Why Most Media Buyers FAIL (And How to Avoid It)

Introduction and Catching Up
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Rob Adler: [00:00:00] 

Jim Banks: So how are you, my friend?

Rob Adler: oh, I'm good. Just spin, deep in the LLM stuff and all of that. 

Jim Banks: And

Rob Adler: Oh, it's been interesting.

Preparing for Affiliate Summit East
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Jim Banks: and you must be getting kind of like all geared up for, affiliate Summer East.

Rob Adler: Yes, actually, we're finalizing all of our travel stuff now. I'm actually speaking at Malecon. so I have a session there, so that we can, I think, I'm trying to remember what the exact title was, but basically I'm going over how humans can use AI and not just get replaced by AI when it comes to marketing.

especially right now, everyone's like, oh my God, doomsday, everything's going and everyone's gonna lose their jobs and everything. It's like, yeah, great, but first you're gonna lose your job to the dude that's using the tools. Then you're gonna lose it to the tools. So like, let's at least try to make it work now.

Jim Banks: so male con, I'm gonna take my glasses off. so male con. Male con is, is an interesting kind of event. I mean, it's been around for a while. 

Understanding Different Marketing Events
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Jim Banks: What's the difference between a male con, a mailer [00:01:00] meetup and affiliate summit for those people that kind of like think, thinking of gonna one or two or whatever.

I mean.

Rob Adler: So that, that is actually a great, not easily answered question, but I'm going to try anyway. so picture affiliate summit, like SMX or Pubcon or anything like that. Right. Like big conference floor with an exhibit hall, like, like

Jim Banks: You've gone. You're muted again. 

This is crazy.

I can't believe it. This is just insane. The technology has taken over the world. No.

Rob Adler: the whole nine conference.

Jim Banks: There we go. There we go. No. Gone again.[00:02:00] 

So we could be experiencing in the shortest episode ever of a podcast.

Rob Adler: How about.

Jim Banks: Yes, now is fine.

Rob Adler: Great. I got about 45 seconds before it dies again. So affiliate Summit Convention Conference, the standard one, you get a ticket, you go, there's a company list, like the normal type of SMX or style conference like that. but what you normally will see is, you'll see a couple brands that attend a lot more.

Brands will usually exhibit, and they'll be the ones that, and they're not exhibiting their product really, unless they're like an ancillary product within the industry. But it's mainly like affiliate networks, advertisers, traffic sources, chargeback prevention, and compliance tools, stuff like that.

Then you work your way down a little bit and I like to usually say the less official it is, the better information you're gonna get just in general. [00:03:00] if that's your goal. 

Networking Strategies at Conferences
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Jim Banks: Mine usually nowadays is networking and just making connections with people that I usually work with. combination of meeting people that you already know and meeting new people. And I've always kind of said like, you got, you got, you gotta do both, right? I mean, some people go, I'm gonna go and go. Oh look for new business. And I think that they're missing a major opportunity of having most of the people that they may work with all in one place at the same time.

The Importance of Mentorship
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Rob Adler: 100%. And that is, and and this is what I like to point out whenever, 'cause I used to be, way back in the day, affiliate, affiliate Summit had a program with affiliate Summit mentors. And one of the thing was is I tried to be a mentor for someone new that was coming in. And the whole goal was you only got paired with people that have never been at all, like they have, they're not even with a company that's ever been.

and that really showed me a lot about not just like. It's not that they're new, it's that they're new to Affiliate Summit. It's not that they're new to traffic or anything. My guy was a 25 year veteran, like he wasn't ever an [00:04:00] affiliate, but you know what he was doing promoting affiliate stuff on non-affiliate channels through his employer.

And I'm like, so you've just been making him money this entire time? And he is like, well, yeah, but I didn't know this was a thing. I introduced him to like four people. Now he runs a shop with 30 employees, so like

Jim Banks: quite interesting, like you talking about that because I think so many people are actually affiliates and don't even think of themselves as affiliate. Right. 

Affiliate Marketing in the Travel Industry
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Rob Adler: So again, if you look at, if you look at in travel, I mean, I worked at Travel for a long time, right? And people like Expedia and yeah. booking.com.

Jim Banks: basically affiliates.

They are, they don't own the hotels, they're just selling the rooms on behalf of the hotel chains and getting a commission for percentage of the booking value. Right. And I'm like, that's the, that's the affiliate marketing model right to a

Rob Adler: That, that literally, that literally is what it's, and that's what those guys are. So like, and, and there's a difference between a company that is based on affiliate and one that leverages affiliate, right? So like a store that has physical, like actual physical locations and sells like clothing, right?

[00:05:00] They're not based on affiliate, but they can have affiliates sell their products, whether it's in person or it's there. This show is how you find people like that. Even if you don't go look at people talking that were there. Oh, I met with so and 

Maximizing Conference Opportunities
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Rob Adler: I met with, so andSo, the biggest thing after, a show like that, especially the corporate e aspect, and I'm not saying Affiliate Summit is one of those, but it is more than the others, is you'll see a lot of like, it was great like LinkedIn posts.

It was great to catch up with my friends at tag, tag, tag, tag, tag. And I'm like, great. So now I know that this person works with those people. But if I see someone in that list, I know I hit 'em up and I'm like, so this guy, yes, no. Should I work with them? Should I not? That right there is what the affiliate model is as a community, when you are not just trying to screw people Over 24 7, I have

Jim Banks: think, I think that the, the challenge I've always had is like, like with affiliate Summit, you've got the meat market, which is a complete crazy kind. 

The Meat Market vs. Trade Show Floor
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Rob Adler: Of, Oh [00:06:00] yeah.

Jim Banks: It's just crazy. Is, is the only way I can describe it. And then you have the, the, the kind of the normal sort of trade show floor, right?

Where people have big booths and, and whatever else, right? Meat market is started off. It was supposed to be just a table with two people, two chairs, and maybe a

Rob Adler: Now it's a

Jim Banks: Now it's like, it's gone completely bonkers, right? But the, but the, the problem that you have is that a lot of people kind of turn up at the, the kind of the meat market and they just kind of walk up and down, up and down, up and down, right?

Effective Networking Tips
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Jim Banks: And I think for me, it's like if, if you are a,if you are an affiliate, right? There's certain companies that you should make a beeline. You should have a list of the people that you want to go. You should know exactly what table they're at and make a beeline to go and talk to them before you talk to anyone else, because everyone else is gonna try and pimp their stuff on you.

They're gonna try and sell you things that you don't want.

Rob Adler: Oh yeah.

Jim Banks: you do traffic. I want your traffic. It's like, well, I need to do traffic in this vertical. And you're in that vertical. Where is the kind? Is there no synergy? Right? So I think you need to kinda make sure that you've got [00:07:00] probably 75% of what you're gonna do planned in advance, and the other 25 can be ad hoc and you can meet other people kind of on the fly.

But I think what's quite interesting is a lot of people that exhibit at the meat market now do so at the detriment of not having a booth, right? They, they used to have a booth and now they go, I'm just gonna have the meat market and then do two days of networking.

Rob Adler: It really depends. And, and this is, and, and again, I know I, I'm trying not to say anything that people will, will, let's say, take the wrong way. I'm not saying in any way that the exhibit hall is not worth it. It's a hundred percent, but depending on where you are in your journey, sometimes the exhibit hall's just gonna be a waste of time.

And, and what I mean by that is, is that if I know what I want and I know what I need, and that ain't in the exhibit hall, I probably won't go to the exhibit hall, but the meat.

Jim Banks: what was really interesting for me is like I remember walking both the meat [00:08:00] market and the exhibit hall and talking to kind of people towards the tail end of the third day. Right. Usually by

Rob Adler: Oh yeah.

Jim Banks: Everyone's lost a will to live. And you talk to them and you, you kind say, well, how, how's the show been?

Right? And they go, well, in all honesty, I mean, we didn't want to come, but we knew if we didn't have a presence here, people would assume that we're in trouble. Right? So all the people that they met, they were gonna be anyway. A lot of people just gonna go and sit on the booze and hang out and maybe drink a couple of beers that they have in a cooler or whatever, right?

And that's kind of like their experience. Those are people that they know anyway, right? And again, again, sometimes it's just good to press the flesh, say hello to people, give 'em a t-shirt or a sweatshirt or a hat or whatever it is, swag 'em up and send them off and, and everything else. but it is a challenge.

Like, and I'm always amazed at how many brands have got a presence there and there's people stood there, they're on their phones, they've got their back to everyone. They're not kind of [00:09:00] paying any attention to kind of who's walking by. I mean, the thing I really like about Affiliate Summit is a show is they color code all the lanyards to show who the networks, who are the affiliates, who are the traffic providers.

You know it. And really, I mean, if, if you are an affiliate and you're looking for advertisers, you should zone and hone in on just the color that the advertisers are represented by. And probably not talk to anyone else, maybe talk to affiliates as well to kind of see what they're up, up to and everything else, right?

But just again, you wanna make a beeline for those people, right? Because then that way you can, o you are only talking to the people that you know will be of value to your business as you kind of try and grow it.

Rob Adler: And, and this is, this is the other part about that too. 

The Role of Trust in Business Relationships
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Rob Adler: Don't. Turn people off 'cause they don't fit what you are currently doing. But be very realistic about what you are going to or not get into in the future. At least as of right now. Like if you're like, I never want to get into X, then that's fine.

But like if the dude you're talking to is just [00:10:00] being an A-hole, like literally, and you're just like, I'm never gonna do business with you, ever. And also I don't even see a possibility of having you as a friend. So like why are we talking right now? Like that is for me, I'm always the, it's not that we can't do business, it's that we can't do business right now.

I might change my industry, you might change yours, you might change companies, you might change this. That has been my thing literally since I started is I don't care where you are. I don't care what you do. I want to help you do X, Y, and Z. If I can, I want to help you. If I have friends looking for something right, I only lose by not introing them because people say, well, why don't you broker and take money?

That's great. And sometimes I will, but other times. It just doesn't work with that spread in, and it just is something where they don't understand because of the compounding aspect, right? So different deal, different criteria, different setup, but also timing is the most important. Just because you're doing this doesn't mean, again, you won't be in that later or you won't be in this.

The amount [00:11:00] of people that realize that they've been getting data for a specific industry or niche that they are monetizing, and then they find out that they could have made four times the amount with the exact same traffic, just with a different offer, is nuts. Once you target the right people, because you go through the nice little wave of emotions, right?

I've got volume, it's great. Oh my God, it's converting. oh, we might actually lose it a little bit. And then all of a sudden you get to the next one, you're like, it's break even. But I put in so much work and then you put in another one, you're like, now I'm profitable. What the heck is happening? So it's that.

But those stories you aren't gonna read online. Because people don't want it in writing and they're not gonna tell you how they solved it. 'cause that gives a potential competitor an advantage. And people will say, well, there's a lot of competitors. Does not matter because I know one guy that considers 400 people his competitor, and I know the 400 people that know the one guy is their competitor.

It does not matter of scale when you have the ability to do 10,000 people's worth of work as one person. So when you're buying on Google Ads, it's not the same as [00:12:00] placing newspaper ads. Like, yeah, you're limited by Geo on that, but so am I. But

Jim Banks: a lot of the people that are the best kind of at what they do are the least talkative and and they're not secretive, right. But they're not very outgoing and gregarious, so sometimes they kind of just slide under the radar and, and nobody kind of knows what they're up to. Right. Until, you get them kind of in a bar, have a couple of drinks, and then all of a sudden they tell you the sort of numbers that they're doing.

You're like, wow, this is amazing. Right. That they're doing that kind of volume.

Rob Adler: So I don't think I've ever actually said this. That exactly is my approach and that's why my approach works so well. And I'm not, I'm saying this like I do it methodically to take advantage of people. Like I don't like it's, it's literally just, I talk a lot as you all can see, and I talk fast, but I can say a lot without giving up the actual secret of what I'm talking about.

But I can give enough that if you know what you're doing, [00:13:00] you can connect the dots. So I just talk and see how people react. I don't care what they say, I just wanna see how they react. And there's always the one guy or girl, there's always the one person that literally is like five feet back and you're like, are they listening to us?

I'm not really sure. And then you say that last part and they go like this and you just go, come on over man. So like it's, that's the kind of thing, but

Jim Banks: Again, again, I, I've always done that whenever I've been in a group of people talking, if there's somebody on the periphery, right. I always try and make sure I bring them into the conversation because again, that's, that's how this industry has evolved for me, right? I think it's one of the reasons.

And and like I said, sometimes the relationships, as you say, you, you may benefit financially from brokering deals and whatever else. People may pay you an introduction fee or whatever it might be. but you know, if you go into, into it with, that's the only thing you're going to do, then you'll, you'll lose out.

I think you, it needs to be a, a, a nice, very pleasant bonus to get when it happens, but not necessarily should be the only way in which you can cut your business. [00:14:00] And so, and so many of the people, I mean, I, I always remember, a a friend of mine who used to throw great parties every time, and I used to turn up and, and basically he said, Jim, you always turn up with a big entourage of people, right?

And I'm like, well, I like kind of hanging out with people and if I'm going somewhere, I want them to kind of come along and enjoy the same party that I'm gonna enjoy. And, and they, and they, they would always go, yeah, that's fine. That's great. Bring them in, right? Because if, if they say they're with gin, then they, they must be good people.

Rob Adler: But that's the key. That's the key right there.

Jim Banks: but I remember like at some point in time, I think probably two or three of the people that I brought along ended up, not at that time, but in the future, landing great jobs. And because of that, the person who ran the parties right, would benefit immensely from being able to pick up a program because they remembered being invited to the party.

They remember not being on the guest list, remember coming in. Right. And,and it was, and, and so for me it's, it's, it's, it's very much a case of, it is [00:15:00] really about the people that you, you have in your sort of circle of friends and who you can kind of bring into the circle, 'cause again, everyone turns up to a, to an event. I mean, I used to like that sort of mentor mentee sort of situation. because again, sometimes it's, it's good to have somebody that can kind of steer you and guide you kind of down the, the, the sort of the dodgy path that, you, you kind of, you, you face

Rob Adler: It saves you from yourself with testing.

Jim Banks: Yeah. And and, and I, I think sometimes I, I, I think it's always a, you, you've got to get involved and you've got to contribute. I mean, it's not just a case of, as you say, standing in the background, making notes and writing stuff down and, and everything else, right? You've got to try and sort of contribute.

And again, I, I think sometimes it's good to encourage other people into the conversation, right? So if somebody's sort of there and isn't, isn't saying much like, Jim, what, what's your opinion on this? And, and, see what they say. 'cause again, sometimes you, you are, you are blown away by some of the stuff that they're doing and you go, well, I didn't realize that that's what they did.

Right? But then eventually it'll, it'll show that they're, they're [00:16:00] actually very, very good at what they do.

Rob Adler: So let me actually take that example and ramp that right back into the conference example, 'cause that is actually a perfect one. At Affiliate Summit, you will see me walking through the exhibit hall, talking to people, taking meetings, the normal stuff. I'm in business mode. I'll see friends, I'll have fun, we will chill and whatever and set stuff up for later.

But I'm in business mode, so I'm meeting to meeting booth to booth, whatever it might be, depending on the use. Now, let's go over Mail Con. 

The Value of Information Exchange
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Rob Adler: So the concept of Malecon, at least in my mind, I'm not gonna speak on your behalf, Malecon, but the concept of Malecon was to have something that was, at least in my mind, more officially, like conference E. Still private enough that you would actually feel comfortable sharing some of the stuff that helps you with an advantage. But here's the key, and what you mentioned is, and, and this is like you said, the main concept is, when I say relationships, I mean two things. [00:17:00] I mean trust, and I mean the ability to know that when someone's telling you something, they're not guiding you the wrong way for another reason, and that.

It goes into trust, but I separate it. 'cause those are two different things for me. 'cause those can completely happen at the same time. So male con is more of, if I'm in affiliate summit, I'm talking about Yeah, we might have some internal mail and media buying and yeah, let's discuss, running your stuff and taking a look and da, da, da da da.

Normal stuff, male con. I'm like, okay, so you want health and wellness. We've got about 4 million people on that list right now. Opener, clickers, past 90 days. Media buying, we're doing about X, Y, Z. Like, I'll go into that. But like, I'm not gonna tell you how I get my CPCs down. I'm not gonna tell you how I get my email down.

But the people I talk to at Male Con that we go out to dinner with, I might tell them some of that. But it all wraps up into this. Is it a two-way street? And I don't mean money and I don't mean concepts. I mean, do we both feel like we are both getting the same amount of [00:18:00] value in whatever that may be out of this relationship?

So if I'm giving you knowledge and you're giving me preferential treatment on X, Y, and Z, or a good payout or something like, cool, if that's worth it to me, I'm not gonna complain and you're not gonna complain. So we're good. But it's up to you to determine if it is worth it for you. Some people, information is not only execution is speaking of execution.

Now let's go over the mailer meetup and their sister slash partner company, the SMS meetup, or I guess sister slash partner meetup. Sorry. So this is, and to be very clear. These are my favorites and, and I don't mean just these, although these are literally my favorites, but all of the kind of, these are affiliates that ended up doing something more official.

AKA, they run a network, they run an offer, they run this, and either they run it themself or they partner with others and either they throw a party, which is usually like the multi people and all that, or they throw [00:19:00] a like mini little meetup, what they call Meetup and that's like bunch of mailers, whatever.

Here's the difference. To go to affiliate Summit, you need to get a ticket to go to Mail Con. You need to get a more expensive ticket and basically just, not be person that shouldn't be there to go to mailer meetup.

The Vetting Process for Meetups
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Rob Adler: You have to apply, get vetted, go on a phone call with the staff there, and then after that, they will actually ask around about the industry to verify that you are a mailer.

Here's the kicker. You don't have to be a good one. You just have to be one that is actually mailing. As long as you're doing it, it doesn't matter. But if you're an am, that's like, I have an AWeber account. Don't even try it because if you Try

Jim Banks: the challenge is like, I, I, I mean I, I've been to a couple of, mailer beat up in the past, right. And I was, I was kind of like, I, I, I was mailing.

Rob Adler: Mm-hmm.

Jim Banks: I was kind of like moving away from it into other stuff. Right. And,'cause I just, for me, I just hated, [00:20:00] every time I got like a spam house complaint, I would be like having anxiety attacks and I just couldn't cope with it.

So I just said, okay, I don't wanna do that. But, but again, it was, as you say, like you needed to have, a vetting process and vesting interview. I just thought, wow, this is kind of really a, again, to me it seems a bit cliquey and, like really kind of close-knit, which I, I get the rationale behind it because if, if it is a, everyone's kind of opening up their kimonos and going here, here's, here's what I got and blah,

Rob Adler: Oh yeah.

Jim Banks: And, and and I, I think when I went there, it was, it was useful because, there was people there that had like a hosting service company. So if you wanted like a class C, you could kind of get a class

Rob Adler: Oh yeah.

Jim Banks: and, all these sort of things. I think a lot of people when they say, oh yeah, I'm, I'm a media buyer, so I.

And they go, I just buy traffic on Facebook. It's like, well, then you're not a media buyer, right? You're not in control of what's actually happening in terms of the pricing and everything else. So it's like mailing, right? If you, as you say, if you've got an, an AWeber account or you mail from Klaviyo or whatever, like, it's down to them as to whether they choose to accept you or not.

Right? the, the kind of the, the sort of volume of mail that, that [00:21:00] high volume mailers do, would never kind of go anywhere near an AWeber or,

Rob Adler: oh, oh completely. And but, but here's the kicker. They don't look at volume. They just look at that, your mailing. And that's the other part going again, full circle back to the relationships part. Mailer Meetup and SMS Meetup are run by the guys at Addicted Affiliate. They are a network. They've been around a very long time.

I've known Steve and Jeff a very long time. The one thing I will give them credit for, and I want to be very clear, if they didn't do this, I would say it, especially here because my reputation is worth more than that. But the one thing about them is they're very logical in two things. One, this is not a promotion for their network.

This is a conference for information exchange and to help people not lose with bad vendors. So a lot of the conversations we will hear around there is like, oh, I'm trying to find an IP for, like you're, I'm trying to get an IP provider. And someone's like, I'm thinking about going with so and isn't it so much better for someone to be like, don't do that, just lost money with them.

But do you know [00:22:00] John? And then you just literally pull 'em over and you're like, I have like 600,000 ips with him. So like with that stuff. Nothing bridges the, let, let's call it the intersection of trust and the, let's call it timetable, to getting a solution when you are at mailer Meetup, because I've literally had that with other people too, where they're talking about, oh, I can't do this and I can't inbox that.

And I'm like, have you tried this? And they're like, no. And I'm like, well, go try it. And they try. They're like, oh my God, it worked. I'm like, yeah,

Jim Banks: Yeah, because that was, that was always a challenge, like when I was mailing, right? We had a sort of set, set, offers that we used to run regularly. we'd run this one on a Monday, this one on a Tuesday, and so on and so on, and then people would go, Hey, I, I, I, I've got a, I got an offer, I want you to kind of mail it.

And I'm like, okay, well what's, what's, what's sort of, CPMs are gonna guarantee me, right? Because, they just assume that they would be a well performance based model. you, you, you kind of get results for us. We'll, we'll pay you. And it's like, no, if I know that every single offer I've got, I'm guaranteed a certain amount of [00:23:00] money, right?

Every time I press the send button, right? 'cause again, I've got overheads. I was mailing, you have the overheads of the, the, the technology, the platform and everything else. And it was always kind of, you have to, you had to sort of make sure that if you were mailing something that, one, you get in the inbox two, you, you kind of ensure that the, the offer that you are mailing performs at a level that doesn't, doesn't trigger these incremental spam house complaints and everything else, right?

I mean, if you sort of had a horrible offer that, people had issues with, then soon, soon as sooner than you, like, you're gonna get spam house complaints through the, the level that that just kind of takes you into, black balling and, and everything else. And, and for me, I just didn't want to kind of do that.

Rob Adler: when you say, well, I need you to kinda guarantee me a certain CPM, and people go, I'm not gonna do that, and I, well, in that case, I'm not gonna mail for you. Right? There's, and yeah, there's a lot of those, like there's a lot of like, I want you to just run CPA, and there are some mailers that literally they could take prepays, like they could take like oh 10 to drop this on a CPM of X, Y, and Z, and it's like, great. But when I [00:24:00] drop it to the same amount, I make 40.

So it's like, so here's the fun part. You have to find out two things. One, and I'm gonna say this because if anyone in the anti-spam community is actually going to watch this episode, I wanna make this clear. Your data needs to be clean and it needs to know who you are. They need to actually understand that they are on your list.

Not that you signed up for a website 47 times removed and then all of a sudden you're like, oh, lending Tree. But the main thing about this is that when you're doing these drops and you're doing the setup of these consumers and whatever else it might be, yes, you have internalized the channel, which is great.

Now you have the liability of internalizing the channel. If you lose a Facebook account, oh no, you lost a Facebook account right now, you've lost your, what if you lost your business manager though, and your other one's under it. If you lose that, it's like losing an MCC with AdWords or Google Ads or whatever they're gonna call it in five years from now.

But like with that, it's like you can take my [00:25:00] AdWords account for a client, that's fine. 'cause I can be like, he screwed up, this is him. He did this. I, here's the proof. Like blah, blah, blah, blah. Right? But if you lose an C, c. Your email's burned, your name is burned, your phone number's burned. Your credit card is burned, like it's done.

You are finished. So like with that, but that's still only Google products with mail. Imagine that Literally there is no big three or big two in terms of where you can send from. There's just a lot of places. So a lot of people just do churn and burn method and those are the guys that they'll just go and register and be like, Hey, Weber can take it, and they'll send it out.

And I'm just like, dude, like that is not a business model at all. And I was like, you literally make money by pissing people off. But the, but the whole thing is, is that I never would've gotten to that level of understanding if I didn't go to the first mailer meetup. That's, that's the main thing is literally someone mentioned that [00:26:00] to me just in passing.

Like it was just common fucking knowledge. And I was just like, oh yeah, that's interesting. And then I took it back and I was like, there's no way this does this much of a difference. And then I did it and I was just like, how did I make three times the amount of money today? And how did he not charge me for that?

And then I found something. Six months later I gave it to him. He made all that back and more. And now we still talk once a week. I know his wife, I know his kids. Like it's, this is not a day job type industry in my mind. This is

Jim Banks: that before, and, and, and I, I completely hear, I mean, it's, it, it is a, like it's a reciprocal business. You kind of, you, you do good things for other people. Other people will do good things for you. You, you, you stiff people, then other people will eventually stiff you. Like,

Rob Adler: you find out

Jim Banks: nowhere to, there's nowhere to hide, right?

I mean, I remember kind of walking around the, affiliate summit West Floor with one of my clients who lived, who lives in Utah, right? And basically we were walking the floor because there was probably half a dozen payment processes on the floor [00:27:00] who had withheld a crazy amount of their residuals, right?

Just because they were worried about kind of fraud risk and everything else. So basically we were walking the floor to try and basically do some collections, right? Because they had no right to be withholding the, the amount of money for the length of time that they withheld it for.

Rob Adler: Oh yeah. No. The rolling reserves are, are crazy on that side of things, but like it's even, it's even on the lead gen side too. People get not paid all the time or whatever it is. But the funny part is, is that if you're new, you don't realize that a lot of affiliate, as best as it can. Self-regulating in a way.

So for example, I keep looking up and I know a lot of people have mentioned that on the previous calls and on the previous like podcasts and stuff, right? I have a monitor up here every time I'm looking up. It's because one of the affiliate advertisers who do not pay groups has a new message of someone that just got fucked.

So literally I'm [00:28:00] looking up and reading that and making sure that no one that is being mentioned is someone I'm doing business with or any of my friends to my knowledge. And that's why occasionally you'll see me randomly look to the side as I'm sending a message going, yo just saw this, this guy just stiffed them for 40 Gs.

How much is your ar? Like that kind of stuff. But that after you've been a little bit higher up and after you've been in the industry a little bit, those are necessities. Like those And, but here's the thing, can you trust them?

Jim Banks: I mean, I, I, my, my, my business model's always been like, I'm gonna get a, a Dun and Bradstreet reference. I'm gonna get, payment history references from people that they worked with for a period of time. I'm gonna call those people to make sure that they legit, they pay their bills on time and everything else.

And if those don't come back, if I can't get a d and b and I can't get a reference, then I'm like, okay, you gotta prepay me, right? And if people go, I'm not gonna prepay you. And I'm like, well, okay, in that case, we're not gonna work

Rob Adler: we're not doing, it[00:29:00] 

Jim Banks: I'm not prepared to take the risk on your business at this particular moment in time.

And they go, well, I'm not prepared to take a risk on your business. I'm like, fine. good luck. Hope you find somebody to kind of work with, but it won't be me. 

Challenges in Media Buying
---

Jim Banks: And, I think, and I think that's the, that's the biggest thing I would recommend to anyone that's gonna get getting involved with media buying, right?

Is sometimes you are, you are the kind of person with the Trump cards, you're holding the cards that you know, that people, people want rather than the other way around. It's like, don't, don't let people treat you badly. Don't do this like whole net 45, net 90. like for, for me, it, it's sort of, so many people have set up and run their network on the residuals of people who were owed money but hadn't hit a threshold.

I mean, every month when I had my

Rob Adler: It is nuts,

Jim Banks: every single month, regardless of whether people are doing $7, 7,000, like it didn't matter. I paid every single person, every single penny, every single fortnightly,

Rob Adler: even if you got screwed.

Jim Banks: Right. Purely and [00:30:00] simply because right. One, if I cut them a check and sent it to them, that would remind them that we had a relationship.

Right. So they, they knew that they were in business and sometimes people go, Hey, I got a check for $50. This is great. What other offers have they got? And they would start to sort of spend more money. Whereas I think some people go, unless you've, unless you spent $250 or earned $250, they're not gonna pay you.

Right. And,again, I mean I, I used to do like, quicker payment frequencies if people would, would sort of agree to commit to achieve a certain volume of sales on a weekly basis. So if it was

Rob Adler: Oh yeah.

Jim Banks: you do a thousand dollars a week for four weeks, I'll pay you every week. Right.

Otherwise I'll pay you every month. Right. And then that way they had an incentive to kind of send more traffic my way. Right. And I had a kind of somebody that would again, potentially c, commit more to me than they might be committing to other networks. Right. And that's.

Rob Adler: so just to point this out too, at this point. At least a couple people that are gonna watch [00:31:00] this are gonna go, why do you guys keep talking about getting screwed? Are you doing something dirty? Is your traffic bad? Are you doing something shady? It has nothing to do with us. And that's the thing that is different here than others, is that with affiliate, if we run with a network and the network runs the traffic to an advertiser, let's say we're promoting Walmart, right?

So we're promoting products for Walmart. Walmart doesn't know who we are. Walmart only knows who the network is that is working with them. So to us, we're an ID number. We might be 50, we might be 75, we might be that, but we also don't know if they're telling them who we are. So if someone else that we don't know have never met and never worked with, ever, and also will never know, ends up running fraud, Walmart might actually take that out on the network and say, you are not getting paid.

That alone. Is an issue. Here's the bigger issue. When paying publishers, your risk tolerance is against your cash flow and against your AP and your ar. So when you're doing this, it's completely logical to have [00:32:00] one advertiser pay, let's say. and then another one pay monthly net 15, right? But what happens when monthly net 15 is what you use to pay all the other stuff for the other offers, and those guys need to be paid up front first.

So you literally take all of that and go, and then somehow you get screwed on that and now 90% of your people are screwed. That can happen even if it's not your fault, but that is also why you need to work with people that you can trust so that you can say anything I need to worry about next 90 days.

And they will actually be honest and be like, I don't think so. 10% chance, cool, 10%. I'm cool with like, no worries. But they have to be honest, they have to be the guy that says 10, and you know they mean 10. It's not like if I say it's 80, he's gonna stop and then I don't get the money and then I can't pay the other pups.

That's what they have to worry about. So it's.

Jim Banks: was always the thing. I mean, I, I, I, I always think as a, as a code, the affiliate network model is like, I, I always said like my [00:33:00] network, I'm there. My, my job is to protect the advertisers from the affiliates and the affiliates from the

Rob Adler: The advertisers.

Jim Banks: make a bit of money in between on the, on the, the sort of the brokering, the, the, the, the balances between what I get paid and what I paid out.

Right. And, and, and I think that's the, that's the, the, the kind of challenge, I think a lot of people just assume that they're gonna get paid for absolutely everything that they do. There's never gonna be any kind of clawback, right? I mean, usually at the end of the month, right. There's a validation if you're doing lead generation, there's a quality control check that's done

Rob Adler: window. Yep.

Jim Banks: and, and it's sort of like, again, pe like, people kind of say, oh, I, I earned this money, I'm expecting this money. It's like, yeah, but there may be some clawback here, right? I mean, they, there's no sort of guarantee that, that you're gonna get paid for everything. And they're already sort of what.

Wondering what they're gonna spend the money on. It's like, no, don't spend it until it kind of hits the bank. Right? Because they, again, there could be some kickback, but sometimes, if you've got leads that have gone in and the lazy salespeople just haven't picked them up and done anything with them, then they'll go, oh, these leads weren't very [00:34:00] good quality.

Right? And then all of a sudden they're trying to turn it on you. Right. Which is why I think on, on one of the previous episodes you talked about listening to all the calls to make sure that, you can actually check to make sure if there was anything untoward when it went through, Hey, I entered into a prize draw to win an iPhone, and that's the only reason that you have my details and I'm not interested in what you say.

Right. That's not, clearly, those are the sorts of things you wouldn't want to be paid for because they're not legit. Right. Whereas the ones that are legit, I don't want it to be, if there's a seven day window between, the lead coming in and the, the kind of payment closing, right? I don't want 'em to do like three weeks later go, oh, we're not gonna pay for these ones.

It's like, well, no, you had your chance to kind of claw them back. You didn't, so therefore you have to pay me for them, even if they.

Rob Adler: Oh yeah.

Jim Banks: even if they are not legit Right, you still have to pay me because I've paid the money out.

Rob Adler: this is, this is what I always love about returns is when returns happen, if you can estimate what they are without ever working with them just on the industry, then chances are they're using the exact same buyer you had [00:35:00] previously just at a different rate. Or the industry as a whole is just doing it.

So like insurance. When I was running insurance, we always had a return rate between eight and 12%. It always started at eight 18% until I started calling my own leads and going, Hey, did you talk to this agent? And they go, yes. And then I would record that, send it to my advertiser and go, so this is you talking to them?

Why does the dispo say unreachable?

Jim Banks: Yeah.

Rob Adler: And that's the thing is, is that I found out later that those agents were trained to do that. They were trained to cut it before the buffer and then literally call back and go, I'm so sorry. We got disconnected. And so I started brokering my calls through Twilio numbers and I would get their callbacks when they would call back and try to close them.

And I'd pick up and be like, stop trying to screw me.

Jim Banks: Yeah.

Rob Adler: So like it, it happens all the time in all of these different things. 'cause how are you gonna prove it? Other than what I just did, which most people can't, don't have the tech chops to do like ad hoc, but like that's stuff that [00:36:00] if you just know you work with someone you trust, you're good.

As long as you also know that that part of the transaction is under their control. So if it's not, they can still get fucked by someone else.

Jim Banks: ' cause again, I mean sometimes you, you'll have a, like on a, a, let's say it's an inbound call, right? There'll be the IVR, there'll be three ads that they put forward, and then 58 seconds into a 65 second kind of payout, right? The call gets terminated, but they've still got their three ads out there with websites and phone numbers and whatever else.

And it's just like, whoa. Hang on a minute.

Rob Adler: Yeah, you just, you're just like, what is happening? And then you have the affiliates also that run landers and they don't know why it's converting so little. And it's like you load it up on mobile and the top third of the page is a click to call link to their phone number that you don't get credit on.

Jim Banks: It's, it's like when I, when I used to, to, to run affiliate office in like nutri and things like that, right? It would always be like, you, you have the option with the networks that I was working with, to either get paid a kind of like a one-off. [00:37:00] Payment, or I could do a residual recurring CPA kind of based upon volume, right?

And I always look at the types of offers. So some of the offers would be, let's say it was a acne skin cream or something like that, right? That's something that people are gonna have to use probably indefinitely. So that was the sort of thing I would quite happily go on a sort of residual CPA pay me every month, right?

On the, the recurring subscriptions, because I would make far more money that way. Whereas some of them would be kind of more of a shifty thing. Let's say it was a weight loss product. People are either gonna lose it, they're gonna lose weight, right? Or they're not. And if they don't, they're gonna stop it.

Right? So I would probably go, I'll take a higher payment upfront and, and not do that one on a recurring, right? Whereas some of them I would do. And, and I think that's where, as an affiliate, you need to kind of evaluate those sorts of scenarios in your mind before committing to to run it.

Because when you're buying traffic, right, you could sort of, again, you could break even on the initial kind of. First purchase, right? Because you, again, you might say, I can get paid 40 bucks for this [00:38:00] now, right? Or I can get paid a hundred bucks as a one-off, so 40 bucks per month recurring, so they have to kind of recur for three months and I'm in profit,

Rob Adler: least. Yep.

Jim Banks: So then it's a case of, how much money can you afford to spend to acquire that, that initial sale, right? And, and again, if it's kind of like break even on that initial purchase, great. Right? 'cause then when, when the second payment comes in, third payment, fourth, fifth, so on, you are, you're not incurring any additional expenditure to acquire those residual sales coming in.

Right. And, and

Rob Adler: Exactly.

Understanding Offer Structures and Payment Models
---

Jim Banks: and I've never, I've never understood why people don't think about the offers that they're running on that basis.

Rob Adler: I'll tell you why. I can tell you exactly why, because. At a certain point, no matter what, you are always at the mercy of whether or not the company knows what they're doing. And what I mean by that is, let's say you sell to them on A CPC, right? Doesn't even matter if they convert, you just sell to 'em on A CPC.

If it doesn't convert, they pause you. So let's say you run [00:39:00] on A CPL. If you run on A CPL and they let you keep running, you would've made more on the rev share. But if you're running on the rev share and you're not making a lot, you could switch the CPL to make more, right? But when you switch the CPL, they'll pause you because your quality's not good to keep going.

So no matter what you do, you need to realize that the only, and I, I forget who said this quote, but it's a great one, is the best deals are the ones where both sides believe that they both lost a little bit. And that's literally the case for this kind of stuff if you, and it's insane how other people don't like even calculate that when they talk about this.

The Importance of Asking the Right Questions
---

Rob Adler: They're like, oh, so we'll get paid residual. Okay, cool. What's the average residual payment? Cool, but they never ask what the max is. They know the minimum, the minimum zero or gets canceled, right? But no, no one ever knows the max. What's really fun is when you ask someone what the average retention on the rebuild is and they're like, oh, we have some people rebuilding at two years.

And you're like, that's amazing. What's the average? And they go two months and you go, so that's like one person. So like [00:40:00] that's the thing is you need to know what to ask. 'cause they will give you the answer to exactly what you ask. And that's, it's not just affiliate, it's anything. 

Challenges with Affiliate Payments and Quality Control
---

Rob Adler: But here's two very, very, very important things to remember.

And these are the two things that apply regardless of channel. But they are for affiliate or promoting of offers in general, no matter what, you are always, always, always at the mercy of the person who is paying you. I'm not saying the person who converts, I'm saying the person who pays you. Because if someone else is the one paying them and they short them, you still get shorted.

Hopefully not, but you might get shorted. But also they have no control. They cannot change the lander. They can't change compliance, which means if it's uncompliant and you didn't see it, you're still on the hook. So depending, but with all of that, you are still at that mercy. So the number one issue with a lot of that is not understanding what you're actually sending users to do and how they evaluate how they make their money.

So if you get a bunch of people [00:41:00] and they convert, but they don't actually follow up, you're screwed. But also, if you work with an advertiser whose Chase team really sucks, you're screwed and it doesn't, it's no indication of your data. Good example, I work with a debt advertiser as a consultant. I bring him pubs that, let's say, pass my criteria with the pubs.

I bring him running to their competitors. The Chase team alone doubles enrollment rate. Because they don't go, oh, you're not there. Sorry. Like it's, they actually know what they're doing. They actually know how to chase. So like with these guys, I have people going from other places, with enrollment rates like 5% with them it's 12.

It's like Jesus. But then the second thing, and this is the, the other aspect of the industry as a whole is if you are not the one that determines when a lead converts, whatever that might be, a lead a sale, or CPC, whatever it might be, you are also not the one that determines when the pixel fires. [00:42:00] And if you don't determine when the pixel fires, you don't know the information you're actually getting is accurate.

Most people think I'm talking about shaving and I'm not. And here's why. Buckets.

The Concept of Shaving and Buckets
---

Jim Banks: explain what shaving is. By the way,

Rob Adler: Oh, sorry. so shaving for those that don't know is, let's say I'm running Jim's offer and Jim is paying me a dollar per lead. I send a hundred leads. I only know I got a hundred leads. 'cause Jim told me I got a hundred leads.

Jim could have told me I had 73 leads and I would not be able to prove anything other way unless I'm collecting the data and then sending it to him through an API and then he's going, I accept. Then I have a paper trail, but just running, I don't,

Jim Banks: Which is why a lot of, a lot of people don't want to do, they don't want to allow you to do host and post or anything like that because they know that way. They're not gonna be able to kind of do something that, you know.

Rob Adler: How are they gonna put their Facebook retargeting pixel on your host and post lead Jim? Like it's, that's what they do is they literally just, oh, you didn't [00:43:00] convert damn, our internal's doing great this month. So it's, it's that, right? But the other side is, and this is a concept, but I'm gonna use buckets as the example 'cause it applies to a lot, but the concept of a bucket is that they tell you you're gonna get paid XA lead.

But the reality is, is that none of these leads are ever going to actually pay that amount. So they let you accrue just like water into a bucket, right? It's filling up and then as soon as it hits the top, it tips. And when it tips your postback fires and you get your attribution. Here's the problem. When you optimize on a pixel, so if you're Facebook, Facebook, click id.

If you're ad you know anything, right? Even affiliate, just click id. What happens when. Your lead that you're sending traffic to is a $50 lead, and their advertiser backend has a $48 buyer, and then that's the first lead that goes into your bucket, and then they sell the next one to a $3 buyer. The bucket tips, [00:44:00] and then you get told that that $3 lead is a $50 lead.

Now imagine that you're auto optimizing on a pixel. Now, even imagine you're optimizing at all because your entire input data source is corrupted. You have no idea what you're doing. So I would much rather, in every way, take a rev share and know that that was a $3 lead so I can go, I don't want those anymore.

And then go to the other ones. Same thing with mail, same thing with anything else. This is on the offer level. It is channel agnostic. But it's fun to find out that also SMBs do this not only affiliate side, but even their internal stuff. They're like, if they check these three boxes, they're worth this. So let's tell Google Ads.

They're worth that. And then all of a sudden they get a bunch of people that never convert. 'cause they never thought conversion metrics should go into that. Like it's, it's nutty, but

Jim Banks: It's my, I've, I've seen situations where AdSense publishers [00:45:00] gamify their conversion, so they fire a non-existent lead to ensure that they get more traffic from Google AdSense, right. On the Google Display Network. Right. By having a conversion rate that is actually not genuine. Right. It's not a genuine 10% conversion rate because, the, the three sort of conversions that took place are all bogus.

Right? So they have bots that will do that, fill in the forms, click the button,

Rob Adler: I have no idea what you're talking about, Jim. I've never heard of these things at all, and they definitely are not used in this, in 18 other industries full time. yeah. And now the fun part is, I get to say this, those are your competitors, so have fun because that's the depth they go to to get a 5 cent advantage over you, and that's who you're against.

Remember, you're not competing with the only people advertising your product. You're competing with anyone that thinks that their product is a good fit for that person. You're competing over the impression slot, [00:46:00] not the person and the impression.

Networking and Relationship Building at Trade Shows
---

Jim Banks: Yeah, that was always the thing that I, the, the biggest red, red flag for me with, some affiliates that wanted to run office, like if they kind of joined your network and then they go, I wanna run x, y, Z offer. Right? And you, you kinda look at it and basically they'd be running it somewhere else.

They get kicked out right. Because of fraud or whatever. And they just assume that because you got the offer, that they can just pick things up where they left off with you. Right. 'cause they think that affiliate networks don't talk to each other, which they do. They talk a lot. Right. so if anyone has an offer, they'll be, affiliates will go and try and sort

Rob Adler: We, we have

Jim Banks: to.

Rob Adler: we have shared Excel sheets of everyone that has ever fucked us going back 20 years, and we share that with private groups every day

Jim Banks: And people say, oh, you shouldn't call them out. And I'm like, absolutely, you should. Right? I

Rob Adler: Are you kidding me? Of course I'm gonna call them out. I'm gonna call 'em out by name. I'm gonna give their address. I'm gonna even show their signature on my fricking contract because they have breached everything.

And if they've [00:47:00] breached everything, then I'm not worried about anything. 'cause they just screwed me. But not only do they, if they just screwed me, no worries. I'll be able to handle it. But now they potentially screwed every other publisher that I owe money from, from that advertiser and that I can't do, like, I'll take a hit, but now I'm taking a hit to then pay to then have them take hits.

No, not, not gonna happen. especially when, that's literally my job as a network is to buffer and protect. Like that's literally what I do. Legal fret, no problem. Who's your pub not telling you don't care. You can take me to court. Don't care. but that's the, the people that have been around a while understand that and they've been through a lot of this.

And like, I'm talking a lot about legalities and stuff like it's the edge case, but it does happen. The main thing is, is it's just relationships, it's trust. And the reason I say that, and what it all goes into is, is you need to be able to understand that when someone is telling you something, they're not blowing smoke or they're not telling you something else.

And that happens all the time. Oh, your site's [00:48:00] perfect to run our offer. Dude, I haven't even given you the link. And no one at your company knows it. And I registered it yesterday, so let's not do this like it's, but that's nine outta 10 conversations I have.

Jim Banks: I mean, I, I remember walking around at the, the, on the, the, trade show floor athletic summit, and this guy just literally jumps in front of me and says, we should be working together. And I'm like,

Rob Adler: Nope.

Jim Banks: Who are you? What do you do? Right? And he, we, he kind of speak, spilled off this kind of like, this is what we do, this is who we were with.

I'm like, well, that's not me at all. I don't do any of that stuff. Yeah, but you can do it. I'm like. But I don't do it. by all means, gimme a card. I'll take one of your cards. But you know, it it, to

Rob Adler: Did I ever?

Jim Banks: I, I got frustrated. I think, I think the one, the one thing I would say about trade shows, I mean, I've, I used to do a lot more trade shows than I do now.

And I think for me, part of the reason is I think, I think there are so few businesses now that actually sit down in the cold, [00:49:00] harsh light of day and do an analysis of what their return is for being there. Right. Whether it's, even if you, even if you don't go and don't have an exhibit or don't have a meat market table, whatever it might be, you will still have the, the kind of cost of

Rob Adler: Flights, hotels.

Jim Banks: hotels, the drinks, the, whatever.

And, it'll, it'll run into a lot of money. Right. And I, I would be, you need to be able to quantify that and go specifically, what did we get from this show? Right. It was

Rob Adler: you wanna know why you don't see that more? Because the companies that don't do that are out of business.

Jim Banks: Yeah.

Rob Adler: The companies that are still here, every single one that I've seen, like let's say five years, like over five years exhibiting every single one has that exact spreadsheet. And I know that 'cause we do, it's like, but, but you're right.

No one looks at it. They're like, it was good. We got business. And it's like,

Jim Banks: Like I said, to me, there has to be an element of accountability. So again, if you are a

Rob Adler: oh yeah.

Jim Banks: right, and you don't go back from the show with things that you are able to close right,

Rob Adler: Oh yeah.

Jim Banks: rightly should [00:50:00] be under pressure for not fulfilling your obligation of being there. Right? And I think a lot of people go, they go, they, they go wild.

They go and get blind drunk, they wake up late, they don't get to the, the floor on time. And, and no matter how blind drunk I've got, I've always been where I needed to be when I needed to be and in a fit state to be able to kind of conduct a meeting or whatever it might be. Right. Whether that's just my durability, I don't know, but Right.

I've always been there to do what I needed to do. Right. Which was, is one of the reasons, I mean, I, I always kind give this to people is a bit of a tip or an advice, right. Don't fill your diary with appointments. Right. 'cause I see people go, I've got 25 appointments today. Right. And when you, they get to it, they kind of walk to an appointment that it might take them 10 minutes to walk to wherever they're gonna meet the person for

Rob Adler: Yep. Yep.

Jim Banks: and that person's late doesn't show up, then that means you miss that appointment.

The following one kind of runs late. So they, they go, well, they didn't turn up on time, so they leave. Right. So they end up with like literally none of the appointments that they [00:51:00] had scheduled taking place. Right. Or very few of them taking place. Right. Whereas for me, I'd much rather kind of walk and talk with people, and, and. Like, you get more done that way. But I'm not committed to, I've, I've seen myself like where if people jump in and start talking to you in the corridors and you want, you want to go, look, I've gotta go. I've got a meeting to go to, but you don't wanna be rude. So it's very difficult, the challenge of trying to do that, which is why I would never Right.

Is, is one of the reasons why people always jokingly say, is the chandelier by your office? I'm like, yes. It's because

Rob Adler: A hundred percent.

Jim Banks: anywhere. I don't have to walk anywhere. I don't have to take anything with me. Right. People know where I'll be. Right. And they'll come over and, and if I'm in the middle of a meeting with somebody and somebody comes over to sit down, I'll be like, look, I'll be with you in a minute.

Come I'll, I'll come and find you when I'm done. Right. That way they know that I'm actually in a meeting that isn't for everyone's general consumption. Right. And and that's always the way I've just done things.

Rob Adler: No, and I'm the same. So like at Affiliate Summit, I always get up really early, not after [00:52:00] affiliate ball 'cause that's not gonna happen. but like the day before I'll get up and I'll go to that like little inlet right there with like the food and the drinks and all that. Because anyone that's been there before knows one hour later those tables are completely done until about 9:00 PM You will never get the table, you'll never get to sit.

So I sit there and I schedule all my meetings for there and then everyone usually just comes to me. But the main thing is a quarter of them are gonna meet, are gonna miss their meetings anyway. I don't care that they miss it, I care that they miss it and don't tell me until they've already missed it.

And that is auto a DQ for me. I'm not doing business with you. At least let me know. Like it's, it's just, sorry, got held up in the hallway. It's a fricking convention. Like no problem. But like the other thing is other people that come in. They see someone I'm talking to and they don't just like tap the shoulder and be like, whenever you're ready.

Like if they do that, like the good people always do that. And then they'll like just go somewhere or whatever it is and they'll let me wrap it up. Others will literally sit down and then they'll look at the guy they do not know and be like, what do you do? And I'll be like, what do [00:53:00] you do besides hijack fucking meetings?

Like, what are you talking about, dude?

Jim Banks: because that's the thing I've always hated when you are exhibiting, right. The last thing you want is somebody who's representing another show, coming along, trying to sell you a booth at their show. Right? It's like,

Rob Adler: oh yeah.

Jim Banks: mate, I'm, I'm here to kinda like sell my own shit. I don't need the you to sell your shit to me.

Right.

Rob Adler: Yeah. Like, but, but because all I think, 'cause all I think about is this, if that person's doing that right? And remember I am actively in conversations to work with this person and this dude literally went, I want you to know this is your scheduled time. By the way. I see the irony of me not being ready for the scheduled time in this scenario.

But they would be like, this is your scheduled time. I'm just gonna hijack whatever you're doing right now, and we're just gonna see what happens. And if he does that, what's he gonna do? When he talks to other people about the traffic he's seen me send, what's he gonna do to other stuff? What's he gonna do to this?

And the best one I've ever had is one of my friends, Sean, Sean Hall. and I'm sure you, at least know him a little [00:54:00] bit. but yeah, Sean, great dude, my favorite ever was him walking up to one of our meetings and he tapped me on the shoulder and he goes, whenever you're ready. And he looked at the other guy and he just goes, I'm seeing you later.

Continue your conversation and then just freaking walked away. And then I just literally turned around and he was like, the dude, like in the middle of like the brush, trying to look at like a random, like animal, literally like 40 feet behind me in a corner. He's just looking, waiting. He's just like, oh, whenever he's ready, it's my time.

And literally as soon as it wrapped, he came over and I, I literally was like, there's actually something with him that you might want to jump in on. He was like, oh. And he is like, James. And then he brought him right back and we all had the conversation there. That's the good way of doing it. The bad way is just inserting yourself.

'cause like in affiliate, that's my upside, my connections, my, but the people I work with, my trust, if you could just take all my pubs, I have no business as a network unless I have something exclusive that they can't get through you. So it's like, [00:55:00] there's a lot to it, but it's really just have a good time.

Talk to people. You people will say a lot more about the stuff they work on once they know you're a real person. You're an actual person that had enough money to at least get to a conference about something where a lot of people are self-employed. We all eat what we kill, and that's all. It's like, the fact that they're there is enough for me.

I'll give you the

Jim Banks: And, and the one thing I would say is if you, if you are an affiliate, a lot of people go, oh, I can't, I can't really kind of afford to go. You need to kinda like find a way to make it affordable for you to do that. Right. because honestly like it, it will incrementally add so much value to your relationships with the people that you're working with and find new people to work with that, in, in some respects, if you're an affiliate going to an event like that, you get so much more value than maybe a network would, or, 

Oh yeah.

an agency because, like the agency, like I said, agencies, networks, they're usually working with people that they already know. Right. They're meeting people they already know. They may [00:56:00] go, and again, I, I always used to kind of tell the story of,when I was, when I was working back in the day doing a lot of, a lot of stuff, like we, we would go to an affiliate summit.

I would get all of my affiliates and, and at the time the majority of them were like men between the ages of probably 23 and 28. And it'd be like, right, so guys, we're gonna go out tonight. We got, we can either do, go and see Celine Dion. We can go and get a nice meal. We can get. Table at a club or we can go to a strip club and they all go strip club, right?

And I'm like, oh God, do I have to go to a strip club? But I, but I, I, again, I would go because that's what the consensus of what they wanted to do was. Right. And, and again, I I almost felt like doing it at the time. Now I can sort of say it because I'm not running a network, but it's like ultimately everything that we did, whether it was strip club, going table at a a, a A club Right.

A meal or, shooting or whatever it was they were paying for it. Like ultimately they were paying for it by virtue of the fact that I was [00:57:00] taking the money out of the margins that I was getting Right. To basically pay for the things that I was paying for. Right. but that basically meant I was, it was money that they could have had that I was keeping to enable me to entertain them and, and, and everything else.

Right.

Rob Adler: Exactly.

Jim Banks: are the sorts of things that they probably wouldn't do themselves. Right. Or maybe some of them would. I don't. But, I always think it's kinda like you're paying for things that, that money really can't buy, and it's not sort of things that they would necessarily spend money

Rob Adler: Oh yeah. And, and again, it's, it's all the relationships. They remember that they remember the good times and the fact you did it and you weren't just talking to 'em about payouts and return rates and all this other BS that they're gonna hear 19 billion other times. And you're also not trying to just drop money on them at random and random places.

You actually want to be with people that you enjoy being with. That to me is the dream. The ability to make money with people. I don't freaking despise having to talk to all the damn time like that to me is amazing. So

Jim Banks: I think the thing I'm, I'm kind of like finding, getting great joy from, right? I mean, like. At the time, the, in the early [00:58:00] stages of the industry, there was not that many women involved in the industry. Now there's a lot more, and I love the fact that there is, but you know, but it's, it's kind of like then put a different perspective on the strip clubs and the bottle service and everything else.

And, and for me, I'm, I'm loving that fact, right? I mean, again, I can't even remember the last time I went to a strip club with, if, with any affiliates to entertain. It was a long time ago. And I have never to have to go back because to me, I just find the whole thing a bit denigrating and don't really like it.

Not, not, not, not, not a fan of it.

Rob Adler: it's, and, and that's the thing, like, it, it really, I'm cool to go with whatever people want to do within a reason. like, but back then also, at least in my mind back then, that was. A lot more standard for industry style events back then now? Definitely not. And, and I don't say definitely not. As in it doesn't happen.

It definitely does. but it's not like, like back in the day we used to put 300 people into a strip club and be like, it's an event. Like, like, and we would have it for like an [00:59:00] hour. Like everything's cool, but it's, again, it's you hanging out with friends that happen to occasionally talk about business with X, Y, and Z, whatever makes people comfortable to do that.

Whatever. You pick your poison, but whatever

Jim Banks: gonna a pa a party once where I think a network had organized a party at a private sort of villa with a pool and everything. And, we all piled onto a mini bus to go from I think the, the Rio to this party. Right. And there, and there was genuine hookers upstairs. Right. And there was a queue of affiliates stood outside the door.

I'm thinking, what the hell am I doing here? Right. I just couldn't, couldn't get away from there quick enough.

Rob Adler: Yeah, no thanks. No, no. That's, that's for other people. They can, they can do whatever they wanna do. I'll stay over here and, and not have a problem sleeping. but yeah, no, it's, and again, it's up to different people and, and I, I always tell people I will never, ever, ever complain if you say you don't want to go somewhere.

It is your fricking life dude. And it is your, or, it's what you're comfortable [01:00:00] with. My job is not to make you uber freaking happy. My job is to help you not have the downsides of dealing with X, Y, and Z on business. But now that we're together at an event, I would be dumb to at least not try to help you, not screw yourself with something.

Like, it would just, it wouldn't help. So like, doing all this, if you want to be happy and go somewhere. Sure. Like if I don't want to go, I'll pay for it. You can go like, I, whatever. It doesn't matter. I dont have to be there for the effect to still be. And that's, that's my whole thing. So yeah, like even when I was running my network and everything, I had some guys, they were like my main selling strip club, and I'm like, all right, all you go like that, that's fine.

I'll be over here. But like, my main thing is always just chill, drink coffee at the table. And you, I know a lot of people, so they walk by, I see 'em, and they come and they sit and they chill and we

Jim Banks: always, I always tell this funny story. So one of the last times I went to a strip club, like I realized that the best way of not getting kind [01:01:00] of pounced upon was to not be sort of sitting at one of the booths, right? So I found that there was some, some seats at the bar, right? I thought, I'm gonna sit on a stool at the bar, and then that way I'll get less harassed than I would do if I was sitting in a booth, right?

again, I've got like various people in, like I'm, I'm. Getting dancers for people all over the place because they're my affiliates and I'm just looking after them. But I'm sitting at the bar just minding my own business and this girl comes over, she goes, oh, I'm really, really hungry. And I said to the guy, Jake, do, do you have any food here?

So this guy gives me a menu and she has a look and she orders like a, a portion of chicken dippers, right? I think it was like $8 for a portion of chicken dippers. So for the next 45 minutes, this girl is sitting talking to me. And again, I, I like talking to, to the people that work in these places to find out what the story is.

'cause there's always a story. I mean, it's, it's not always a, a kind of a shady dubious story. Sometimes they're, they're girls that know they've got a limited shelf life kind of being there. They're not gonna do, do it for forever. and and again, I always treat them with respect.

'cause [01:02:00] I think that's, that's the best way, to, to kinda do it. But, but I'm sort of sitting there talking to them. I'm thinking, so let's have for 45 minutes in a strip club not being harassed while I watched this girl eat a portion of chicken dippers for $8, the best ROI I've ever had,

Rob Adler: No one would ever believe that story ever. It's like, it, it just, it wouldn't make, but then again, I can say that about a lot of affiliate Summit Stark stories in general. but yeah, I mean, I

Jim Banks: I remember, I remember another one of my affiliates, he, he, there's a, I think, I think there was a company called Vistaprint, right? And they used to come, like, if you get, I think 200 business cards for like $5 or something like that. And on the back it had made by Vistaprint.

Rob Adler: This friend. Yep.

Jim Banks: basically went, turned up at, Spearman, rhinos in Vegas, right?

And he said, right, that, his card had his name on it. He said, executive producer, and you have the MTV logo on his card, right? And he said he was, he was recruiting girls for

Rob Adler: oh God.

Jim Banks: part in, I think a 50 cent video or something like that, right? So he was like doing some recruitment and they kind of [01:03:00] rolled out the red carpet.

I'm thinking if they'd have flipped the card over and seen, made by Vistaprint, they'd have thrown him in a dumpster, right?

Rob Adler: Oh dude. And the funny thing is,

Jim Banks: sometimes I like the creativity that affiliates kind of can go to, to, to kind of do that sort of thing. I

Rob Adler: Oh yeah. That, that's why, that's why affiliates can usually outperform. Most brand buyers like it. It's because we have to, like, if we don't, we don't make money. Yeah. Like it's, it's, it's a little bit different. But yeah, I mean, it's all about, it's all about just figuring out who you like to work with and what you wanna work in.

And as long as you do that, I don't care what channel it is, I don't care what it is, just, just help me find what I'm looking for. If it's people that wanna install an HVAC system, it's people that wanna install hvac. If they wanna refi, they wanna refi. Sometimes I just want people that are looking for something maybe they don't even need to buy.

But if you don't know the difference in your traffic, you're gonna lose money. And

Jim Banks: was always the thing. I mean, when, when I used to run like payday loans, right? What became really apparent to me was that people didn't want a payday loan. They wanted to buy [01:04:00] groceries, or they wanted to buy birthday presents for their children. That's what they wanted the money for. It wasn't, they didn't want a loan, they wanted the things that the loan would give them.

Right? So we used to kind of like then think differently about it and people go, well, the payday loans are really shady. It's like, well, yeah, but you know, it's gotta be better than having a guy in a baseball bat with a baseball bat turning up to kneecap somebody for not paying a debt that they got, some debt collector

Rob Adler: Well, well, think about it this way. Why wouldn't I want to help someone that doesn't have a lot of money? Get free food Like, like I would mail them DoorDash. Uber, and don't get me wrong, it's expensive, but they start you with free stuff and it's usually enough to get a free meal or two, and there's no commit after that.

So like, I used to be there and be like, listen, I understand you're going through some stuff here. and I actually, I used to spell it out like actually in the email I'd be like, listen, I'm the guy that sends you the email for, x, y, and z. I know that you have no idea who we are at all, but here [01:05:00] is, 20 bucks for, free promo from DoorDash we got as a part of our marketing company and we just wanted to extend it to you.

It's not incentivized. I'm not asking for conversions. I'm not doing X, y, and Z. And it legitimately does help the individual. It is a win-win for me. Like I am completely fine with that. And it's, it's about stuff like that when you can actually find something that makes money and also helps people, that's your win.

That's your,

The Value of Philanthropy in the Affiliate Industry
---

Jim Banks: for me, I, I, I think in the affiliate industry, if, if, if there's one thing I wish the industry did more of is that sort of thing, philanthropic stuff where they're adding value to people that may be not in the same position that they're in. Right. Don't, again, people don't get, I don't get impressed by people that, can do bundle service, that can kind of walk around the $300 jeans or anything like that.

I like the people that have paid for other people to come to the show. Who, who couldn't afford a ticket. They paid for their flight, they paid for their hotel, they paid for their ticket. To the, to the get in. Right. To help them kind of get on [01:06:00] in industry. I, I, I, I love people that are philanthropic, will help other people to kind of get on, right.

Because we all, we all were there at the beginning, right? We all had to start from somewhere. Right. And some people have been very fortu to get to where they are. And I think the ones that kind of give back are the ones that I love the most.

Rob Adler: Oh yeah. A hundred percent. And, and like, and I, I'll make this my last point 'cause I know we're running over. but the, the other main thing too is, is if you're working with them. It would be nice to just, just do not your due diligence. Like you don't need to deep dive on someone, but like occasionally you find something that you did not expect in a good way.

Like one company we were working with, the guy I was working with VP did, he just didn't seem logical, like there was something in his head that was just like, no matter what, I cannot do business here. I cannot do this, I cannot do that. So I just look at the CEO's like LinkedIn or whatever, and I looked down and I was just like, huh, he's a mentor with score.

And SCORE is like a small business association in, the us but you can get free mentorship from people that have basically been there, done that and are like, I'm retired now. I like mentoring people. And I [01:07:00] saw it and I was like, doesn't make sense. Him being like, that does not jive with someone who is like actually trying to help people for free with X, Y, and z.

I was like, maybe it's just for show. So I actually reached out to him and I, I put score in the subject line and he was like, no, it's legit. I actually do do that. And I was like, oh, great. He's like, why? Just wondering, 'cause like I saw your name in our CRM, but I haven't heard any updates, what's going on?

And we found out that it was literally that guy just like there was something about our deal he didn't like or it made him look bad or something. And the CEO was just like, oh yeah, like my bad, lemme look into this real quick. Like the biggest thing there is not that I jumped over and asked him to look down on it.

The biggest thing there is that in my mind he went from, I shouldn't work with him to, maybe it was a mistake and that wouldn't have happened without doing that lookup. So it's, you need to know who you're getting into bed with. 'cause those are the people that are gonna pay you or you pay them. And either way you are now linked to them financially.

You are married by money. So it is, [01:08:00] you need to know it's, some people

Jim Banks: and, and my parting gift, if you like. So I have so many friends in the industry that directly together, we've never made a dollar, right? But I probably referred hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars their way, right? I've got nothing back in return, other than I know I've done a good thing, right?

And I'm cool with that. And similarly, I've had people that will go, you need to talk to Jim. And people have come to me and again, I've offered to kind of, do things for people. No, it's fine. It's good. And those are the sorts of reciprocal arrangements I love kind of having and those sort of things that I think, you really need to try and go, not not just look at it as what's in it for me, like what's in it for all of us as kind of a collective.

'cause the, the bigger the industry is as a collective, the more, powerful it'll be kind of as we move forward.

Final Thoughts and Encouragement
---

Rob Adler: And I actually have one really good quote to tie that together. So I'm gonna end with that actually. And that is, you need to stop thinking about it's me versus everyone and start thinking about it's us [01:09:00] versus them. Because just because you're not working with them, you're not on paper as their partner, you're not here with that or whatever it is, doesn't mean their information doesn't benefit you and vice versa.

It doesn't hurt you to give it to them and it doesn't hurt them to give it to you. And if you are working together even as competitors, that you have the mutual enemy of the people you're going after anyway. So make friends, make them often, but also trust, but verify and make sure that it is good for you forward.

But these guys, I had four people in my wedding and three of them were from the industry.

Jim Banks: Yeah, I mean, it's

Rob Adler: That's, that's the best way I can describe like the melding of the business and personal

Jim Banks: I

Rob Adler: they,

Jim Banks: whenever I travel to, to Vegas, I've been to Vegas probably like 50 times. Right. And people always say to me, you're going there for business or pleasure. I'm like, what's the difference? Right? Because for me, my business is my pleasure. It's like I, I kind of have great friends in the industry travel all over the world to see them, hang out with them, experience things together.

And and for me that's, that's part of kind of what it is. It's not a case of, [01:10:00] well, I'll only go and talk to that person if I can make some money from them. 'cause that's not really kind of what I'm about. And it's

Rob Adler: not, it's not what it's for. It's not what the industry's for, even though it looks exactly like what it's for, but it's not what it's for.

Jim Banks: so Rob, this has been a good, good, good episode. I'm glad we kind of got to talk and,

Rob Adler: Yeah, definitely.

Jim Banks: So any, anyone that's kind of listening in, if you haven't already subscribed to the podcast, make sure you do that. 'cause we love it. It'll be on here somewhere, as Rob said, pointing down below. make sure you kind of do that.

Tell your friends about it. The industry is bigger and better with your involvement in it and helping, sharing the love by helping spread our, our kind of words of wisdom to, to as many people as you can. take care.

Rob Adler: time you share one of our podcasts, it saves a thousand people from me cold emailing it to them. So please share, like, share, and share often, but I hope you'll have a great week.

Jim Banks: Okay. Bye for now.

Rob Adler: See.

Jim Banks: Cool. I.