The Affiliate's Guide to Owning their Audience

One of my SEO friends Chris Labbate wrote this on Facebook:

He wrote a lot more but the summary was that AI is creating a lot of problems.

• AI wants your data and ideally wants your audience

• Cost for clicks is getting more expensive

So what can websites and affiliates do to combat this problem?

One of Chris’s answers was this:

Quick interruption to shoutout to StatsDrone.com and FTDx.io as newsletter sponsors. We are open for more sponsors so email or DM me.

That makes me feel good about what I’m doing for StatsDrone which is trying to grow the brand through authority content and podcasting. I would describe this as being harder to do but becoming more and more necessary. 

The key to making this happen is by doing it consistently where we know that many startup affiliate sites don’t do quality content in a consistent manner.

All roads lead to social

I was listening to the MoneyWise podcast from Sam Parr, founder of Hampton. Their most recent guest was Rob Townsend who’s a financial advisor. He said a lot of the financial advise being distributed today is now coming out of social media. See here for that episode.

Just a footnote here that Sam set the newsletter space on fire with his The Hustle getting acquired by HubSpot.

This is very true as I think Antonia Medlicott at Investing Insiders UK does an excellent job of content that I'm hoping one day they will have a Canadian arm of their site.

The evolution of content

I think content has evolved drastically in 100 years.

First it was books and newspapers where newspapers were the gatekeepers of content.

Then Google came along and opened everything up where anybody could publish a blog and get distribution via search.

The next channels for distribution are social which is at first was but about attention interruption but is now becoming a place where people actively use search within. That is, they trust what they will find in searching social media for content over Google. Google has lost that trust.

Now AI is trying to become that source of trust but it has flaws. I think why social will always do well because I think people like to buy from people. I think people could get tired of AI in some aspects of looking for answers.

I’m paraphrasing from Chris Walker who was a previous guest of the Affiliate BI podcast where he said 100 years ago, people bought because of word of mouth. He said that’s still happening today. That will likely still be the case in the new AI powered world. 

So where does this leave websites and affiliates?

Becoming products

It is a tough place. I think site owners need to start thinking about their business as a product. If it is content, then it likely needs to do more than just words unless that involves data. To get data implies to do research or build a product. 

The type of content that resonates with people is audio and video. I don’t think words will die but sadly Google and AI have made words cheap.

When I look at the newsletter of Affiliate BI on LinkedIn, LinkedIn has now hidden the data of the views. It is shrinking but I seem to be doing ok for having an audience moved over to Beehiiv. I think this is because Google has given LinkedIn less traffic but I don’t know if LinkedIn cares less about Google. 

Why you want to own your audience

100 years ago when you were dealing with newspapers, you likely had to pay to play.

Today, you can create your own audience. It can happen faster than it used to take but it can still take time and effort. 

While there are media companies that still want and expect you to pay to play, you’ll want to build your audience so nobody has the ability to take it away from you. 

I did a LinkedIn post last week where I shared a screenshot of someone from a media group that was trying to sell me links. That guy told me that this is how I build my brand and trust but with their prices, I would call this more of a ransom. 

Trust and the Creator Economy

I recently saw this posted somewhere on LinkedIn that the creator economy is worth $156 billion today and will grow to $500 billion by 2030, growing at roughly 22.5% annually. This article here has a lot of data and footnotes.

Aside from focusing on the audio and video component of the creator economy, the newsletter segment isn’t shrinking.

It shows that Patreon has paid over $1 billion to date according to demandsage.com and that Substack has over 5 million paying subscribers. 

I’ll end this all on a high note.

Recently, I had a news group trying to sell me blog posts on a relatively new domain that is under DR 30 and wants well over $1500 per blog post.

Sales bro was so intent on telling me how SEO works, how media works and that if I want to build a brand, you gotta over pay.

No thanks bro. 

I’ve been podcasting for nearly 3 years with close to 150 episodes and the Affiliate BI newsletter is closing in on 3000 subscribers. I’ve also added 15,000 followers on my personal LinkedIn page.