Is there a name for someone that invests not only with just money but maybe sweat equity? Or both!

What about these accelerators, they seem to be everywhere in the VC world but are there any in affiliate marketing?

And what about service providers as investors where they can contribute expertise?

Is there a thing for affiliates to get mentors and advisors in their affiliate business?

Quick shoutout to the supporters of this newsletter which could be you but is currently StatsDrone and FTDx.

PS subscribe to this newsletter on Beehiiv here, just in case.

Someone in my network said this sounds like a venture studio. What I think a venture studio does, is they tend to invest into their own projects and ideas and build teams around those ideas.

So my question is, are there any accelerators or incubators in affiliate marketing?

I had this idea a long time ago about getting sweat equity and doing partnerships which came through my experience in affiliate coaching. That led me to working with Duncan Garvie for quite some time on ThePOGG where I did some of the SEO and their designs. 

I remember doing a few affiliate coaching panels at iGB back in 2011 and 2012. At one of these events, I had Duncan Garvie approach me after the panel saying he has a new affiliate site and he wanted my help. I’m glad that happened and we’ve been helping each other out to this day. 

I was always interested in the investing space but never knew where, how and when to get into it. 

In the back of my mind, I felt like I knew I needed to gain more experience and gain more focus in my work projects. That is, I had experience doing SEO, doing design, building affiliate sites, building adtech, and doing conversion rate optimization. 

Despite doing all of this, I would say I gained great skills but likely would have had better success focusing on one project and building that out. 

I acquired the domain, adventures.io, thinking one day I could turn this into a project that invests but does so beyond just with money.

I picked the domain name because it is composed of the words ‘ad’ and ‘ventures’ and of course who doesn’t like adventures?!

Now that I’ve found my passion project in StatsDrone and in writing this newsletter and recording the Affiliate BI podcast, I get the feeling there is an odd demand for an accelerator or incubator in affiliate marketing. 

Let me share where I see some opportunities in a hypothetical accelerator / incubator in affiliate marketing.

  1. SEO
  2. Product Design
  3. Conversion Rate Optimization
  4. Data Analytics
  5. Advisory Board
  6. Adtech
  7. Affiliate Network & Sub-Affiliation

Are there any VCs or venture studios that should be a red flag for a founder?

Let’s start with the obvious place: SEO

SEO

I still think SEO is one of the most misunderstood parts of affiliate marketing and iGaming.

The best SEOs I know are the ones ranking their own sites. Many founders that actively work in SEO are some of the leading affiliate marketers I know. 

There are other companies that are able to have success hiring SEOs but some fail miserably at this.

Then there are the SEO consultants, which the great ones, of course deliver solid results and then there are others that couldn’t rank a website to save their own life. 

So why don’t we see more SEO sweat equity deals being tossed around? They do happen but I personally don’t hear about them as much. Many SEO consultants want the guaranteed payment and if they really wanted the risk, they would do an affiliate site themselves. 

I think SEO would be a great service to offer affiliates. I would have taken this year ago but finding and trusting an SEO can take quite some time. The vetting process is a lot of work and it is hard to have instant trust which needs to be built over years. 

Product Design

Google has already signalled that it wants to push quality forward. I do assume that the flaws in Google’s search engine will maybe be ironed out but the signals for a quality site are becoming a little bit easier to spot. 

I previously wrote an article called The Role of Product in Affiliate Marketing.

Some of the best performing affiliates I’ve studied seem to be investing more into product owners and product roles in their companies. 

After going through the process of redesigning the StatsDrone app with UserActive, I wouldn’t design another product without them and that would include an affiliate site too. Shoutout to Peter Loving, Amadeu Thomson and Mariana García.

Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)

When I had Jesse Ringer on the Affiliate BI podcast, one thing he said was that he would always focus on optimizing for a better conversion rate. That is, CRO would always deliver results and likely has a positive impact on SEO.

I’ll highlight where I think a lot of sites go wrong and I’ve been guilty of this in the past and I could always do better today. 

Some pages and sites don’t have enough calls to action while others have too much. 

If you have a page that is just endless walls of text and the user has nothing to click or tap on, you’re asking them to leave the site. 

If you have a page that is just loaded with too many calls to action (CTA) then you can expect this to have the opposite effect. 

Both situations I think negatively impact SEO. 

Data Analytics

I am likely very biased but I think this is one of the weakest links in the entire affiliate marketing industry. 

Not everyone has the luxury of having someone on their team with a strong understanding of data, analytics and Business Intelligence. You can find these people at the larger affiliate companies like Better Collective, Find.co , Game Lounge and Paradise Media. 

You can find some of these people on LinkedIn if you search for the right keywords. 

Something that I’ve learned over the years is that just because you have advanced tools, it doesn’t make you a good analyst. The analyst skillset and training is truly lacking in the affiliation space. 

This is just like having Google Analytics and Google Search Console but not getting the most valuable insights out of it. 

For example if you’re an affiliate, would you know where to look within your data for signals of shaving?

What about if you’re an affiliate program owner, how would you know if your 4th best affiliate stopped sending you newsletter traffic or worse yet, if the quality of their FTDs deteriorated. 

How would you know these things?

If you got questions, I always got answers so DM or reply to me. 

Advisory Board

It seems that the only advisors you see in affiliate marketing are the public traded affiliate companies like Raketech, Better Collective, Catena Media, Gambling.com Group, Gentoo Media and Acroud . 

Recently I saw Jai Maw posted that he’s joined the advisory board at PlayStar which I think is smart for an operator to take on an affiliate. 

An advisory board could help with M&A issues whether it is strategically acquiring assets or even being acquired. 

I think I would be good as an advisor but I’m also quite busy as is.

Adtech

I’m not quite talking about WordPress themes and plugins although those are part of the scope but adtech is another major pain point for affiliates.

This can start with link tracking and I’m almost not surprised that many affiliates don’t have dynamic variables setup with click ID tracking. Our experience with it is many affiliates don’t know where to start and … they need that data nerd in their company. Or help from companies like StatsDrone.

Affiliate Network & Sub-Affiliation

Let me just start things off with some simple maths and numbers.

Raketech just posted their Q4 results and their sub-affiliation posted revenues of EUR 5.211 million and a gross profit of EUR 1.052 million.

That is just over 20% cut that Raketech is taking for helping the affiliate with their business. This is roughly what I expect affiliate networks to do for their margins being that high volume type of business using the power of a network.

Is there any incentive for the network to help with ANY of the previous topics I mentioned above?

I think the answer is why not. 

I mean who wouldn’t want to join a network that would do any of the following tasks:

  • Help with your on-page SEO
  • Tips on improving your UX and design
  • Do A/B split testing
  • Help analyze your data for revenue leak
  • Help you buy sites, be acquired or raise funding
  • Optimize your adtech
  • and maybe help you get better deals

I wrote about this concept previously in my Affiliate Network 2.0 article and I do believe this is the evolution of the affiliate network. 

Affiliate coaching and consulting

We still have more tools to build but until then, I’ve always been enjoying the work as an affiliate coach and doing affiliate consulting. 

If you got a question, reply and ask!