Micro-Influencers | Small Audiences Driving MASSIVE Results in 2025 with Brett Owens of Afluencer

Everybody's been a race to get to the millions of followers, but in actuality, it's really a tribe or a niche of people that are following you that are more powerful, convert more, make more money.

Welcome to the High Voltage Business Builders Podcast, a show where we interview high voltage entrepreneurs growing and scaling through e-commerce, real estate, and other wealth without Wall Street ventures, showing you the path to making your first or next million. So Brett, what does it mean to be an influencer?

Yeah, that's a good question. So influencer 2025, I think, is different from what it was in 2015, 2020. Today, an influencer in 2025 could be someone like a micro influencer, someone with 10,000 followers. Sounds modest by maybe historical standards, but they could be very specific in terms of what they post. So for example, they could live in skincare, right? Only post skincare products.

Yeah.

So if you're a skincare brand, that's kind of an ideal person. For you to potentially work with, partner with.

So micro brands, micro strategies, micro influencers, these are things I'm familiar and heard a lot more about. Is it just because everybody's been a race to get to the millions of followers, but in actuality it's really a tribe or a niche of people that are following you that are more powerful, convert more, make more money? Is that where we're headed with this? Kind of going—

yeah, I think that's, yeah, where we're heading and where we're at. And I like the tribe analogy there. I think traditionally, if we look back over the last 10 years, influencer marketing got a bad rap from an ROI, from return on investment standpoint because of that race to the million. Not very specific in terms of who's following. A lot of times there were celebrities, right, who got to that million, million plus over that. And got to pay a couple hundred grand to have them pitch a product on social media. And then the odds of that returning are very low. One, for your such a high investment that you have to make. And then the other is that the tribe's all over the place, right? They just kind of like the person. So they're not necessarily interested in that specific genre of product that's being pitched. Whereas, yeah, it's that you find these now, you find the micros and I mean even nano influencers. There's always terms that have popped up over the last couple of years. But really the, I think the common thread is getting into the specificity of it that you go smaller, but you're kind of narrowing your range. So if you've got a fitness product, you want someone who really only posts fitness. And even to that respect, if they They're only doing kettlebell and that's what you want. You're doing that or Pilates, you know what I mean? So it's very, very specific and that's more—

back to the old phrase, the riches are in the niches. I mean, this is like, this is a circular conversation of common sense and logic, isn't it? Because everybody raced up to the internet to do these big things and then, you know, everybody realized it's all about the small tribe, the know, like, and trust relationship. Who, who are you valuing and what crossover or segments of audience are you actually tapping into? Like you said, not just influencers who do physical healthcare or whatever, it's the ones who are specifically focused on kettlebells, right? And into those niches, that is almost transitory of every model, every business, every type, every situation, isn't it?

It is.

Yeah.

If we think about kind of the internet coming into being, right? There was the old banner ads. Oh, well, banner ads don't work. Well, it's because you're just on Yahoo. Who cares, right? It's, you're not, Hitting that specific. So yeah, this is just kind of direct marketing historically and internet marketing, what's worked, and it's finally coming into fruition. And I think because now that you do have these smaller tribes, the smaller micros, you can now kind of find them and get enough scale. Maybe these people only had 1,000 followers a few years ago. It wasn't going to give you enough scale to really move the needle on your sales, where now they're They're kind of there where that even 20,000, 30,000 followers can move the needle for you in terms of sales.

Yeah, that's interesting. And I, I, I kind of get it because there's a world, you know, TikTok came online first, one example, and I played in that for a bit and was doing some influencing myself and just kind of playing along, learning how to, you know, instruct and construct, you know, what, what makes a good video, what makes a good hook, what makes a good, you know, catch in that world of trying to get all that noise and everybody's just pumping out so much information. And then very quickly the influencers came into that platform and it was just completely overloaded. And I was a micro influencer with like 7,000 people on my health account. And at the end of that, I get like 150+ requests a day for people wanting to have me promote their product. And I'm like, well, that's insane. I can't even keep up with it. I'm not trying to do personally because that's not really how I make money, but I just tested it out and I'm like, good grief, I'm getting plugs for— I could have shipping containers full of product in my house for the number of stuff people keep offering to give me for free, uh, from products. But I find that, you know, that same, that same collusion point, that, you know, those many people trying to reach that market— is it harder to reach those people that have those micro who are being hit up by everybody all the time?

Yeah, direct is funny. So a lot of brands are doing exactly what you described, where they're going out to Instagram, they're going out to TikTok, and they're DMing the influencer directly. And every brand that we work with that I talk with, it's the same thing. They never get any replies. And it's for that reason, is because you're getting inundated. And I think it's Also is, is, is a little spammy.

Yeah.

Well, it is.

It's like, well, are you legit? Is this real? Do I want to promote your product and put anything, no face time or energy into it at all?

Yeah. Yep. Yep. And then the brands who have a legit product, they're almost offended because like, ah, why, why wouldn't you want to work with me? But they don't, they don't understand until they go through it that that approach just doesn't work. That just DMing is—

No. I had a skincare brand that came in here the other day and he's really got a great product, but he's missing some of the marketing initiative, but he has the heart to do it. And I said, well, no one else is initially going to promote your product. And I want your feedback on this because this is what I told him. You know, no one's going to promote your product to the level of interest and, you know, language as you. So why don't you start the engine, get out there, post a video a day, do a 30-minute live every day, do something to talk to your audience, even imperfectly, put some slides up or whatever, and just start talking to that tribe for 30 days and see what happens. And then when other people— when something works, then look for somebody who's, you know, willing to do that with you, and maybe they're even going to be attracted by you. How does that sound to you, Brian? Does that sound good to your brain, or do I need to give him some better advice?

No, 100%. You got to be the guy or the gal. You got to be the person initially to figure it out and put your face on it. I think that's something kind of a rookie mistake that I see from a lot of brands that we work with. And I'll, I'll pick on Shopify merchants as, as an example. They all have often come, they have beautiful looking stores, and we have an app, so that's how we interface with a lot of fine merch. It's beautiful looking store. It all looks great, but there's no face on it. There's no personality. So it's very faceless and they're kind of scratching their heads. And I'm sure you're talking to the same types of people saying, well, I'm— nothing's working, nothing's converting. It's like, well, this is just kind of a faceless entity. You got to put a face on it and it needs to be your face. So you're the—

It's got to be the owner's face to start off with.

Yeah.

Yeah. At least.

So you got to just get out there, get the— I mean, you know, turn the phone on, turn the video on and just start doing something regularly. And I agree, it doesn't have to be perfect, but it does. And especially if you're just getting started, It really has to be you. I haven't seen it work from an— I've seen it tried, but I haven't really seen it work from an outsourced standpoint yet. Everyone tries to kind of outsource the business where they, okay, I did the hard work, now I'm gonna hand it off to somebody else. And that really doesn't work from a, you know, I don't think from a go-to-market standpoint.

So talk about how your— you got shops and, and, and this is a similar problem, not just on Shopify, but for Amazon people and for the TikTok people of the world who are probably listening to this. What should we do? What is the right strategy? Is it really you on the videos all the time? And then when do you translate out of that? Or what tools or techniques and stuff can you have for advice for people to, you know, make this work a little faster or better, basically?

Yeah, yeah. I think for your average small business person who kind of a solo entrepreneur starting it off, yeah, I think it does have to be you on the videos all the time. I think you kind of grind it out. I think you do the email. I think email still works. So I would still do an email newsletter on a monthly or biweekly basis. I mean, we did that ourselves starting out in 2019. And it's depressing when you do it at first because you have, you're literally emailing 12 people, but they don't know, you know, and you just have to get in the habit of doing it.

It takes some serious motivation to keep pushing past that point.

Yeah, exactly right. So you got to keep pushing past it. You got to keep posting the blog knowing that, hey, 5 years from now, this is where I want to be. So I just want to get in the regular habit. It's almost like doing health stuff. Like, you know, like you just got to get in the habit of doing it into that flow, post on the YouTube channel. So, you got to kind of grind it out, I think, initially to find that initial traction.

Yeah.

That's the tough part for a lot of minds because they keep waiting to see this happen. And, I personally posted hundreds of videos with this 200 views and I'm like, is this thing ever going to crack off? And then, a couple of them get 3,000, 5,000, 8,000, 100,000 views and I'm like, okay, it's working. I just needed that little bit of shot in the arm. It's like, okay, this is working, just keep going. But, it does take a lot of personal motivation, doesn't it?

Yeah. It's amazing how long it takes. I mean, this is my 3rd software company, and I thought this would be faster, and they all take 4 or 5 years until anything productive happens. And then I know that's kind of depressing if you've already put a year or 2 into your business and you're thinking, well, this isn't taking off. Yeah, these guys are saying I might need 2 to 3 more years, but it does kind of take that long, and you have to kind of keep putting your head down and, and pounding at it and just sticking with it.

Just keep going once a day, every day, do something, you know. And it goes fast. Like, we're already into the end of March when we're recording this. I can't believe how fast 2025 is going. And if I look back the last 3 years, it seems like I I went to sleep and woke up and 3 years are gone. Maybe that's my age. Maybe that's what it is. Maybe younger people are like, whatever, it doesn't take that long.

It goes faster as you get older.

It does. So we're sliding faster into the inevitable. Oh, that's 100% motivating. Very motivating.

Real talk here.

Yeah, real talk. We're doing real talk today, guys.

Yeah.

What else could they do? What else should they do? Like in terms of Process or technology?

Oh yeah, process. I would get live chat on the site. I think that's a real valuable thing. And people are— there's another thing you're probably not going to want to hear, but it's best if you man it yourself and just do it and just take the chats. Because the people who go to your site, you want to talk to them. It's going to be educational and it's just helpful to just kind of live it. Have your phone with you if you need to. I know like having your own schedule is nice. Maybe you can go Go out to the grocery store during the day, but I can't count the number of times where, yeah, I've had a live chat with someone. They don't know where you are. So, but just get the app on your phone and you want to be buzzed when there's someone on the site. And maybe not all hours of the day, but a lot of hours and maybe on weekends you want to do the chats. I think the chats are very important. I think you'll see the interactions that you have is going to be much, much higher if you have live chat available versus even just traditional phone and email. Nobody really wants to call anymore. I think it's still good to have the phone number up there. It won't get used, but it's good to have. Email is good to have, but I think you'll see 10x, even 20x in terms of live chat. And that's— those are chats that you really want to have because you got to figure out what is driving those first few people, and then they'll kind of lead you to more. But you need to have those conversations. If you're not having those, just staring at Google Analytics without any background, I don't think is very useful.

It's going to bore the crap out of you. At least this will keep you busy. At least you make you feel like you're doing something positive. Plus get the feedback, right? We do it, you know, Skipio for text chats, and we do What's the other software for text chat? I forgot what it was. But that helps to, you know, get that little bit of personalized feel, that connection, that, you know, respect. But you're right. People don't really want to phone. Not many people, especially in certain demographics. They don't want to really call at all. The older generation, 60 and above, which is not me, by the way, is going to— I saw a look on your face.

Uh, I, I, I figured I was being grouped into it. Oh, you've been lumped in because you were not the 60.

There we go. Sorry about that. Probably like more phone calls than text chats and emails. So really know your audience at the end of the day. And for my mid-market audience, 40 to 60, it's, they really like that, you know, opportunity to at least text you and reach you and have that conversation and know you're real. It's, we're coming back to that real truthful know, like, and trust relationship aspect, the humanized aspect, aren't we? We kind of, you know, AI is big and everybody talks about it, but at the end of the day, most people are not wanting to talk to bots and they don't wanna—

Yeah, I think we almost ran a full lap with that now. Yeah. Where we went to the bot and automated thing. And I think it's the same with emails and we got into years ago. Maybe 10 years ago, I remember doing the automated sequences for our customer follow-ups, and it was kind of novel at the time where it's like, oh, hey, you can send out an email every— on day 7 after you get someone's email address on day 14, and it looks personalized. And back then we would have people reply and they would think it was still coming from me. But now we don't get— I mean, we still send them out, but I don't think we get a lot of leverage out of it where it's more of the personality. People like coming on our pod, right? People like coming on the podcast, doing stuff like this.

Yeah.

I do talk to a lot of people, new customers who they've seen my face on our YouTube channel. So they do their research.

Yeah.

And I think they like having a face with it and they're always surprised, right? When they talk to you, they're like, wow, Neil, it's really you.

That's—

Yeah.

They think, oh, you're not an AI bot. And then the, the classic spin on that is like, no, I'm not. It's like, oh, well, I, I thought you were. I'm like, oh, dang. What do I, I need to work on my communication skills.

Right, right. Yeah. Yeah.

People thought I was, they're just so confused. They're just surprised. They're like, oh, it's actually you. It's like—

They are. Yeah. I get that on the live chat and I, I say, Last time I checked, I wasn't. That's always the— that's kind of my go-to, you know, dad joke.

Well, and it also depends upon the software, the type, the amount of people you have, the types of systems you're running. If we're talking about like the consulting and high-level business development stuff in terms of building companies that I do, I want to have a personal relationship, a B2B, if you will, almost relationship with those individuals. If you're talking about I'm doing 10,000 units a month of a product on Amazon or Shopify, you're going to end up with a multi-channel, you know, customer support team to support you, of course. The, I think the input is, you know, not what Brett is not saying. Let's not mess that up. There's personalized needs and approaches to how you do each of these business models. But for some of those, you still need to translate that standard operating procedure down to the next person who maybe—

Yeah, exactly. And I think there's room to automate a lot of that too, because I think we're, us personally, we're probably in between you and the 10,000 SKUs a day where we kind of automate some of it. So we've got on our chat and we use a product called Intercom that has basically a bot interface and we're able to feed in the information so it can suck in everything from our website and from our support articles. And it gives a pretty good first shot at things. And I think people don't mind as long as they can still get to the human. So that's what we, that's what we do. And that'll help you. I found that to help scale a bit without going all, all robot.

We're still not there, the first tier customer support being taken over by AI, but it's not far off. At the speed at which we're leapfrogging technologies week by week, it's almost within months, maybe this year, where, you know, full AI customer support agents will be there and people won't even know they're talking to a machine. Do you feel that way too?

Yeah, I think we're about there. We actually got rid of our support person. Oh, good job. Yeah, well, I found out he wasn't doing the chats live, so that was— Oh, there's a— That kind of took me live chat. Uh, he was batching them, so he was doing them at, you know, once or twice a day. And, you know, anyway, someone I'd worked with for a while, so I just kind of assumed he was, he was doing the chats live. And then, yeah, so when I say taking him over, I mean, so I literally did take him over for a period of time myself. And then I didn't want to live that way. But so then I automated part of it and now we've got another person from the team, but it's just a part-time thing for him, part-time thing for me. So we really took it into something that was literally a full-time job down to a couple hours a week for a couple people and then automate a lot of it.

Does it—

is there any AI or automation between the influencers and your platform in terms of the customer and the platform? If a brand is using it versus an influencer, I'm sure you have 2 components that this works with, right?

It is. Yeah, yeah, yes, exactly. So yes, so it would— based on their question, that's what it'll pull. So if the influencer is trying to connect their Instagram account to our tool, it'll pull that help article and it'll give them a nice little summary. And then if they still need help after, right, you can You can talk to the person. The same from the brand. If the brand's like, hey, I need help setting up my Shopify store and they've got a specific question, then it can pull the articles and it motivates you to keep producing content because the content then gets sucked into the machine. And if you see a gap or questions keep coming up, then we write an article and then that's a lot of times that'll address a lot of the future questions.

Well, you never know when someone's gonna pick it up. Like the other day, uh, Lennon forwarded an article to me and he's like, hey, did you submit this or did you pay for this? Because there was a, a blog network of about 60,000 other sellers. That they had broadcast out one of our articles to. And I said, no, I didn't. It's like a $2,000 payment to send it. I didn't do it. He's like, well then I didn't do it. I was like, well then they picked it up. They picked it off of our blog and sent it out to all their people for free. So yeah, good content. It makes a big deal. And speaking of content, like as the content comes through and they connect and go, is the, are they operating independently of the brand or is the brand helping the influencer decide what to do or how does that work?

I would say they're still figuring that out. I mean, ideally the brand kind of knows what they want. In my opinion, the industry is still very immature in terms of people figuring this out. So a lot of the brand marketers that we chat with, they're experienced in, I mean, you name it, Google AdWords, Facebook ads, they've done, you know, everything except for influencer marketing. So they're new to it and kind of feeling their way through. So in terms of best practices, still being established, but the more sophisticated brands kind of know what they want. And a lot of them want reels or videos because those are what convert the best. And those are what are getting preferential treatment by Instagram's algorithm. And it's been that way for a few years that they try to catch TikTok. So the brands kind of know what they want. And then And I would say also the savvy brands do give the influencers enough creative control, kind of do their thing. That's why you kind of want to let the creators create. So that's, I would say, probably what's working the best out there.

Now, are you soliciting them or are they coming into a profile or something and then they can apply? So is it, it's not channel agnostic. Are you specifically with Shopify or is it, can you go channel to channel to channel? Can it work for Amazon? Can it work for others?

Yeah, we work for others too. So yeah, the way that we're set up is for some specific platforms. We have apps, I guess, namely Shopify and BigCommerce, so they can find us in the app stores and then add our apps. To their stores and that just kind of gets them a head start. And then Shopify, we've got some other features, like it'll let you send products directly. That's not available if you're on Amazon, but if you are on Amazon, you can still set up an account with us, kind of go through the front door because we've got a web app and then you can, um, use, use the app. Okay.

Get the content creators to provide content for you in that way. And are they, are the content creators, you know, what's the collaboration look like between the brand owner and the collab and the content owner? Do they have checks and balances? Are there ratings and reviews? If someone sends you a product, are you getting, you know, some guarantee of some kind of video? Coming back versus just, you know, going off into la-la land, which happens sometimes.

Yeah, good question. Because that, I would say, probably a huge gap previously in the whole influencer marketing thing is like, did you send a product, then you never hear from the person. So yeah, ratings, reviews, we just rolled out with our— and it's available only for Shopify brands and then influencers that work with them. And that goes hand in hand with the shipping feature, because what we wanted to do is be able to have— if you shipped a product, we didn't want to just rely on the brand's word either, because that wasn't fair. So now we can verify shipment and delivery. And then it goes to the influencer and they have a verified address with us so we can verify that it got received. And then they've got a month to work with each other and then they can leave reviews on each other at the end. So 2 ways brands could be involved. Cool.

There's accountability within the system for the check.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

How is that working? Is that— is there any compliance issues with that? Are you seeing everybody play ball or are you having to kick some people off the platform?

It's been good from a compliance standpoint in that it keeps everyone on the up and up. Before, It was kind of wild, wild west, although I would say pleasantly surprised in terms of how well everyone generally behaved. I mean, only have to step in every so often, which is pretty good. But this, I think, kind of further helps. It's the same as like Uber, Airbnb. Like you're not going to trash the car, trash the place, right? Because you know you're getting reviewed and likewise the drivers on there putting their best foot forward.

Cool.

So if I get that content, how's the creative rights work? Can I take that ad and push it across? Like if I say I want a video for sponsored brands ads inside of Amazon, can I use that video across any other platform? Is it going to be licensed platform by platform with the creator? How does that work?

You want to put that in the collab, but typically the creators, I would say, are not going to have a problem with you licensing it. But I always tell the brands to put it up front, say, hey, we're going to use this content here, we want you to create the video, and the video is a deliverable that we own. Because by default, the creator is going to own that content. So you want to make sure that that's specified in your collab. And then if you do an agreement, you can do a simple A little influencer agreement with them also and just sign just to specify, hey, this content we're paying you, so adjust your pricing or let's talk about the pricing also, but we want to own the content after and we want to use it for these purposes.

Yeah, good. That's good. Because I think there's, you know, there's always an omnichannel aspect. Well, I have a lot of people that run on Amazon. I have quite a few people that are also Amazon, Shopify, and we have Amazon Shopify retail. So anywhere that influencer is going to be needed for channel-specific stuff, that'd be awesome to know that we can push it out for everywhere.

What are you seeing work today?

Like if I want to go out, I'm an owner, I want to do a live, I want to do a video. You know, how many seconds are you seeing work the best? Where are there content areas to offer suggestions to? What are the dos and don'ts? Maybe that's a better way of saying it.

Yeah, let's, let's say start with the dos. Shipping product is great because the influencer can use it in the, in the production. I would say video, if we're talking length, probably about 30 seconds. So 30-second reel, I think using that product in the video is probably, you know, going to be the best practice. If they can do a story, Also, that's gonna be a nice bonus. And if they can post to TikTok also, that's a nice add. And it doesn't really cost the influencer a lot extra to do these other mediums because once they're doing the video, it's almost the same effort for them to post to TikTok, do a story. So if you pay a little extra for it, I think it's worth it. Stories will give you the links and the swipe-ups. So I think that's what you're going for. And then if you can have them, and this is getting touchier now, I know as the platforms do kind of tighten up and they want all reviews to be legitimate, but Obviously, especially with the Amazon stores, right? Reviews are great. And if you can have the influencer leave a review, I mean, it's a nice way to get a little extra, I think, on that front.

Yeah.

You can also sign them up as an affiliate if you want to kind of keep getting more bang for your buck, right? So why not? Especially if you're doing a paid post, why not also sign them up as an affiliate? We also, if someone is doing an affiliate-only program, which I'm not a huge fan of these days, I think you're kind of swimming uphill. But also it's one of those things like if you run an affiliate program for 10 years, why not keep it running? And you can advertise that to influencers also. And you might get the people who are just starting out and they might be interested in doing something for commission. Maybe you send product or maybe you don't, right? So you keep the investment low on that.

Well, a lot of them, I assume because they're on influencers, have platforms built up, have a micro niche as we talked about, and are all on the platforms trying to monetize themselves mostly with the video and content. And what I also assume that if they create content for you, when they post it back, they're getting their own monetization through that, even if they don't have an affiliate relationship. So many of them are like, what's the point anymore, right? If I'm posting on TikTok and getting paid. Does that sound about right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, 100%. Yeah. Example from, I mean, what I've used, I wrote a book and I got them over there actually. So we published 2019 and that's always kind of a challenge is how do you keep book sales going? And books are low margin anyway. So there, you don't want to really want to spend a ton on marketing, but I kind of looked at it like, well, we, what do we want? We want Amazon reviews because that'll help with the algorithm. Or so I thought. The reviews never really helped with the algorithm, but it did come around when ChatGPT, I think over the last year we've seen, we sort of saw these, this dark matter of book sales climbing and climbing. And we're actually selling more now, I mean, 6 years later than we were when the book launched. And it's because of referrals from ChatGPT. And I attribute a lot of that to the Amazon reviews that we built up. And part of building that up was getting them from influencers who reviewed our book and went online. So kind of my best practice there was I would send them a free book and I would kind of leave it open-ended. I'd say, hey, I can do up to— I had a range of about $50 to $200 per collab. So pretty modest. I wasn't working with a ton of people, maybe 1 or 2 a month, but I would say, hey, let me know what you can offer and then I'll let you know what I can offer in terms of this range that I published. And a lot of times they come back with their— right, they come back with their best idea like, okay, I got a YouTube channel, I've got Instagram, I've got TikTok. Yeah, all the other things. Right. Featuring your book. I'm happy to leave a review. And cool. So I send them a book and offer them the max $200, and then they do it, and then I PayPal the $200, or maybe a couple times, $100 upfront, $100 on completion. But it's a good way to kind of grow, just kind of grind it out, but grow organically. So we talk about putting your face to it. This is a good way to kind of, I think, supplement that. Someone else putting their face to it, but keeping it very personal. And I never stepped in on the content. I always just let them go. So a lot of times it was a mommy blogger talking about financial independence. It's a finance book, so they would just kind of go. So I never really guided them on that. I wanted it to be from their own words. But the important thing to me was just having the video, having the real format.

Yeah, that's smart because, I mean, at the end of the day, they're going to have to— they're going to know how their audience likes them to speak and how they like them to present things and how they, you know, influence without forcing buys or sales. And then once they know they've got a video that pops off, they're of course going to want to put it on all the other places. That will make them money too. And it's just a smart combination of events. Well, well received. That's what I love about the influencer side of it. Maybe this dark side. What's the dark side of influencing? Let's get to that real quick.

What's the dark side? Sure. The dark side. Yeah. You could spend a lot of money. And I think especially if you're going up the chain, right? If you're going up, it gets expensive really, really fast. I mean, even if you're looking at someone with 500,000 followers, they might want $100,000— I'm sorry, $1,000 a post, $2,000 a post. So you get into the thousands of dollars really quickly and that's going to be really hard to turn an ROI. They can be even more challenging to work with up the chain. You do have the ghosting. The ghosting is kind of a problem where you send the product, never hear from the person. I think that's a pretty common problem, especially when you contact people directly because there's kind of no history, no background. There's no, there's no intermediary party. So if you meet them on a platform, at least you hope that you've got the platform sticking up for you. Or so there's some ramifications. It's kind of like, hey, if I take an Uber home from the airport, yeah, it could be a bad ride, but ideally the person that got a 4.8 rating, I should be fine versus the sketchy guy who's like, hey, I'll take you downtown for $20 or $40. And there, if that goes awry, you've got no, you know, there's no safety net to fall back on. So I think it's kind of the same with the influencer side is the ghosting is a problem. Getting them to follow through is the problem. The timing, I think, As brand people, I mean, we are used to working as if we had normal jobs. The influencers are not exactly on that normal time schedule, so they might get to stuff when they get to stuff. They might put your collab downstream where they're doing other stuff for a while. Something happens in their life from a personal standpoint, you get bumped back, right? And they're not necessarily hitting the timelines that you want.

Yeah, this is good. What are we missing about this conversation that— a question I didn't ask you or a tangent we didn't go on yet that you wanted to let everybody know about?

Uh, let's see. I think the tracking is worthwhile in terms of, right, how we're getting ROI from it. So there, I know there are tools within Amazon and you know better than I do, Neil, in terms of the toolbox there, but I know there's attribution links.

Yes.

And that's kind of a common way used within the Amazon platform for those purposes. On the Shopify end, we, we don't have tracking on our end, at least yet. That's something we're, we will have, at least from a discount code standpoint. For now, a lot of people doing it with affiliate tracking apps, and there's a lot of them in the Shopify App Store. So that's something that'll give you the link tracking or discount code tracking. Tracking is not going to be perfect, but it can be a decent proxy, right? At least you want to see some sales, some activity. You want to keep moving that ball forward. So I think you want to see that even good old just looking at the calendar, if you're not doing a ton of influencer stuff and maybe you don't have a ton of sales yet, you can kind of see what's working from a, hey, I got a bump here, I got a bump there. So this, you know, early days in terms of That. So I think it's good to kind of have your eye on that so you know what's working. I don't think you have to necessarily obsess over it, but have an idea of, hey, this is kind of working, moving the ball forward for us.

Yeah, no, that's fantastic. And these are great, great insights. So Brett, clearly, you know, the influencer world, we talked about your software to a degree, but we didn't explain what it was to people. You want to give us a few minutes here and explain what that is and what you're doing with it?

Oh, sure. Yeah, appreciate it, Daniel. Yeah. So we've got an influencer marketing platform, actually came out of an affiliate tracking app that was my last company that started back in 2012 and throughout the, the 2010s saw that everything was morphing into the influencer side because we had all this tracking and we could integrate with social media apps. And it was very cool from a tracking standpoint, but we kept getting questions like, hey, do you guys provide affiliates? And then it turned into, you guys provide influencers? And we didn't really do that. So we started something in-house, but then it was expensive. So I spun that off as a company called Afluencer. Back in 2019. And what we do is match up brands with influencers, vice versa. And then we did end up specializing more in the smaller brands, matching up with the micro influencers. And that's where we're at today, where we can really kind of dial it in. We've got influencers who are actual users of the platform. So that's very helpful because we're not having to go out to Instagram. We've got over 35,000 influencer users in there, in the, on the app. We can find people if you've got a skincare product and say, okay, well, here's like 430 skincare influencers who are US-based. You're shipping to the US, so we want to look at these folks and then we kind of dial in from there in terms of demographics, age, right? Sometimes people are looking for like the 40 to 60 or so on and so forth.

Is it pay-per-use?

Is there a monthly fee like a number of videos? How does the platform— like, what's the best way to use the platform, I guess?

Yeah, so best way, actually, we have a free plan that's fully functional, and that's pretty unique in the influencer platform space. Traditionally, they're Kind of, I think, you know, you'll, you'll see higher price points.

Or pay per post or pay per monthly or something like that.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So to get started, you can get started with us on our free plan. We do have then premium plans or the Shopify and BigCommerce apps are paid, but inexpensive, $49 a month at the Shopify and BigCommerce level. And then our premium plan as well. So you can get started there and post a collab and get rolling. And then that could either be a commission-based thing. If you have an affiliate program running already, that's not a bad idea. Kind of a why not? Let's just, another place to advertise your affiliate program. And then you can get started with the pay-per-post stuff. And I do encourage for the people who are new, I mean, you can get started with the micro, even the nano influencers, right? Just put $50 a post and work with some people who've got very specific followers who are really aligned with your brand, right? And it really makes sense. Like, this is the type of person I want to talk with. And think of that $50 or $100, whatever you're offering. It's kind of a way to get the conversation going, right? And see if you can get a partnership going there.

Very cool.

Well guys, everything in the links below here, definitely go check that out, see what Brett's doing. If you were in the micro or nano influencer space for a particular product you're trying to reach, if you need sponsored brand videos for Amazon or you want more marketing videos for your YouTube or for Meta or Instagram, etc., you know the power of influencers and physical products. Things can go really well, or you just get out there yourself and start pounding that pavement. One video a day for 30 days can make a big difference in your business, especially if you're dialing in the language and copy. And as Brett had suggested, you know, live videos are doing really well. So get out there and do some lives for your products. Just remember, people want to buy, they don't wanna be sold, so don't be forceful on your videos. We gave out some great tips and some scripts today. I hope you guys follow that. I wanna thank Brett so much for coming on, sharing a good word, some great information, and I hope everybody takes some value out of this today. Thanks for having some time with me today, Brett.

Thank you, Neil. Appreciate you having me on the show.

Guys, as always, like, share, comment, help us beat big tech and engage. If you wanna be a social media influencer, you know where to go. If you wanna be a brand who gets more social media influencers, you know where to go today. So I encourage you all to take care out there today. Get out there and do something others are not willing to do. And remember, your opportunity begins at the end of your excuses. Catch you guys on the next episode.

Ask you this, if you're serious about building an e-commerce business starting on Amazon FBA, what if myself and my team worked with you one-on-one to execute the steps outlined in the podcast while helping you discover what the heck to sell, how to make sure it's profitable, and how to successfully launch a brand, plus how to do it under a consulting plus performance-driven model where I put a $10,000 skin-in-the-game guarantee for those that show up and are serious about building a real business done with us? If yes, text keyword profit to +1-417-413-4209. That's 1-417-413-4209. And I will personally respond with a few simple questions. If you're not in the US or Canada, please visit voltage dm dot com. That's voltage dm dot com. Click get started and book a no-pressure discovery call with me or a member of my team. learn more about the Business Builders one-on-one coaching and mentoring for CEOs, entrepreneurs, and those looking to build an empire or retire using the power of e-commerce. Once again, thank you for listening, and be sure to tune in next week for a brand new episode of the High Voltage Business Builders podcast.