps. and a podcast is podcasting 2. 0 enabled, you can actually stream what’s known as Satoshi’s, the smallest form of Bitcoin to the podcaster, and you can send them like little micro payments.

[00:27:59] matt: So [00:28:00] it’s, it’s everything everyone’s always wanted. The unfortunate roadblock is the Bitcoin’s side of it. For a lot of people, they don’t like it. It’s too technical, and it is, and that’s the unfortunate roadblock, but it’s everything you’ve always wanted from you know. your cell phone, your cable bill.

[00:28:13] matt: You’re like, I just want to pay what I’m listening to, right? And, and they’re, and they’re starting to get into courses. Now, this is where I’m going with it. They’re starting to get into, to courses and, and audio books. And basically what that means is as As a buyer, you could only pay for what you’ve consumed.

[00:28:32] matt: So, instead of paying a hundred bucks for a course, you could, you would, there would be a set value that happens that the course creator would, would set. And as you watch the show, or, or, excuse me, as you watch the course, or listen to the course, you’re paying whatever adds up to a hundred bucks. But if you never finish it, you would only pay fifty bucks.

[00:28:52] matt: but the flip side of that and the whole value for value thing is you could be like, you know what, I love this course so much. I’m going to crank up the streaming payment [00:29:00] so that. That the creator, instead of that creator getting a hundred bucks, I’m gonna give him three hundred bucks when I complete this course, you know, and it kind of adds this dynamic to the whole, content consumption, side of things, I don’t have no question there, that was just a soapbox moment because that’s what your, that’s what your blogging, scenario sounds like to me, it’s You create content.

[00:29:21] matt: If it’s valuable and people come, I’ll pay you out. They’re kind of doing this now with podcasting, but in a more technical, you know, sense. And I think it’s a really cool way to start thinking about creating like these content communities and other avenues for, for content creators.

[00:29:36] alex: Yeah, for sure. It’s, it’s, I’m, I’m really excited about all of that. Cause I think that, we need more options like that for content. especially with what’s going on with, you know, a lot of bloggers and stuff with Google and everything that’s happening, related to them having to pivot, right. Because Google is changing their algorithm and all that stuff.

[00:29:56] alex: I, the thing that gets me is all of this stuff kind [00:30:00] of ties into that idea, the idea of Loosening that grip a little to me like if we’re gonna get really like big and heady like that’s that’s kind of what I think About a lot with this is likethe siren to me kind of feels so fundamental to the web in a lot of ways, where it’s, it’s, you know, if you think back to like blog roles and you think about like people who were, you know, had a list of just links of other websites that they liked just because they thought they were cool.

[00:30:25] alex: And like the entire web was interconnected just by a series of websites that were like connected to each other. Right. It was federated in a lot of ways. And, I, A lot for me, like the vision of siren isn’t just to be an affiliate program. It’s to be a way to allow, a company or a business like that to incentivize and, you know, give credit to people for that kind of thing to help them everywhere from a full on sales, like You know, a car dealership, literally just creating a whole sales platform on their site, using it, but also like [00:31:00] for people who are trying to do, to monetize and, and help.

[00:31:05] alex: writers actually get paid for their writing without necessarily relying on ad revenue and stuff like that.

[00:31:10] matt: Yeah. It’s, you know, it’s, yes, a hundred, we could talk about this forever. Like the silos of social, social media, you know, what if, what if, okay. RSS really won the technical war, 20 years

[00:31:21] alex: Oh

[00:31:21] matt: right? If, if we all had an RSS link, like we have a website, and every, and it was just a ubiquitous thing.

[00:31:27] matt: Everybody understood what RSS was. And you’d be like, oh yeah, just go to my RSS link. That’s where all my content comes out. it’s the freest way of delivering content to the entire world, yet humanity chose social media platforms. Because they were faster, sexier, and, you know, you did a lot of cool things, started sharing photos with people, then you could like it, and be like, oh my god, this is amazing.

[00:31:48] alex: Meanwhile, RSS is standing in the corner going, no, We could do the same things with this old antiquated technology and you would own it, right? There’d be no ads in between your content. I [00:32:00] know. It could have been so great. I think about it all the

[00:32:02] matt: Google knew it, right? That’s why they killed off, killed RSS. And, and they just killed their podcast app, which is you know, now, now, now they’re telling people like, oh, YouTube’s going to be the savior of, Podcasts.

[00:32:13] matt: Yeah, like that. What don’t you realize they’re doing it

[00:32:17] alex: I’ve been on this. I’ve been on this ride before. I know where this is going.

[00:32:22] matt: Alex is fantastic. Conversation. siren affiliates. com. We’re going to get this episode out because I know you’re launching on the 4th, June 4th. right now, if you’re hearing this and it’s still available, I’d grab that 49 lifetime, almost free crazy deal.

[00:32:35] matt: that Alex has put together. Siren affiliates. com anywhere else, Alex, you want folks to go.

[00:32:40] alex: nope. That’ll be alright.

[00:32:41] matt: Alex, thanks for hanging out today.

[00:32:44] alex: Thanks.

[00:32:44] ​ [00:33:00]