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Honey Scandal: What We Can Learn

Name: Honey Scandal: What We Can Learn
Uploaded: 2025-01-13T01:00:12+00:00
Duration: 22 s
Channel: Shanli Liu, CPA, CTP
Description: In this short dialogue, the speakers examine how the Honey browser extension grew into a massive creator-driven phenomenon by employing a uniquely…

13 Jan 2025 · 0 min

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In this short dialogue, the speakers examine how the Honey browser extension grew into a massive creator-driven phenomenon by employing a uniquely wholesome affiliate strategy. Honey positioned its product as a free‑money, money‑saving tool, which made creators feel good promoting it to their audiences. This approach enabled millions of creators, including top YouTubers, to endorse Honey en masse. The conversation then shifts to the backlash Honey faces, attributing it to a lack of transparency about certain practices after the fact. The speakers argue that marketers can learn to craft offers that feel beneficial to both affiliates and audiences, avoiding one‑sided deals and ensuring clear communication to prevent reputational damage.

So Honey's being called one of the biggest creator scams of all time, and I'm not going to dunk on Honey. I think there's plenty of videos doing that. Instead, I want to talk about like, how did they get so big and what can we learn from that? Honey used one of the most brilliant affiliate strategies of all time, which is that they enlisted creators to ask something of their audience that made it feel wholesome and good, which was an offer around saving money. Honey is a browser extension that automatically scours the interwebs for coupon codes.
There's no reason not to add Honey to your browser today. It literally takes 2 clicks.
So who doesn't want to tell everybody they know about a way that they can save money on anything they buy on the internet? It is It's really free money. Why would you not install it? And so because of that wholesomeness, they were able to enlist millions and millions of creators and some of the biggest people on YouTube to then promote this product. Now, what they did after the fact, that's a separate question. But I think all of us can learn how can we make an offer so good that our affiliates feel good about asking their customers to take action on it rather than just making a one-sided deal that just pays the affiliate and then it's actually an ask from the audience, so they can't push it as hard. And I think the reason they're getting the lashback they are right now is because some of the things that they were doing weren't as they made them appear. The mistake they made was that they weren't transparent about those practices.