Hi Arlen and welcome to the podcast. It's great to have you here. Hey Jesse, thank you for having me. I, I appreciate being on it. I'm super excited to talk to you today. Yeah, me too. This is gonna be a topic that I'm super excited to dig into. So, before we get started, do you wanna just give a very quick intro to our listeners of you and your background and your area of expertise?

Well, I started our, our company, which is OmniSTAR Interactive. We were founded back in about the year 2000. Myself and my business partner both attended Howard University in Washington dc. We were computer engineering majors, computer science, believe it or not. We actually realized that we were from the same town in in Illinois.

So after we graduated, both of us, we actually worked for different consulting firms in the Northern Virginia area for a couple years, but on the side and at nights, a lot of late nights burning the midnight oil late nights, we were kind of putting the groundwork for what's OmniSTAR interacted. We decided to create a suite of solutions and the affiliate software, which is our main solution.

Was the one that really kind of took off. Yeah. So Suff, suffice to say you are kind of the grandfather of affiliate marketing. You've been around, I have to say, I've been in, I've been in this world for almost as long as you as well. So straight outta uni. I kind of got into digital marketing, so I know what it's like to kind of see all the changes, but feel really lucky to have you on here because suffice to say, Affiliate marketing, you know, still growing strong and is a really key part of an e-commerce store's marketing mix in definitely in 2023.

So, can you tell me what, what are the most common strategies used in affiliate marketing for, particularly for e-commerce businesses that are working well right now? Yeah, so when we're talking about affiliate marketing, first off, lemme just kind of narrow it down, narrow the focus down on what we mean by it.

Because when you use affiliate market, It can mean several different things. You know, when we're talking about affiliate marketing from the aspect of a brand. Create. Let's say you're a brand or an e-commerce brand, or you're just a, a brand selling a product or service in general, when we're talking about affiliate marketing, what we're talking about is launching a program where you're going to incentivize affiliates to promote your brand in exchange for an incentive.

Um, that incentive for affiliates, if you're looking at affiliates, and when we say affiliates, we're typically talking about people outside of the scope of your company. These are typically not customer. These are people that are. Have their own networks of people, their own following, and this is what they do.

They promote brands and exchange board commission, and so they're not a customer, they're not familiar with your brand necessarily. And so you're getting these people to promote and you know, you're really creating kind of an outside network, if you will, of salespeople. And so that's really what we're, we're gonna kind of focus on.

As far as affiliate marketing strategies and as far as strategies that I've seen that have been successful for brands that have. A successful affiliate program is, is really, I guess what I would say is to not only have that affiliate program where you're recruiting outside affiliates, outside influencers, but at the same time launch a referral program.

Where you're recruiting your own in customers to ref to promote your program. And when I say doing these simultaneously is really kind of the key where you can kind of get more banged for your buck. And when we're talking about a referral program, that's gonna be a little bit different than your affiliate program.

Typically, with the affiliate program, you're going to incentivizing these affiliate. With typically a a percentage commission per percentage commission for each referred sale, and that commission is usually gonna be cash, you know, and it can go range from anywhere between 10%, 20, 30%, whatever you work out with that particular affiliate, with a referral program where you're incentivizing your customers to refer people that they know it's gonna be a little bit different.

Typically, in that case, you're going to be during it so, You're giving them towards future products. That's the typical incentive for a referral program, cuz you're trying to keep everything kind of in-house. You're trying to increase your sales from these people. You're, you're incentivizing them by giving them more product.

And you know, that can be done via discount codes. Uh, Credit on online credit or, or gift cards and the like. And so a lot of the success that I've seen with the successful programs is when you're not solely focusing on just affiliates alone, but you're also have a simultaneous program where you're getting your, your customers involved as well.

So that's, that's really where I've seen a lot of success from customers that we've. That's awesome. With the referral program, you can, I think you can launch at day one. Okay. Because the, the thing with the referral program is what you're doing is you're really just leveraging. The word of mouth nature of your customers, your customers, you know, liking your product or services and telling their friends.

Because these days we all know it. If you have a product or service that you're using and you like it, you're gonna tell your friends and your family, you're gonna, you're gonna talk about it on social media, you're gonna talk about it to people you're communicate with over the fall via text messages. So people are gonna do that regardless.

If they see something hot, they're gonna spread the. . And so I think you want to capitalize that, start capitalizing on that from day one. So I think straight out of the gate launch a referral program because you know, you want to try to get that immediate traction. And there's also a, a viral nature to these referral programs because if you got a hot product and initially you get it out there and the word starts spreading, you know, it can really just start compounding and you know, can.

Yeah. You know, you get big very quickly. So, so what does the typical referral program look like? What, like, I know there's, you know, every business is different and what works for a business, but if you, what's the kind of blueprint that you would apply for a referral program? So is it that it's, they buy and then seven days later they get an email asking them to refer a friend with a referral link and they get a discount code.

Maybe it's 20% off for every friend they refer successfully. Is that kind of the way it works? Or am I off the mark here? What's, what's the typical you're, you're definitely right in some aspects with regards to how you're engaging them. You've mentioned letting the customers know maybe like a week later via email correspondence, letting them know that, okay, you've got that referral program.

This is what you can get, you can get a 20% discount on future products that you purchase from us. Sign up. So that's definitely a great strategy. Put that email within your, you know, your whole email funnel that you're gonna send out to customers. So definitely on point with that. So that's one aspect of it.

Another thing though is there's multiple ways. There's multiple ways that you can engage people with this referral. Number one is just straight up on the website, letting people know by a page on your website that can be also done via popups, via, you know, different interactive engagements that you have on the website.

Live chat is another great way to let people know, so that's another way. Secondly, you can tell people immediately after purchase, so pur post purchase, letting them know about the referral program right there on the thank you page that you. And, you know, letting them know what they can earn. So you're really just trying, you know, monopolize on the amount of areas that you're informing them.

Yeah, from that on the website. And then, you know, lastly, one of the things that not a lot of people do, but I think it's very effective, is letting people know, letting your customers know that you've got the referral program in your transaction. Emails, I'm talking about the order correspondent, order confirmation emails, the shipping confirmation emails, all of these emails, and people don't really realize, have some of the largest.

Open and click through rates out of any emails because obviously when people purchase something, they're gonna be checking those emails. They're gonna be making sure, okay, did I get the right product? Did I not, or did I pay the right amounts? When can I expect it? Or is there order status link that I can look for?

So people are gonna be all over these emails, and so what we recommend doing.  letting people know of your referral program in those emails, but don't be just o overly, you know, intrusive with it. Just a small click, a small link in there, letting them know that you've got the referral program. Click here to sign up, because the focus still has to remain on the nature of those emails, which is that transaction.

You don't wanna distract from that. We definitely let people know. That's awesome. Subtly in those emails. Yeah, I think it's so interesting, isn't it? We just forget sometimes you just have to ask people to do stuff and remind them otherwise it doesn't happen. Right. Awesome. Okay, circling back to affiliate marketing then, so.

I know. So the, the general principles are clear to me and to probably to most of our listeners, right? You're incentivizing these, these potential partners to promote your product. They, they would be typically, they might be bloggers, influencers, I mean, in the e-com space. That's what we're talking about, right?

Yeah. So it we're kind of in a, in an interesting space right now and an interesting time. Cause you, you know, you've mentioned affiliates, you've mentioned influencers, and a lot of times people use those terms interchangeably. Where, the way I like to look at it now, because we've kind of advanced so quickly into this whole social media world.

I, I'd like to think of influencers as really just the affiliates of today, so I don't really know if there's too much of a difference when you think of affiliates and influencers, because they're really doing the same thing. They are a group of people that have a specific following online, and nowadays it's mainly social media and the social media accounts or social media handles.

And what they're doing is they, Putting out content. Maybe they're educating people, they're getting people to follow them and, and in between what this community that they have, they are. Promoting products for a commission, and that's really it. You know, so they, that kind of all comes under the same category.

When you're talking about affiliates, you're talking about influencers, you're talking about bloggers. I think they are, they're really kind of one in the same these days. And it's just influencers and, you know, they've really been kind of the, the buzzword of today because there's been so many standout influencers that have really just kind of, you know, captured everyone's attention.

Yeah. So as the typical.  influencer today that we're kind of, so imagine we're a fashion brand and we've, you know, we've got some, got our eye on some influencers we wanna work with. What does the typical deal process look like? Because influencers, in my mind anyway, typically want some upfront cash as well as commission.

Mm-hmm. , um, Although I know and, and then when I think of like affiliates, I'm thinking more of like them being happy to work on commission only. But I think maybe you're saying that that kind of distinction is maybe blurred. So are we typically expecting to have to engage them? And some upfront payment before, you know, as well as a commission or, or how does it typically work?

Well, that's a great question, but I think it really just comes down to what you negotiate. You know, there's no set blueprint or set contract that you have to follow when you're engaging these affiliates and influencers. So, you know, there's just, there's no one way that's just the right way that you have to follow.

And I, I think there's, there's cases. You know, you don't necessarily have to pay any upfront fees. I think it really is just going to depend, I think it really is gonna come down to the, I guess you could say, the amount of weight, so to speak, that these influencers can pull, you know, when I say amount of weight, I mean the network behind them, the amount of followers behind them.

So, you know, obviously if we're talking about, and I, I'll kind of define the levels of influencers now, if we're talking about what's considered a mega influencer. That's somebody that has over a million followers on any of the major net social networks. And we're talking about mega influencers. We're typically talking about the celebrities, the reality stars, the sports figures, the entertainers.

They're typically the followers. They're the, the mega influencers and just people that have just attracted a mass amount of people by what it is that they do. So they're the mega influencers. Those are people that, of course, I think you're gonna have to pay some type of. Fee, they're probably not gonna work on a commission, or they may work on both, where they're gonna be working on you paying them a fixed amount fee to promote as well as a commission on top of that, based on the amount of product that they send, uh, that you know that they're gonna sell for you or they're gonna get p customers to, to buy from you.

So that's kind of where that goes. If we, if we go down the, the pyramid, so to speak, the next level within the, uh, macro influencer, and these are people that are a little bit smaller. They have followings of about 500,000 to a million followers and could, could be the same thing. You may have to negotiate something where you're gonna pay a fee, but what I'd like to, for brands to focus on brands that aren't these large enterprise brands or smaller businesses.

I think the sweet spot is the micro influencer. Now, the micro influencer are those influencers that have a following anywhere between 10,000 to 50,000 followers on the social networks and any, any of the major networks. That's the sweet spot. Now, these people, even though those numbers may not seem. They typically have a more loyal following because they're gonna have a lot more engagement with their followers. There's a lot more interaction. A lot of their followers they may know personally, and they're just gonna be able to maintain a relationship. A lot more effectively when you're dealing with those smaller numbers.

And that's the sweet spot. Because because of that tight-knit relationship that they have, they're gonna trust their followers, are gonna trust more of what they put out, more of what they recommend, and these types of. Influencers, I think you would be in a position where you could negotiate a relationship where, yeah, you could just do a, a relationship where you're gonna give them just a commission on referred fees.

I don't think that would be unreasonable dealing with these type of influencers. And you wouldn't necessarily need to pay any type of large upfront fee. And I, I think that's a real sweet spot for brands that is often. Cool. So how does a brand go about accessing these kind of micro influences? Because I think, I think what's overwhelming often for brands is like there's a lot of work involved, right?

And like, Looking for them, keeping track of them, engaging them, having a contract with them, checking that they've done everything. Sure. How, how does a brand go about like, managing that whole process? Yeah, that's, that's another great question, and I know that's, that's always a concern for a brand because everybody hears about influencer market.

They hear about how effective it can be, but they're like, all right, you know, , do we wanna, do we really wanna do the work or do we have the resource? In place to be able to just manage this and, uh, it, it's definitely possible. So there's, there's a number of ways that you can go about. Trying to first off, engage these influencers.

Cause that's where, really, where it's gonna begin. How do you, you know, how do you hook them? How do you reel them in, so to speak? So that, that's, that's square one. So one specific method that I like to, you know, talk about that it's not often used is just, Dedicating this to just somebody, anybody on your team doesn't necessarily even have to be a marketing person on your team.

Somebody that's, that you can just task. There's no really experience that was required for this. And this is just to do searches, hashtag searches on any of the major social networks. So let's say, we'll just talk about Instagram. Hashtags are more prevalent on Instagram, and so all you need to do is do some hashtag searches that are gonna be specific to your industry and specific to a specific influencer.

So, lemme give you an example. We talk about fashion. Fashion is, of course, a, a big niche and where influencers are, are prevalent on. And let's say you're, you're based out of the city of Chicago, you can right now, if you were to go on Instagram and do a, a search for the hashtag. Chicago fashion blogger or Chicago fashion influencer.

I did this the other day and I, I've got about almost 50,000 results, so that specific hashtag was used over 50,000 times. On Instagram. And so, because as you see, that's such a specific hashtag, only people that are using that are actually gonna be influencers or gonna be bloggers because, you know, they wanna make that known that they're a blogger, they're, they're an influencer.

Mm-hmm. . And that's just one example. So doing a search on that unspecific hashtags where you include blog or you include influencer. And associate that with the industry that you're in, you're gonna get some great results. And then it's just gonna come down to approaching them, sending them direct messages, finding what their other social handles are, doing searches, trying to get their email address.

And then doing your pitch. And that's why I say this is something that can be tasked with really just anybody on your team to do this, get 'em in a database, do a follow up sequence, and, um, starting to grow and find that relationship right there. And then just doing your pitch, letting them know. , you are this brand or you're representing this brand.

We're looking for an influencers to promote and then go from there. So that's really the step one to find them. I think that's a great way to, to get them another way to, to find influencers and to help manage a process. Especially if you're a brand that, like you said, you may not necessarily want to go through the process of doing all of that individual outreach.

These days, there are plenty of influencer marketing services or databases that you actually sign up for. I like to think them, think of them as, I guess you could say kind of like matchmaking services or dating services for brands and influencers, and so there's many of them out there. One of 'em is you can go to influencer.co as one influencers.com is another one.

There's many of them. If you can just, if you just do a Google search on influencer marketing. Network. And what these services do is they have a database of influencers for brands that you can go on. A lot of them will allow you to do some free searching. And then the paid aspect of it comes into play.

Where you need to get a paid account is if you wanna actually get in touch with these influencers. Mm-hmm.  and if you wanna facilitate a relationship. And so these sites actually work as kind of a middleman and, and when the fact that they kind of facilitate the relationship. The payment goes to this company, they facilitate all of that.

You don't have to worry about the contracts and negotiation. They handle all of that. Mm-hmm. . And so that's another way to really, you know, start to, to grit that relationship going and get it managed and get access to a pool of influencers without having to do your own, you know, outreach. Yeah. Awesome.

What about the tracking? So, you know, if, if the, if the main place that this influencer is influencing people is through, like TikTok or reels mm-hmm. , how are we tracking whether it's effective and how are we paying them a commission when Yeah. We can't necessarily like use tracking links in those places, can we?

Or can we? It. That's a great question. And that's where an affiliate software solution comes into play. And that's where like a solution like ours, almost affiliate software would come into play. You, you did mention, and you're a correct Instagram TikTok reels. Yeah. There's no tracking link you can actually embed in those, you know, With Instagram right now, the only thing you can do as far as like a trackable link is if an influencer has over 10,000 followers, they can have access to those swipe up pages where when you swipe up in one of the stories, it can load an external link.

But yeah, that influencer would have to have at least 10,000 followers. To be able to have that functionality. So yeah, I mean that, that's one way of doing it. But for everybody else, or for any influencer out there that, that doesn't have that capability, one of the things that you can do is create a promo code, a unique promo code for that particular affiliate, and then have that tied into your affiliate software solution.

So solutions like ours, osi, affiliate software will, will allow you to. Promo codes that are tied to your e-commerce platform so that you've created a promo code that's tied to your e-commerce platform that's also tied to your affiliate software so that anytime that promo code is used, the affiliate that is tied to that or that influence is tied to that code is gonna get credit.

And so that's definitely something you want to have in place in order to be able to effectively track the use of these codes. , you know, how much business really are these guys sitting your way? You, you definitely gotta get that, have to have that in place. Yeah. Awesome. And so, so say the brand, I'm imagining the brand's identified, you know, 10 influencers that they wanna work with.

They've, they've got, they've cut the deal, they've cut the commission. What sort of, like, what sort of campaign or content strategies are we then employing? How are they working with those influencers to, to make sure the content. Like resonates with their brand. What are the, what strategies do work best in terms of.

Working with those influencers to get the kind of campaigns that will actually be successful. Right. Great. Great question. It really is gonna come down to square one before you even solidify that relationship with the influencer, because I think what you want to do as a brand is when you are. Looking for these influencers.

You're doing your outreach. Maybe you're doing your own outreach or you're using one of these, you know, influencer brand databases, matchmaking services, however you do it to get them. One of the things that you want to do when you are vetting these influencers and you is you wanna make sure that your mission and your core company values align with that particular affiliate, because I think that's where you're gonna get the most bang for your buck.

You wanna make sure that you've. Um, done your due diligence and you've really, you've kind of really just had your, somebody on your team scrub everything that you can find about this influencer, all their social handles, their posts from months ago, years ago, or, you know, what is it that they're promoting?

What are they talking about? Because, You want to make sure you've got somebody that is really in line with your core values, because if not, there's gonna be a mismatch and no matter what it is that you're promoting, whatever sale you've got, whatever latest. Fashion of the year you've got out. If they're, if it's not a match with their audience that they're communicating with and the things that they communicate about you, you're gonna get the terrible results.

Yeah. So I think that's where it really begins, is making sure you've done that due diligence and it's almost like you're, you're, you're vetting them, you're putting 'em through an interview, asking them key questions. You're scrubbing all of the social handles you're looking at, you know, the history of.

And you're making sure that you have that right fit. Because I think if you've done that, you've done your job, then, you know, as a brand, if you've got, let's say, like you said, next seasons, you know, summer fashions, you're not gonna worry too much about an alignment, a mismatch alignment. You just know that, that your particular brand is really gonna resonate with their followers and, and their audience because, you know, that's just who they're targeting and, and kind of, you know what they're.

Yeah. I guess that's just so important these days. Like you could be working with an influencer that was like, like racist five years ago and then Yeah. Yeah. You know, and then it all comes out and your brand gets brought down with them. It's really interesting. I was listening to a podcast yesterday about, it was about kind of psychology and how we're influenced as humans to make buying decisions, et cetera.

Mm-hmm. , and they were talking about how, you remember Jersey Shore, the TV show, and there was like Snoopy and, and there's some other guy, so apparent. The rival to Gucci sent a Gucci bag to Snooky so that she would wear it around and Gucci would look worse. So that their brand would look better. And then also, apparently Abercrombie and Fitch paid the other guy, the famous guy from it.

They paid him a huge payout to never wear Abercrombie and Fitch. So, oh wow. This is where like, as a brand, we need to think, you know, you need to think about like, is this influencer absolutely aligned with our values, who we wanna be, the audience we wanna reach, because mm-hmm. , if that influencer leads you down a path of.

Attracting the wrong kind of audiences or indeed like positioning your product in the wrong way, then, then, then it's really hard to recover from that, isn't it? And, and, and that as shown by these brands paying a lot of money to not have a certain person wear their product. Pretty interesting. So yeah, very.

I wonder if that, do you know if there's any tools you can use to like scrape and influence his. You know, look for certain words they might have used in the past or anything like that. There must be some tools out there, maybe, well, a lot of those type of components you will see in these affiliate marketing services and databases, because that's kind of their, their value add is because they've compiled a whole database of these influencers, how many followers they have across each channel.

The key words that they typically post about the areas that they're posting, the type of brands that they follow. So all of that data is, is really, is kind of where they, they kind of come into play. Other than that, yeah, I'm sure there's probably some services out there that aren't necessarily affiliate.

You know, influencer marketing services that where you can get this information. I mean, other than that, these. Yeah, I mean, if you've got a developer and that's maybe familiar with the Python coding language, I'm not sure if you're familiar with that, , you can definitely create something, a script that will be able to, you know, do some type of script.

Yeah, look, yeah, look for certain words, data, because I imagine that's, I mean, that's probably how the press are doing it, right? When they're like, Looking into the background of someone, they're probably not doing it manually. Yeah. They're just looking back to see whether they've ever said, you know, some terrible words that no one should ever say.

Exactly. Um, so, okay. That's so fascinating. All right. So yeah, so it's all about picking the right influences. You can use some of these networks and tools to do that. You can do due diligence and then you cut the deal and then it's about. You know, seeing whether they were successful. So you used like a tracking code or some kind of code that they would share with their followers, and then if they're a successful influencer, you might engage them in a more long-term relationship.

So when I was at, at Etsy, I was head of performance marketing and I had a team who looked after affiliate when I was there, and this was five years ago now. So that team was quite a large team and their job. Kind of constantly to, it was a sort of a, almost like a PR role where they were building relationships with these, what were then bloggers or influences.

They were constantly coming up with, you know, say it's Easter's coming or, you know, a spring or you know, black Friday, whatever it might be. They were engaging these. These influencers that we then had in our database with new ideas for content, new ways to like kind of product or new products that they could share.

So is that is a kind of highly evolved affiliate marketing program for a larger brand. It looks a bit like that. Does it? Like where there's a team or a person whose job it is to kind of run these relationships? Yeah, yeah, exactly. What these brands will typically do, the larger brands and you know, even some of the smaller brands, is they'll hire a affiliate man, a marketing manager, affiliate manager, and that's their goal.

We can start from, you know, obtaining the correct software solution. To to manage the program and to launch their affiliate program, to then also recruiting the affiliates and managing the relationships that they have. Also communicating and facilitating the communication between the needs for that affiliate program with the other teams, like the graphic design team, the product team.

So they need to be abreast of any new products that are coming out, the sales that are coming out, so all of that. So they really kind of sit in the middle. And manage everything. And the goal, of course, their job is really to, you know, get these affiliates to really increase sales. And that's really kind of how their success is measured.

Is is is basically on performance. Yeah. You know what the activity is. Yeah. Well, I mean, at Etsy, certainly, I remember the, the leadership team really loved affiliates cuz it was mm-hmm. , well, especially the way we ran it at ET sea, we weren't doing upfront payments. We were doing. Purely based on commission.

Right? So it was performance based, so any, any cost to the business was only incurred. We made sales for the business. Mm-hmm.  and the mm-hmm. , the absolute beauty of it, the added benefit was like we were getting all this content, we were getting all this coverage, we were getting all this kind of inbound marketing happening regardless of whether the sale happened.

So we only had to pay when the sale happened, but we were getting additional kind of free exposure and coverage and followers and all of that. So I think there's some other really strong arguments for doing affiliate marketing from a brand. Kind of brand reach perspective because that coverage is essentially free and you're only paying when someone buys.

So yeah, it's, it's definitely something to consider getting on board with. Do you, what do you, in terms of e-commerce niches, like which one, are there particular niches that do particularly well? I mean, obviously I think fashion, jewelry, accessories. Mm. Homeware as well is pretty good. Kids products I know would be good.

I guess it's challenging when the products are very big or expensive because you can't allow the kind of sampling in the same way. Any other kind of niches or sectors that you see as, as really, really good for this. For this type of market. Yeah. Yeah. And it always changes over the years. So there'll be a period where, I remember several years ago, really, and it's probably still big today, but I know several years ago, I mean, we were just getting, I mean, every week we were getting a lot of customers that were in the hair extension space.

That was a very, that's a niche that I, I'm sure still is. Very popular monks, you know, affiliate marketing, affiliate programs, you know, so yeah, hair extensions. That was kind of a, a key thing there. Another thing that we're starting to see a lot more of now is the supplement space, or mm-hmm. , any brand that is in the.

Not necessarily just supplement, but we're in the category of a superfood. You know, these days there's a variety of different superfood. You know, one of the big ones right now type of Superfood, organic Superfood is is called Sea Os. Their program just exploded and their sales exploded soon after they launched their affiliate program.

And we've actually had other companies that have been with us for a long time in the supplement space where, you know, affiliate marketing is, it just works really.  because it, it's something that lends to people spreading the word because it's something people are taking. They're seeing great benefits and they're, you know, they just wanna tell everybody, especially if it's has something to do with weight loss or you know, hair care skincare, their skin benefits to steam oss as well.

And so those are things that can visibly be shown across social media, so that makes it great. Yeah, that's really interest.  Beauty. Beauty and makeup is obviously another category that's absolutely huge for affiliates as well, isn't it? Cool. Is there anything else you wanna share with our listeners before we, before we sign?

Well, yeah, the one thing that I will share is that it's this affiliate marketing is, is not going anywhere and it, it's not too late to get into the game. So if you're a brand, you're an e-commerce brand and you know you haven't lost an affiliate program, it is never too late to start. And then just, just, just start your groundwork to start, you know, finding those affiliates, launching your own in-house referral program as well.

Getting somebody on your team. , you know, do the due diligence to do that outreach, to try to find those affiliates. And like I said, if you wanna start somewhere, micro influencers are a great way to start because I think they're, they're obtainable for a lot of brands. You don't have to worry about trying to, to snag one of these big fishes where they're yeah.

Mega influencers of the world. You don't have to worry about that if, if you're, if you're not, you know, able to, to get to those levels at this point. That's awesome, awesome advice. And really actionable, you know, tactical stuff that people can jump on straight away, so I love that. Cool. Where can people follow you?

You can go to our, to get to our website, OSI affiliate software, and then secondly, uh, you know, to find out a little bit more about me and all of my adventures and business, you just go to my website, arlenrobinson.com. Awesome. We'll make sure to link those in the show notes. Thanks for coming along. No problem.

Thank you, Jesse, for.