In this insightful episode, we sit down with affiliate marketing expert Jeannine Crooks, who brings over 25 years of experience to the table. From working as an affiliate and a merchant to starting her own agency, Jeannine has seen it all.

Tune in as she demystifies the affiliate marketing landscape, answering key questions about costs, network partnerships, and how to determine if affiliate marketing is right for your brand.

Jeannine also shares her insider tips on choosing the right network, managing fraud protection, and leveraging agencies to maximize your affiliate program's success.

Whether you're new to affiliate marketing or looking to optimize your strategy, this episode is packed with actionable insights you won’t want to miss!

Podcast transcript

Kerry Curran, RBMA (00:01.526)

So welcome, Jeannine. Tell us a bit about yourself and your experience.

Jeannine Crooks (00:06.264)

Well, thank you so much, Kerry. I'm really excited to be here. I've been in the affiliate marketing industry for over 25 years now. So I've played all the different roles. I've been an affiliate. I've been a merchant. I've been a technical provider. I've been with an affiliate network. And now I have my own agency, which I just started a couple of months ago. So kind of played all the different roles along the way. I love the industry. I've watched it change people's lives. And so I can't imagine doing anything else.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (00:33.899)

Yeah. I mean, you definitely are a well -known expert in the industry. So I'm excited to have you on today. Great. So I know you've been talking to a lot of prospective clients and people have been trying to tap into your expertise with your new agency. talk a bit about, you told me a bit about your Ask Me Anything and what people are asking you. So what are you hearing a lot from brands or agencies today, marketers today?

Jeannine Crooks (01:05.772)

Well, there's a lot of things that they are wondering about when they're thinking about starting their own affiliate program. So I've tried to kind of summarize different things to consider. The first question is always, my goodness, what does it cost? And so I always try to jump into that because there's a couple different choices there. There's more than a couple, but two basic categories. One, you can just do an in-house program, or you can put it on an affiliate network. And so I usually try and let them know what the challenges are going to be of each one. The in -house program is going to require some type of software that you work with. And you're going to need some time from a human within your company who's going to be able to manage that. depending on your program and the affiliates you work with is going to determine how much of that time is going to be consumed. 

With an affiliate network, you're going to have more fees. Honestly, you're going to be paying them a couple of different things to be able to use their platform. But they're also going to take care of a lot of the other kinds of stuff that your person may or may not know what to do. Either way though, your biggest expense will still be the affiliate compensation portion. But remember, it's performance marketing. So you only pay that because you got a sale or they generated a lead. So those are some of the things there that are among the most common questions. The other thing people wonder is, is affiliate marketing even right for them?

You know, it can work for just about any type of product. So whether you're selling a physical product, travel, know, financial services, or you're trying to generate leads for your program, it can work for all of those. But you've got to remember, you know, for example, do you have sufficient margin in your product to be able to pay out a competitive commission? You don't have to be the highest commission, but you still need to be competitive, you know. And one other thing I always try to remind them about is does your website convert? You know?

Kerry Curran, RBMA (02:58.816)

Right.

Jeannine Crooks (02:58.904)

What's your conversion rate for all the people that are coming there? Is it just, you know, like, hopefully 1 %? Or is it in the 1 to 5 % range, which is what affiliates are going to look for? So those are some of the questions that I get asked right up front.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (03:11.466)

Yeah, no, and I definitely get that. That's like when I send out a proposal, you almost want to put the pricing on the front page because you know they're going to flip to the back. So I can see why that is a big question. But to your point, you know, when you're talking about affiliate commissions or fees, that is only paid out when the desired action takes place. So, you know, again, makes it a better investment than a lot of other media channels or great compliment to those other media channels. But you did also mention the cost and expense of networks. So talk a bit about, again, why that's a smart investment to partner with a network and what the networks provide and why it's a good investment.

Jeannine Crooks (04:01.378)

Sure. Yeah, I mean, I've spent a lot of years with affiliate networks and I've seen a lot of in-house programs as well. And I think that a network is still a really good choice for just about every company because there's a lot of moving pieces that are in there and the network can take care of those. Like they'll do things like affiliate screening right up front and ongoing compliance monitoring. Anyway, if you're looking at a network, make sure they do that. Those are very critical parts.

But they're going to see things about a potential publisher who may be applied to your program that you might never have known. Because they've got all those tools. They've spent a lot of money. I I know that some of the networks will do close to 30 different checks on an affiliate to make sure that this is somebody who's legitimate, who is being truthful in terms of the way that they're saying they generate traffic, stuff like that. No hidden cookie stuffing. I think we've all heard the old cookie stuffings, horror stories.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (04:55.695)

Yeah.

Jeannine Crooks (04:57.3)

So a network will make sure that they're not doing something like that. Usually they've got better tracking technologies because they have the advantage of having hopefully hundreds or thousands of clients that they're working with. And so when you're getting that kind of money coming in, you can afford to have some really good programmers on staff who can make up a lot of those kinds of things for you. They can help with things like compliance issues, like GDPR, which scares a lot of people. I've seen people that are just terrified to work because, my gosh, GDPR, what's going to happen to me? I don't want to get challenged on that. Different networks have different approaches on how they do GDPR. 

But overall, they should have some position in place that can help make things clearer for you when you want to work with, go online and be able to work. you can't control where your traffic is coming from. So you're going to get some that comes from Europe. There's a pretty good chance. Luckily, the networks can help you with that.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (05:51.798)

Right.

Jeannine Crooks (05:54.272)

And then the other thing that I really like is they'll end up paying the affiliates for you. So I think that that just makes things a whole lot easier. Instead of you at the end of the year having to issue all those 1099s and worrying about trying to pay everybody every month and who changed their bank account and all that kind of stuff, the network takes care of all of that. And I can tell you that it can cause so much brain damage because I managed an in-house program. my gosh, it was a challenge.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (06:09.632)

Yep. Yeah, it's a lot to keep track of. Yeah.

Jeannine Crooks (06:23.614)

So much, so much. Yeah.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (06:26.436)

Right. And so you were talking about a lot of streamlining and I'm kind of taking a lot of the risk and heavy lifting when it comes to compliance and payments. But you'd also mentioned, you know, that there's so much concern around fraudulent clicks and click bots within uncertain platforms or publishers. And the networks provide an extra layer of protection about cross-click fraud as well.

Jeannine Crooks (06:34.796)

Yes. Mm-hmm.

Yes, they do. And the thing too that's good about that is they're monitoring it and most networks give you a period of time between when the transaction occurred and when the affiliate gets paid. So you've got that time to kind of go in there and decline any of those kinds of transactions where maybe somebody bought something and their credit card didn't work, or they returned it or something like that. You're not out that commission until you know it's a verified sale that's going to stay that way forever.

And yeah, I mean, identifying fraud and being able to stop it before it happens, that's a big deal. And, you know, everybody tries to do their best on it. And even when some stuff sneaks through, most networks usually are pretty good about helping you to not get, you know, not be forced to pay out for whatever just happened and stopping it again. You know, kicking that affiliate, not just out of your program, but hopefully off the platform. Because if they're going to do stuff like that to you, they're going to do it to another merchant. And the networks realize that. So it's like, hi, you had your chance. Bye.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (07:29.099)

Yeah. Yeah. Well, and that's the thing too, we have …

Jeannine Crooks (07:55.494)

So, you know, I think that that matters. Yeah.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (08:00.608)

… been talking about across the affiliate industry itself has a PR challenge where historically there are a lot of assumptions of nefarious behavior based on past bad actors. so to your point of the more layers of protection that the networks can provide, the better off your program will be. And all in all, I was just thinking we sound like we're a commercial for a specific platform, but it's …

Jeannine Crooks (08:30.393)

No.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (08:30.542)

… really when it's your point of costs, it's worth knowing, your perspective is really worth the investment.

Jeannine Crooks (08:37.484)

Well, I think it is too. you know, I mean, the thing is as well, and this is one of the other things that I think is a big deal about working with an affiliate network as opposed to just having an in-house program, is that the affiliate network will have a publisher base that already has been, you know, has been gone through the compliance process and stuff like that and is on there actively looking for programs to support and to promote.

And if you're an in-house program, then you've got to go out and do all that recruiting on your own. You've got to try and identify them, reach out to them, convince them to work with you, convince them that, yes, you will pay them when the money is due. And there's a lot that are very cautious about that. Affiliates have their favorite platforms. There's no doubt about that. And the other thing that they do that I think is important is they like working on a platform because they can log into one place and see all the programs that they're working out in one reporting location.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (09:10.77)

Mm-hmm. Right. Hmm.

Jeannine Crooks (09:29.014)

Whereas if they're working with a bunch of in-house programs, they've got to log in here, log out, log in here, log out, log in here, log out. It makes them crazy. They're just like, I don't have time to do that. You know, yeah, there's some software that can help with it, but you've got to be big enough to afford that software. So I'm definitely much more of a proponent of networks because also, you know, if you're an affiliate and you've got a challenge with something, you should be able to reach out to your network and get some help with that merchant. Not every network works that way. And that's, think, …

Kerry Curran, RBMA (09:29.024)

Yep. Right.

Jeannine Crooks (09:59.062)

Also an important point because people just assume it's an affiliate network. Different networks have different strengths and it's important to know that they've got different, better publisher bases or different technologies. Like some can do unique cookie codes and others can do cross -device tracking and others have cookie list tracking. So you want to really study everything about an affiliate network before you pick which one you're going to work with. And there's many that are out there that are very good, but you can also get a sense pretty fast of who ...

… you know, the tier one networks are some of the tier two versus the guys that, you know, are willing to re -broker anything, you know, for the 17th time. And, you know, it may start off as $40 for a lead and by the time it's been re -broker, the last guy gets 75 cents. I think you can kind of guess the quality you're going to get of a lead that somebody's earning 75 cents for. I've seen it happen and it's not pretty. So, you know, it's important for you to do your homework as well.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (10:49.514)

Right. Yeah, in choosing a network, do you usually support your clients through an RFP process or how do you help them choose the right one for them?

Jeannine Crooks (11:06.508)

Yeah, I mean, I think that that's part of it is, you know, being able to put together the RFP. You're not always required to do that depending on the size of your program. You know, if you're going to be, you know, a seven figure a month program, then that's an RFP thing. If you're going to be smaller than that, then it can just usually be a lot of serious discussions with their sales rep to find out what you need, find out who else they're working with. You know, I mean, one of the things I think we might talk about is agencies and agencies.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (11:34.411)

Yes.

Jeannine Crooks (11:35.352)

If you've selected an agency to help you through the process, they can help guide you through the RFP process or make recommendations right up front of networks that are good because that's one of the things an agency does is they know who all the players are and who's good at what for whom. And I've had some programs come to me already where they're like, we're going to go on here. No, don't. Do not. And it's not because there's anything wrong with where they're going, but it wasn't a good match.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (11:58.25)

Right. Mm-hmm. 

Jeannine Crooks (12:04.042)

If you sell physical products, that's not a good network for you. They focus on digital downloads, some of those kinds of things. yeah, I've seen a lot. Over the years, I've seen a lot.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (12:15.688)

Yeah, there's, yeah, and you know, we were both just at affiliate summit Eastward, there's a lot of emerging platforms. So it's to your point, it's like, do your homework, you know, pull, reach out to yourself or someone with your skill set to help choose or ask your agency. So definitely, I mean, it's an exciting time with all the new evolutions and new technologies coming out. But again, it's to do your homework.

Jeannine Crooks (12:23.084)

Mm-hmm.

Jeannine Crooks (12:42.284)

Yes. Well, you know, I mean, that's kind of one of my jokes about affiliate marketing and about why I like it so well is because you can say, that's so last week. And it's true. Because maybe you've got a new Google dance this week, or some new technology just came out, or some new strategy for reaching out to consumers, or some new compliance requirement just came through. Because that's one of the FTC's favorite things to do. We could talk about it, we could have a whole …

Kerry Curran, RBMA (13:07.882)

Yes.

Jeannine Crooks (13:10.602)

… session just talking about that. It's important to kind of stay up on all of that. And that's part of the fun. To me, that's part of the challenge is just knowing and being able to evaluate when new opportunities come through to know whether it is good for the industry or not? Is it good for your client or not? I've got some clients where it's like, hey, look, new technology. No, not a match. And others where it's like, my gosh, I can't wait to tell you about this thing because it's so cool.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (13:12.235)

Yeah. Right, right.

Jeannine Crooks (13:40.394)

It could help you make a lot more money online. And that's kind of all of our goals, right? We want to do it, but I always want to do it, you know, and in a compliant way, the right way. So, because that's kind of one of the things about affiliate marketing that I love, everybody can benefit from it. You know, the consumer can get great information and so they know what to buy. The publisher gets paid for the work that they've done sharing that information. The merchant gets more sales.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (13:42.368)

Yeah. Right. Do it right. I know.

Jeannine Crooks (14:08.354)

You know the agency and the network platform you know have done their job and therefore get paid for it because they helped put those publishers together with those consumers and make that transaction happen so everybody can be a winner in it. How nice is that …

Kerry Curran, RBMA (14:22.633)

Yeah, just mutually beneficial all around. Another big investment line item, as you mentioned, as we've alluded to, is your agency partner. The asylum I grew up in was an agency. I've been in agencies since …

Jeannine Crooks (14:26.028)

Yes. Yes. Mm-hmm.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (14:43.564)

Yeah, almost 20 years. I get, I'm a pro agency and I'll tell you, and I know we've talked about this, but when it comes down to having that depth and variety of experience, right? Working with different business challenges, verticals, platforms, channels, and even more so when it comes into affiliate, it's having that expertise across …

Jeannine Crooks (14:45.676)

Mm-mm.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (15:13.47)

… the board. And I've seen throughout my career brands in housing, more on the other paid media channels, but, you know, just looking at the savings of the agency fee. when it's gonna say, but then you can't really measure, okay, you grew, you've eliminated your agency fee, and you grew by 10%. Now, you paid your agency fee that was equivalent to …

Jeannine Crooks (15:14.006)

Yes. Right.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (15:43.326)

… say 3 % but then you grew 20%. So it's like you can't go back and predict what it would have been. But that's always been my POV is just agencies bring value. And obviously there's different types of agencies, especially when it comes to affiliates. So tell me more about your perspective there.

Jeannine Crooks (15:52.203)

Well, you know, I totally agree with you. Because like I said before, the agencies know who the players are. We're going to know, for example, which coupon sites are good to work with, which cash back sites, which content publishers, which sub networks. All of those areas, you know how it is to work with them. You know what the requirements are to get on there. And that really matters. Because a lot of times, and I literally just had this happen to me yesterday, seriously.

Where we were talking to a publisher or to a merchant about adding this publisher and this particular publisher has an integration fee. And they had done their own research and thought that that integration fee was a monthly fee instead of a one -time fee. So they were going to turn down this wonderful opportunity because they misunderstood. And I understand why they do it. It's nothing against them. They're very intelligent people, but they misunderstood a little bit on that one. as the agency, we were able to clarify and say, no, no, no, that's a one -time fee, one and done. You pay that. You're finished. You're set.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (16:53.253)

Wow. Mm-mm.

Jeannine Crooks (17:14.344)

And so now they have this wonderful opportunity to work with someone. Well, that was the benefit of having an agency who knew and understood how that all worked, because they would have just missed out so much. the agencies know how to do that. The agencies also have relationships in place, because even though everything is done online, it's all about relationships when it comes to affiliate marketing. And so your agency will probably know the person who is this publisher.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (17:35.306)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jeannine Crooks (17:41.75)

You know, I can get them on the phone and be like, hey, Andy, hey, Michael, hey, you know, Rick, let's talk. And be able to, you know, help make those kinds of things happen. Or know about a special opportunity or something or get a special feature. You know, it's not, I don't want to say that the agency is going to magically make this happen for you all the time, but when those opportunities occur, the agency is more likely to find out about it first than, you know, the general population.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (17:41.899)

Yeah. Right, right.

Jeannine Crooks (18:09.928)

That might be working with an affiliate network. And definitely, you're probably not going to hear about it if you've got an in-house program. And there's a lot of day-to-day maintenance, taking care of affiliates and taking care of an affiliate program. an agency is going to know how to do that. They're going to know when it's time to update the right banner ads or to add new text links or to promote something or another.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (18:15.904)

Right. Mm-hmm. 

Jeannine Crooks (18:33.516)

You know, like for example, one of the things that's going to happen very, very soon is the larger websites are going to lock down for Q4. That's going to happen in about an hour and a half. And if you're not ready for that and have all of your stuff in place literally in October, sometimes even late September, you're going to miss Q4 on some of the largest publishers. But an agency knows that schedule. And so there's a lot of nuances …

Kerry Curran, RBMA (18:41.162)

Right, soon. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jeannine Crooks (19:02.744)

… to it. you know, just the same as the merchant wouldn't expect somebody to just come out of the blue and be able to do whatever wonderful product that this merchant is creating or offering the service, whatever. You know, go to the specialist because they know what they're doing and it's not going to cost you a lot more or maybe even much more than what it would be if you had an in -house person doing it. But you're going to get the benefit of all that experience. You know, I mean, I've been doing this for 25 years since God was a little boy.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (19:16.234)

Yeah.

Jeannine Crooks (19:32.438)

I mean, that's my joke about it. Kind of shortly after Amazon offered the first affiliate program, I was kind of like not too far behind them. And so there's a lot of knowledge in here that I'm glad to share. I love to share it. I just have to make sure my bills are paid. So yeah, I have to charge an agency fee because I still have one of those mortgage things. Go figure.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (19:52.948)

Yeah, yeah, until we can get all the partners to pay for that directly.

Yeah, and so that's another thing too. With an agency, it depends. Not all agencies are equal, as we know and we've seen, especially when you work on the platform side or the network side. But some of the other benefits I saw were for the larger agencies, there's a volume. There's negotiated rates based on their volume. Or there's examples where a publisher says, …

Jeannine Crooks (20:16.994)

Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (20:31.278)

If you can get me three brands for this upcoming promotion, then I can give you a discount on the onboarding fee or something. So it's like there are those relationship benefits that come into play with that agency relationship. So definitely a lot more benefits worth the investment as we were saying. So yeah.

Jeannine Crooks (20:44.78)

Mm-hmm. Yes. Yeah, you know, and I would just suggest to people because there are some agencies that contact everybody who launches or something like that, you know, and do your homework on your agency. Find out what they've done, what they know, who they're going to put on your account, all of those kinds of things, you know, how much attention you're going to get, how much they are going to customize their approach and their recommendations based on what you do.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (21:05.878)

Yeah, yeah. All right.

Jeannine Crooks (21:25.994)

As a client? Is it a template or is it all about you? And I think that those are important things to do because I've seen large agencies that are wonderful. I've seen large agencies that aren't. I've seen small agencies that can do so much, you know, and some that, yeah, they wouldn't be my first choice.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (21:26.226)

Mm-hmm. Right.

Well, and I think we're seeing an increase in smaller consultancies and.

Jeannine Crooks (21:51.373)

Yes.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (21:53.1)

Smaller agencies and independents. So hopefully the future is very bright. So Jeannine, this has been amazing. I love, always love connecting with you because I always learn a lot. And so thank you so much for your time today. We'll definitely have you on again, because as we talk, there's so many other topics to cover. But thank you for your time today. And again, do you just a quick shout out to Sled Dog Consulting and how to get into …

Jeannine Crooks (22:12.63)

Yes.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (22:22.424)

… touch with you.

Jeannine Crooks (22:24.36)

Well, that's my new company name, Sled Dog Consulting, because I literally have Siberian Huskies and we take them dog sled racing. So there is a reason behind that name. And we're just right at sleddogconsulting .com. Still a fairly new website, so it's not all beautiful, but I've been spending time on my clients instead. So I figure that's a good excuse. yeah, and just come right to us through that. We're also on LinkedIn, listed there. So come say hi to me.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (22:32.014)

Love it.

Jeannine Crooks (22:53.184)

I love talking about affiliate marketing, so I love doing calls with people and just chatting.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (22:53.26)

Great.

For sure, so much, such a depth and wealth of knowledge to share. So thank you so much, Jeannine. Take care, thank you.

Jeannine Crooks (23:06.274)

Thank you.