How does affiliate marketing workwithin B2B SaaS?

Joran, thank you so much for joining me today, uh, on the episode. Uh, now if, if you've tuned into this episode, you may be familiar with, with affiliate marketing. You may have clicked on an affiliate link. You may even be an affiliate, but you may be asking yourself, what's the benefit of being an affiliate? And how do you actually leverage somebody else's audience to grow your business, whether you are, you know, an information business, a technology business? And, and you're— and you built a business that helps other companies do that. But before we, we learn about that, let's talk a bit about, you know, explaining what is What is an affiliate? What is affiliate management and how can that help a business?

Yeah, yeah. So, an affiliate in general is somebody else who's selling your business and you can kind of see them as marketing partners. So, for example, like the affiliates which are on our platform, they drive traffic towards the client's website and then from there the traffic has to convert and the affiliate would only earn money if they deliver you a paid client. So, you need to receive a payment and from that they would get a kickback fee in return and I'm focused on SaaS, software as a service, so you pay monthly for software subscription, so the affiliate can actually earn a recurring subscription. And then we're also focused on B2B, which means higher ticket prices, higher commissions, but in general means a kickback fee for the paid clients they got delivered to you.

Okay, so let's talk a bit about why you created and founded your company. I know before I hit record I asked you how to pronounce it and I wasn't going to attempt it, so I'll let you do that and explain what it means. Why did you take the road of building this type of business?

Yeah, yeah. I was working at a different startup before this as an employee, and it was pretty innovative, as in we identified which company visited the website of the companies we work with. And all the time I got the question, because I was working in sales and after that in customer success, every, almost every call was like, hey, Joran, this is a great tool and you guys are doing really great things. 'Which tools should I use more?' If you do 5 to 10 demos a day, you get sick of that question. So I built a website with the best sales and marketing tools on there. At one point, like, the website grew to 25K, 30K organic visitors per month, and my idea was I'm gonna make money out of this website. So that's where I got into affiliate marketing. I basically applied to all these affiliate programs from the SaaS tools I had on the site, and then from there my idea was I'm gonna earn money by referring these software companies when people actually buy subscription via my link. Didn't really work out. Like there's a lot of networks like similar what we are building is that like I just did not trust the tracking. Like I had 15,000 clicks in one tool, I did not make one sale. Like for me that's impossible because I was recommending like good brands, so they should have good conversion rates. And then there were some other competitors now of Redditors where you have to work in a silo. So, you have to invite all the affiliates yourself. At one point you're gonna hit a wall. So, and as an affiliate I had to log into like 50 different portals which you get sick of as well. So, ran into those issues and then I decided like this can actually be better. So, I started building my own network.

Excellent. So let's talk about the, this, this network, this affiliate management platform that you have, have created. What is it and how is it different from what's, what's out there?

Yeah. Yeah. So we purely focus on B2B SaaS companies. I think that's one differentiator already, which also means the affiliates on the other side are purely B2B SaaS affiliates. So they know what software is and how to sell B2B. Then like what we're going to do is 'Cause a lot of people when they think about affiliate marketing is like, hey, it's shady, it's these coupon sites, there's a lot of fraud going on. Like if I know that people when they think about affiliate marketing, those are often the first things they think about if they're not familiar with it, like how it can actually work. So what we're doing is we're giving as much insights as possible towards the businesses, like what is actually happening and how did this signup happen? So is somebody doing any kind of shady things? And then the next thing we're doing is we're giving them like first-party data. So having the affiliates connect their social profiles, their Google Analytics, so you know that they own the website they say they have and you actually know that they are the person they say they are. So by doing this, we want to make it as transparent as possible. And like we're even going one step further soon where SaaS companies can find B2B SaaS affiliates based on for example, the audience they're looking for. So if you have a go-to-market, you want to go to the US, ideally you find people who have access to your audience in bulk.

Excellent. So I mean, what I'm hearing here is there's really kind of, you know, there's two sides to it. There's the affiliate, and I've been a registered affiliate with many different softwares over the years, who would use your platform to find other SaaS companies to become an affiliate for. But then there's also, you know, a SaaS company who would register with your site to show up there. Is that how that works?

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So SaaS companies will sign up, install our tracking, and then basically you as an affiliate can find them and can apply to their program. So benefit for you is, for example, you have all these different links, right? Ideally you have them in one platform so you don't have to log into all these separate portals. And then for the SaaS company is they can actually find where people like you can actually find out about new programs without having to go anywhere else. So, we try to bring it all in one single system.

Okay, and do the referral fees get paid out, like, ported through your platform or do each of the SaaS companies pay out individually direct to the affiliate?

Yeah, at the moment it's the latter, so they pay out directly. Like, we are gonna make changes to it, like we have one big project we're working on right now which we finalize first and then and we are going to tackle that as well, where most likely we build a wallet for yourself where all the commissions you accumulated from all the different programs will come into your wallet, and whenever you want to, you can actually subtract the money from it.

Okay. Now let's talk a bit more about your business. Obviously, when you created this, what were some of the, I guess, the challenges that you faced with starting something like this and also getting the word out to affiliates and to other SaaS companies?

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, we're building a marketplace. We're doing it without any external funding. So how you call bootstrapped, which in SaaS is I guess like the most challenging thing you can do. So I guess like as a reference, like how I started the business is I started it while working still full-time. So I have my full-time job, I have my salary. I knew I was going to build this SaaS. I knew it's gonna take a long time to actually build it. So I basically, from my salary, I paid the developer. We then did a Product Hunt launch, which is like selling your software for a one-time fee. So it's like diminishing your subscription model, but at least you get some early money and some early users in. So that's how we kind of figured out the chicken-egg with the marketplace we have. And then we found out we had a lot of bugs, so we fixed that. So I think it took another couple of months And I think at the point where I was like, okay, I can't juggle anymore between doing demos for my own software during the day while also managing a team of 30 on the other side at my full-time job, that was the moment I decided like I need to go all in and I need to basically quit my job. So I did it like in parallel. So I did not throw away my old shoes before I got new ones. And that's How I got started, basically.

Oh, excellent. So you, I mean, you're technically running a SaaS company that is this, this affiliate, you know, for other, other companies that are out there that are running a SaaS business, you know, some are even, you know, a white label of another software, but they are considered a SaaS. What are some of the, the tips you can give people to, to find affiliates or to build a great affiliate program? Because you've probably seen a lot of, you know, some great and some not so great programs.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it all starts with the basics, as in, like, don't try to have somebody else sell your product if you haven't figured out how to sell it yourself first. So it's not a magic bullet. So it doesn't mean like, hey, we're gonna set up an affiliate program, affiliates will come in and they will start driving revenue if you haven't figured it out yourself first. So only set it up when the foundation is right. Like for example, our ideal client profile is now, let's say, $50K monthly recurring revenue. And the reason being is they know exactly who they are targeting, which means is they also know who has access to their ideal customer profile. They would already have best practices. They will already have like case studies. They would already figure out their conversion rates. They probably already ran paid ads. So they have visuals and banners available for the affiliates to use as well. And they kind of have probably a person who can manage, recruit, and basically take care of the affiliate. So, like, I would recommend, I guess, like, figure those things out yourself first. Start running paid ads yourself first because you're gonna then care about your conversion rates a lot because you're spending money. And then, like, once that is working and the funnel is going, then from there think about an affiliate program, but don't use it as your first go-to market channel.

So how long have you been running this business?

We've been building for 3 and a half years now, maybe 4 already. I've been full-time now for, for almost 2. So, uh, been doing it like a long time on the side, especially during COVID and then, uh, now 2 years, 2 years full-time. Okay.

What's, what's the, I guess, the, the roadmap for the future?

Where do you, where do you hope to take this? Yeah, so it's a good question. We're now at, let's say, 60 companies in our marketplace, 8,000 affiliates on the other side. Like, ideally we get to like 100,000 affiliates, let's say, not this year but end of next year, which is gonna allow us to basically, whenever a SaaS company comes in, say like, oh, we already have people for you who can start recommending you. Like, where do we go? Um, I want to keep the team as lean and mean as possible. So I'm not looking to build like huge sales teams or anything like that. So we try to keep it as much product-led growth as possible. And then from there, like, uh, like revenue goals, I think like we just take it step by step basically. Like, um, we don't have these 5-year plans because I think in the phase where if I create them, they will be changed anyway after 3 or 6 months. So at the moment we're still in the hustle phase and we're still like taking it almost month by month basically.

For sure. Now we talked about what it would take to be a SaaS company and to build your affiliate program and there may be people listening to this that thought, hey, you know what, maybe being an affiliate is a great way to earn a little extra income and that type of thing. What are some tips you could give to somebody to, you know, get started as an affiliate? What should you look for and what should be a realistic expectation?

Yeah, yeah. I think what you should look for, what you should think about is do you have an audience? So do you already have a blog? Do you already have a newsletter? Do you already have a following on LinkedIn? Or do you have— or are you consultant, agency, or whatever? Like, but do you have an audience which resonates with one of the SaaS companies you start want to recommending? And then you can think about the tools you're currently using. Like, do you love any of the tools you're currently using? And would you be comfortable in actually sharing your experience with it? So if you look at it from that perspective, you already know that tool. You can already share exactly how you're using it, what the value is, what it can do for you. And then from there, it's easy to recommend. So I would always start there, as in start with what you're comfortable with, and then start recommending it towards the network you have. So the bigger network you have, the quicker results you're going to get basically. And the more familiar you are with the tool, the quicker results you're going to have as well. So it really depends on, I guess, like where do you start? But the beginning is always the hardest, right? As soon as you, especially with B2B SaaS affiliates, like often tools have like 14-day free trials, 30-day free trials, and not everything converts. So you need to have, First, you need to drive traffic that needs to convert, so it will take a while to get your first paid referral, but after that, it compounds. So that's, I guess, the beauty of the market we are in, at least.

Absolutely. Now, where would people find your marketplace online?

Yeah, so it's going to be at getreadytis.com.

Okay. And we'll put a link to that with the episode as well. One question I want to end with that I ask most, most people, um, are there any tools out there— not recommending your own— but any tools out there that have helped you run your business, uh, more effectively, more, more efficiently, uh, that you could kind of let us know about that maybe some people don't know about?

Yeah, yeah, we use Linear as a tech tool. So basically, like, it's our tech planning for all the tickets, for all the projects, for everything. Like, I hired an intern now on the marketing side, and I even use it for project planning on the marketing side. So Linear is, is definitely a tool I would recommend if you're especially a SaaS or you want to do any kind of planning. I would definitely look into it.

Excellent. Well, thank you so much for sharing this. I'm going to check it out myself. We'll put a link with the show notes to, to where people can get signed up. And also a link to where they can connect with you directly on LinkedIn.

That was good. Thank you for having me. Excellent.

No problem. Have a great day.

You too.