Affiliate Nerd Out

3 million shoppers across Asia want to buy from US brands. Most can't, because those brands don't ship to them.

What if you could reach them without changing a single thing about your shipping?
I sat down with Jeff Unze, North American GM at Buy&Ship, to talk about how brands are doing exactly that. He also shares which product categories this audience goes after, and why it's not what you'd expect.

👉 Follow Affiliate Nerd Out for more publisher highlights and conversations on growing your affiliate program.

#AffiliateMarketing #CrossBorderEcommerce #PartnerMarketing #PublisherHighlight #AffiliateNerdOut #BuyAndShip

Alfie: https://dustinhowes.com/alfie and use code DUSTIN30 for 30% off your first month

For more tips on how to scale your affiliate program, check out https://performancemarketingmanager.com

I sit down with Brian Blancho from TicketSmarter to break down everything that went down at CJU. We are talking about an honest, no-holds-barred review of the event, covering the good, the bad, and our official star rankings.

If you are trying to figure out where to invest your budget and how to recruit affiliates in the performance marketing space, you can't sleep on live events. But is CJU actually worth the heavy price tag? Tune in to hear our raw take on the experience, the ROI, and what you need to know before booking your ticket for next year.

We jump into all the major categories, including the networking quality, venue layout, expo booths, food, sessions, giveaways, and standout parties. We also pull back the curtain on some major pain points, like the absolute disaster of an event app and the brutal 15-minute meeting schedule that wrecks your whole day if you fall even five minutes behind.

Subscribe to this channel for more affiliate program growth tactics and insider reviews.

Start your 7-day free trial and see how Alfie can transform your affiliate recruitment process today! https://www.alfie.io/

Connect with Dustin Howes on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dustinhowes

Alfie: https://dustinhowes.com/alfie and use code DUSTIN30 for 30% off your first month

Go to https://dustinhowes.com/alfie to set up your account with a 30-day money-back guarantee 

For more tips on how to scale your affiliate program, check out https://performancemarketingmanager.com

It's go time for Q4. 🚨

If your Q4 plans aren't locked in yet, consider this your sign to finalize them this week.

On this Real Talk Friday edition of Affiliate Nerd Out, Christen Evans (she/her) and I cover:

1/ Why I'm heading back to CJU after 10 years

2/ The question that made a 10-year industry vet walk away from me

3/ Affiliate leaderboards: motivating or discouraging?

4/ How a 30-minute webinar turned into 60 minutes and 1,000+ views

5/ The one person to follow if you want to know how many days are left until Black Friday

👉 Coming up: my Affiliate Recruitment Masterclass. It's built from interviews with hundreds of affiliate managers about what's working right now.

#AffiliateMarketing #PartnerMarketing #Q4 #BlackFriday #CJU #AffiliateNerdOut

Alfie: https://dustinhowes.com/alfie and use code DUSTIN30 for 30% off your first month

For more tips on how to scale your affiliate program, check out https://performancemarketingmanager.com

Not leads. Not "maybe" contacts. Full profiles: contact info, why Alfie thinks they're a fit, fit score, traffic type, reach, and even soft signals like age and gender skew. Stuff that used to take me hours of manual prospecting just... populated itself.

In this episode of Affiliate Nerd Out I gave a live look at Alfie's new Advanced Campaigns feature, built directly from user feedback.

You can now:
1/ Target by influencer type, traffic source, and category
2/ Adjust age/gender demographics
3/ Filter by country

I've been in affiliate marketing for a long time, and I genuinely don't know why it took the industry this long to build something like this. It's not just faster; it's finding the right partners, not just more partners.

Christen Evans (she/her) and I also dug into Q4 prep, the Rakuten → Impact migration chatter, and a fine jewelry program that's been an absolute rocket ship (30/60/90 numbers included).

Alfie: https://dustinhowes.com/alfie and use code DUSTIN30 for 30% off your first month

For more tips on how to scale your affiliate program, check out https://performancemarketingmanager.com

This week's episode got a little spicy.

We're talking about the newest MegaLag video calling out people in our own industry, the ShopMy drama nobody's fully unpacked yet, and why I ditched TikTok for an app that teaches me Claude instead.

Plus, I recorded something with one of the smartest AI guys I know, the same guy who helped build out my Claude agents, and it turned into a two-part series. Part one breaks down what AI tools actually matter right now. Part two, we're doing a live build so you can watch exactly how it's done.

If you're in affiliate or partner marketing, some of this is going to hit close to home.

#AffiliateMarketing #PartnerMarketing #AffiliateNerdOut #AI #Claude #MarketingPodcast

Alfie: https://dustinhowes.com/alfie and use code DUSTIN30 for 30% off your first month

For more tips on how to scale your affiliate program, check out https://performancemarketingmanager.com

Ever set a commission rate for your affiliate program, only to watch a partner send you customers who buy the cheapest plan, cancel after one payment, and pocket the payout? You're not alone. I've been there myself, and it's one of the fastest ways to torch your margins without ever knowing it happened. 

My FirstPromoter review started when I recently sat down with Tautvydas Vasiliauska, Head of Marketing at FirstPromoter, on Affiliate Nerd Out to dig into why subscription businesses need a completely different approach to affiliate tracking than the ecommerce world does. FirstPromoter has spent around a decade building affiliate, referral, and influencer tracking specifically for SaaS and other subscription companies, and Tautvydas laid out exactly where the standard ecommerce playbook falls apart. 

Alfie: https://dustinhowes.com/alfie and use code DUSTIN30 for 30% off your first month

For more tips on how to scale your affiliate program, check out https://performancemarketingmanager.com

"Letting go of a role that gave me anxiety every day took longer than it should have."
 
But when it finally happens, you feel the pressure drop in real time.
 
In today's episode, Christen Evans (she/her) and I talked about:

- Stepping away from sales and into the work that actually fits
- Pinterest acquired TVSci and there's a beta opening for brands doing less than 100K in ad buys
- Why being good at something is not the same as being built for it

We also get into what happens when the podcast stops getting no's.

Watch the full episode to see why. If you've ever stayed in a role longer than you should have, drop a comment. Curious what finally made you move.

#AffiliateMarketing #CareerGrowth #ContentCreator #PerformanceMarketing #AffiliateNerdOut

Alfie: https://dustinhowes.com/alfie and use code DUSTIN30 for 30% off your first month

For more tips on how to scale your affiliate program, check out https://performancemarketingmanager.com

"Here's $4 million a month. Go figure out what you wanna do with it."
 
That's the only brief Colleen Butterfield got. No roadmap. No strategy doc. Just a number and a deadline.

She went from affiliate coordinator to CMO with no MBA and no traditional path. Built a solar company that sold to ADT for half a billion dollars along the way.

In this episode, we got into:

1. What it actually takes to go from affiliate manager to CMO
2. Why being good at your job is not a good enough reason to stay
3. What affiliate managers need to start doing now to lead marketing by 2030

She also says something about the affiliate manager role that most people in marketing completely overlook. Worth staying for that alone.

Watch the full episode to see why. If you've ever been great at a job you hated, drop a comment. Curious how you handled it.

#AffiliateMarketing #CMO #PerformanceMarketing #MarketingLeadership #GrowthMarketing

Alfie: https://dustinhowes.com/alfie and use code DUSTIN30 for 30% off your first month

For more tips on how to scale your affiliate program, check out https://performancemarketingmanager.com

Waited until her mid-40s to start her own business. Now she's telling every affiliate manager to stop waiting.

Lee-Ann Johnstone built KonverJ from 22 years in affiliate, starting back when it wasn't even called affiliate marketing.

1. Commercial negotiation is half the battle. Learn it early and everything else gets easier.
2. When you stop learning every day, you start falling behind. She's treating AI like a brand new skill despite two decades in the industry.
3. Planning and strategy should lead the program forward, not be the afterthought after the execution.

She also dropped the two questions she asks herself about everything she reads.

They change how you process information entirely. Watch the full episode to see why.

#AffiliateMarketing #AffiliateManager #DigitalMarketing #CareerGrowth #AffiliateNerdOut

Alfie: https://dustinhowes.com/alfie and use code DUSTIN30 for 30% off your first month

For more tips on how to scale your affiliate program, check out https://performancemarketingmanager.com

The networks know who the bad actors are.

They make money off of them.

Christen Evans (she/her) is back for Real Talk Friday. She's a rule follower, and she wants to know why the industry keeps gatekeeping in 2026.

Here's what we got into:
 
1. The networks kinda wanna sweep it under the rug and stay quiet.
2. At my first job, publishers had hundreds of fraud tickets against them. Still in the network. Because they were making CJ too much money.
3. Nobody has the balls to do it. Or legally, they're terrified.

We also get into who should be housing all of this and why it's not a 15-minute flash.

👇 Watch the full episode to see why.

Ever dealt with a fraudulent partner? Drop it in the comments.

#affiliatemarketing #affiliatefraud #performancemarketing #affiliatenerdout #digitalmarketing

Alfie: https://dustinhowes.com/alfie and use code DUSTIN30 for 30% off your first month

For more tips on how to scale your affiliate program, check out https://performancemarketingmanager.com