#432 – Amazon Traffic Hacks: How Influencers & Big Blogs Drive Millions with Richie Carreon

#432 - Amazon Traffic Hacks: How Influencers & Big Blogs Drive Millions with Richie Carreon Kevin King: Welcome to episode 432 of the AM-PM Podcast. This week my guest is Richie Carreon. Richie is one of the development and main guys over at Levanta. So we're going to talk about everything affiliate marketing, how you can connect with influencers and creators and actually how can you get in these big blogs that Wirecutter and All these guys do with top 10 products of this, top 10 products that can just drive massive traffic. In fact, a month and a half ago during Black Friday, Cyber Monday, he had clients driving into the millions of dollars of traffic between all of his clients. Just crazy amount of business that they did. We're gonna talk about all that, how you can do it and more. Enjoy this episode with Richie. Unknown Speaker: Welcome to the AM-PM Podcast. Welcome to the AM-PM Podcast, where we explore opportunities in e-commerce. We dream big and we discover what's working right now. Plus, this is the podcast where money never sleeps. Working around the clock in the AM and the PM. Are you ready for today's episode? I said, are you ready? Let's do this. Here's your host, Kevin King. Kevin King: What's up, Richie? Carry on. How are you doing? Welcome to the AMPM Podcast, man. Richie Carreon: Yeah, thanks for having me. It's good to see you again. I always see you either in person and now I get to see you virtually, which is pretty cool. Kevin King: You work for Levante, so a lot of people listening may have heard of Levante. If you haven't heard of Levante, we'll talk about it here in just a little bit about some of what they do. But there's this whole industry that's popped up. It's been around, but really in the last year or two years, it's really come to the forefront and it's you guys and a whole bunch of other people doing similar stuff. We're connecting influencers to sellers, e-commerce sellers, and connecting e-commerce sellers to media, to magazines and publications and everything else to actually just get the word out and creating this whole automated system to actually coordinate and track everything because it was a mess. So, how did you actually come to get into this? Do you have a background in e-commerce? Were you selling before or were you working for somebody else? Richie Carreon: Yeah, that's a good question. So, me personally, I've been in the ad tech marketing technology space for well over 10 years. Spanning like video programmatics, so those big brands working with these large agencies like Havas and Digitas, et cetera, going to Cannes Festival of Creativity. And then I found my way at an affiliate marketing company called Refersion. And during my time I was leading marketing there, so I got a lot of exposure to the e-commerce world as well as the affiliate ecosystem. And then, you know, Levanta opened up shop just about 19 months ago and I get a tap on the shoulder and they're like, hey, we'd love for you to come work with us. We're doing something entirely different. And I was like, well, you're doing affiliate marketing, isn't that a dime a dozen? They're like, well, no, it's actually quite different. And what's really uniquely different about it is, as we know, any of the major marketplaces, retail media networks, like Amazon, etc. Generally that data, that first party data is in a walled garden. It's really hard to access. And so within about a year and a half or so from just today, they opened up their Amazon ads attribution API. So allowing platforms like Levanta to access that first party data. And we saw an opportunity where we really believe that sellers now can unlock a brand new marketing channel and that's through affiliate marketing. So yeah, that's how I got into it. Yeah, pretty well versed in the affiliate and e-commerce space, but I've never been a seller. That is one thing I have yet to do, but it has crossed my mind now that I'm in the Amazon ecosystem. Kevin King: This whole world of affiliate, I mean, there's a lot of, I know affiliates that have, there's one affiliate Perry Belcher always talked about. He's like, this guy, he's so good. He owns the entire city of Some town in Indiana, he bought the whole town or something and he's made so much money off affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing, the people that are very good at it can print money without having any inventory, without having to deal with all the stuff we deal with as sellers. A lot of times it's a 50-50 deal, not always, but on the big time affiliates. What you guys are doing, we'll talk about that's a little bit different in some cases, but I remember when we were starting the Freedom Ticket with Hedium10, it was a 50-50 deal. And so when I 2017. I was getting frustrated with all the crap that was online on YouTube and on Facebook and I was like, there's just garbage courses. A lot of the courses that were out there, there were some big ones that were okay but the vast majority were just, they're leaving stuff out. They're like, buy a product for $3 and sell it for $20 and you make $17 profit. And I was like, no you don't. And so I was like, I'm gonna do a course. And so I was gonna do it on my own and then I talked to Manny and Guy at Helium 10 who owned it at the time and they're like, why don't you just do it with us? And I was like, I don't know. And I started thinking about it. If I do it on my own, I'm gonna have to give away 50% of every sale. So if I sell it for a thousand bucks, I'm making 500, the affiliates making 500. They already have the traffic. They're already going after the same audience. Why don't I just team up with them? And so that's what we did is we worked out an agreement where I created it and we did a revenue share. In 2019, right before they exited the company, we established to where they're going to make it for free as a bonus if you have that software. Then they pay me a flat fee, which we did an averaging thing. It works out. It's a good deal. I'm familiar with that side of it, but when it comes to actually Before Levanta, 20 months ago, before he existed, people were going out there. I was going to FameBit and sites like that and trying to get people to actually push my products, push my makeup kits or push my dog products or whatever. And I'd pay them, you know, this was an influencer more than a creator space at that time. And I would pay them to 200 bucks or 300 bucks or depending on their followers and their engagement and all that stuff. And they'd create a video, put it out and plug me. But I had to coordinate that all myself. I had to find the people, I had to look through all the videos, I had to do all this. It was a lot of work and there's a lot of platforms that popped up and half these people weren't reliable and they wouldn't, you know, you'd be harassing them to try to get it. Someone would do good quality, someone would do horrible. And then 20 months ago, basically, I hear about this company called Levanta and a couple other people and I was like, what is this? So what is the difference really between a Levanta and somebody that's been around the old school fame bits and all the other ones that were out there prior to you guys coming? Richie Carreon: Yeah, so a couple of things. One is we are built for the Amazon ecosystem. So, if you're selling on Amazon, now you can add on affiliate marketing and really build your own affiliate program, which you can do technically through Amazon Associates and Creator Connections, but there are some limitations and we are friends with Amazon. So, you know, it just depends on what best fits your needs. But more specifically with Amazon, there's three main benefits for Amazon sellers to use Levanta compared to your traditional avenues you might do to run an affiliate program. So one is you're actually going to have a direct relationship with those creators. So traditionally in other platforms, there is no direct relationship. You actually don't even generally know who is actually promoting your product. And you actually get full control over those commission structures on a platform like Levanta. So if you want to offer 100% commission to someone because you're trying to drive awareness and drive traffic to your listing, maybe you're using a loss leader strategy on your acquisition strategy. Then that could be an approach, but you can also offer as little as 0% if you choose to. And, you know, it's whatever you predefine and agree on with that creator. And you also can work on a CPA or cost per acquisition. So that means that you have a lower risk to you, but you're driving a lot of external traffic to your listing, which has some benefits actually. And then we also work on a CPC model. So that what that does, if you're not familiar with CPC, it's cost per click. And that unlocks new types of ad units for various types of publishers like CNN, Wirecutter, BuzzFeed, Hearst, Meredith.dash, Hearst, etc. But then the reason why some publishers or creators would prefer to work on that capacity because maybe your product is new and it's a higher risk for them. So now if you are on CPC, it's a lower risk because they're just driving traffic. And so it really varies on what you're trying to achieve there. Some of the other benefits, which I think is actually really valuable now these days for a lot of brands on Amazon is really trying to improve your organic search rank. So Amazon sees this affiliate traffic as external traffic, right? And we all know trying to get external traffic to your listing can cost money or you really got to get down and dirty working with traditional old school ways, right? They will help improve your organic search rank, but also you can also take advantage of Amazon's brand referral bonus, which is an average of about 10% kickback. So we see a couple of brands do a couple of approaches to this. One is they'll take that 10% and improve their ROAS. As an example, or sometimes they'll pass that 10% to the creator and so the brand's willing to give 30% but then they add that 10% as a nice little extra because Amazon's giving that kickback, which to the creator's perspective is a 40% and that makes them more interesting to the creator than somebody who's offering 20%. So, those are some of the benefits. Also, at the end of the year, if you're working with creators at scale, let's say you're working with 200, 1,000 creators, do you really want to do all those tax forms in a couple weeks? It doesn't sound fun. So the platform actually does all of that end to end. And all the data that you're looking at in your dashboard is first party data from Amazon. It's nothing that we're guesstimating. It's all our data directly from Amazon. Kevin King: So basically it's a complete connection and reporting system. And so you're basically taking a lot of the administrative work off the hands of the seller so that you connect them. So basically you connect them with the creators, then you coordinate the payment of the creators and you coordinate any of the taxes or any of the backend admin or the follow-up. Hey, you said you're going to have this done in a week. When's it coming? All the tech that's behind it to do all that correspondence and communication. Richie Carreon: Yeah, the tech for sure. We don't offer services and that's why we have a really good ecosystem of agency partners that we work with that can run your programs on your behalf. One other thing that's interesting too is our creator network. People are always like, where do I find a creator? How do I contact a publisher? We have about 7,000 plus creators on the platform today. They're all highly vetted. They go through a vetting process with our creator team and they have ongoing just reviews throughout their life cycle on the platform and so that means that a lot of our creators are highly engaged, high quality and it's a two-way marketplace. So those creators can go and search the entire product portfolio and see what products are most interesting to them. We even have some AI capabilities for creators. So let's say it's the holiday season or actually New Year's. They're probably planning out their New Year's content already and they're like, They just type in a prompt, writing a content piece on health and wellness, and then all these health and wellness products will show up. That's on the creator side. But also brands can go searching for creators as well and have all types of filters like, you know, this is their focus areas, maybe following types, what channels they might promote on, and they can invite creators to their programs and apply. Kevin King: So just to explain that in an example term, so if I'm a seller and I'm selling slow feed dog bowls, I can put my dog bowl up on your platform and say I got my Slow Feed Dog Bowl. I'm willing to give up. I set the commission amount. I'm willing to give let's say 20% and then I go out and like I type in who are the dog creators out of the 7,000 and I reach out to them say hey would you know you interested in promoting my bowl. That's one way. The other way is A couple of those 7,000 creators or maybe they're like, you know what, I'm gonna do a post with my dog, taking my dog to the beach and on vacation and whatever. I need a way to monetize this. It'd be good if I had some dog products. What's available that'll actually pay me some money if I mention it? And so they come and they find me that way. So those are basically the two ways that that system works. So it's almost like if you don't have a product though, because you could have mixed results. So you might go in there and if your product is, There's a hundred other products, weighted baby blankets in there. You may not have a lot of people take you up. It's just like the Vine program. Same thing happens in Vine. People go and they complain all the time the Vine program. I put my product in there and I was supposed to get 30 reviews and I got six. And then other people put in there like, man, I was wiped out in a day. It's the product. So it's product dependent. If they think your product's crap or they don't want it The 100th weighted baby blanket, it ain't gonna work, most likely, unless you've got some delineating factor. So that's where, because I hear people say, oh, I tried this platform or this platform or that platform. I didn't have any luck. And I'm like, well, what are you, you know, I think there's something else going on here. You can't blame the platform, necessarily. I think it's something with you. Richie Carreon: You're right. Also, remember, these creators are promoting your product to their audience who trusts them. If I have a community, and you know Kevin, you have a community, you're going to be very selective of what you put in front of your community. And because, I'm just going to use this as an example, we come at a higher price point than a lot of the other solutions that are on the market. And because we come at a higher price point, we tend to attract higher quality brands. So some examples are like Grown Alchemist, Aloe, we have Dude Wipes, Lume deodorant, Caraway, Hexclad, you know, these are very household like names you would see, especially purchased by those with a lot of more expendable income, especially millennials in that age range right now. And because of that, we have a hypothesis that these creators are more engaged with the marketplace because they see higher quality products. And there are other platforms and respectfully so. They may see, they may have not as higher quality products. And so, you know, you might have a spike, but then the long-term engagement might be lower. And so we're really particular about that. And we believe that we attract a lot more higher quality brands. Kevin King: A lot of people I talk to too, I think they approach your platforms, correct me if I'm wrong or add to it, they approach it wrong. They approach it as like, I'm going to use this as a money-making source. And I'm going to, I'm only going to do 10% commission plus I'll give the 10% I'm a referral bonus, so 20% total commission because that's my A cost on Amazon and I need to make a little bit of money. I'm not in the business of giving stuff away. I'm the opposite. I'm like give the damn things away and get the halo effect of your organic ranking and everything on Amazon. Don't come in at 20%. Look at your competition on Levanta. If everybody else is doing 20, do 25 or 30. Or come in and like you said, if you're doing a launch, you know the old search, find, buy where people were giving away free products in exchange for reviews or exchange for going and buying it. And some of that still exists. That hasn't totally gone away even though Amazon frowns on it. It's still out there. But this is almost like a legit workaround of that where you get an affiliate that's got a good following and that's shown in the past that they can actually convert. And not all affiliates can actually make sales. I mean, that's something a lot of people quite don't understand too. But if they can make sales, give them a freaking 100%. And I go in and I would say, I'm launching my new dog bowl. I'm going to try to get like seven affiliates, 10 affiliates, 50 affiliates and say, look, promote my product. I'm going to give you 100% for the first seven days. Everything you do that gives my launch going and I'm gonna have a contest whoever are you hundred affiliates? Spends the most traffic because I will log in here to Levanta all the data. Like you said, it's all transparent there I'm gonna give you a free cruise I'm gonna give you a free iPad or free laptop or whatever and that's just gonna be a marketing expense and I'm gonna use the platform in that way and I think hardly anybody does that and they don't approach it that way whether you just approach it as a okay, I'm I'm going to do this and it's just going to be another advertising cost and I can't afford to give away. They don't think of it from a positioning or getting shelf space. Richie Carreon: You're absolutely right. I'm a marketer myself. I do a lot of those types of things in thinking. It's the economics behind it. And especially if you're trying to drive awareness of the brand. So I remember I mentioned earlier, there's that loss leader strategy people do, you know, just to drive traffic, keep it low cost. And then they get awareness of their other products across the line. And you know, I think that's a super smart strategy. The cruise thing is actually quite, that's a new one for me. I haven't seen that approach. But you know, high ticket items and doing quick promotions, I think is also very helpful, especially if you're trying to launch something new. You know, you have to remember these creators are trying to monetize their audiences. They're trying to earn as well. And, you know, going back to what you said earlier, Kevin, about we're giving people freedom, right? We're also helping sellers get that freedom by generating revenue through affiliates, generating revenue through affiliates. But we're also helping creators also create an opportunity for them to have some financial freedom as well. Kevin King: So what about like the outside of the traditional, the TikTok, Facebook and Instagram, Pinterest type of people, the influencers and creators there? You also specialize in all these lists, these guides. Wirecutter is owned by the New York Times, right? It's a major source of revenue for them. A lot of people don't realize that. If you look at the New York Times financials, The Wirecutter commissions in the field, the money they make off of that is significant. Richie Carreon: Yeah, we call those listicles, actually. That's, I guess, it's like the proper terms, I guess they call them. I mean, there's also like advertorials and all types of other things, which you might find more on what's called performance PR, which is a very interesting space. I actually didn't quite recognize, I didn't realize that was a thing until I got into the affiliate space. Kevin King: Performance PR or performance marketing? Richie Carreon: Performance PR, so... Kevin King: Yeah, yeah, yeah, where you're on a... The 10 best new dog goals of 2025 or whatever. Richie Carreon: Yeah. Yeah. And then the listicles are even interesting where like, it'll be like, Hey, here's our top 10 and all they do is that's some, there's some publishers out there. That's all they do. They, all they do is post these crazy lists and there's no other content around. Kevin King: It's just like, Hey, especially if it's an odd number, it's not top 10 works, but also like top seven. It is another magic one because it's an odd number. Uh, and some of those guys, they actually test it and actually use the products and write their opinion. Other ones, they just put you in order of who's paying the most commission. Richie Carreon: Absolutely. It's, it's essentially not supposed to do that. Kevin King: I mean, technically, but that's what they do is say you're here, here's the best and the best one's giving them 50% and the rest next one's giving them 40% and so on. Um, yeah, those can be super powerful too cause they come with a lot of built in credibility. Richie Carreon: You handle a lot of SEO. Yes. I actually was talking to a seller here in New York. This was probably during the summertime. I didn't want to sell him. We were just chatting. He was like, oh yeah, I heard of you guys. He's like, you know, a couple of years ago, I got picked up by the New York Times. They placed my product in there. There was no affiliate link. It was all organic. And he was like, I saw a crazy amount of sales through that just from this one article, like where I was mentioned. They linked out to his product. But he was like, I actually really believe in this. And he's like, and if I can do that and have control over that scale, like that's super powerful for me, especially when advertising costs, as we know it today, it's not as Welcome to the show. Kevin King: A lot of times, you might need to have a history because they only want to push stuff that they know they're going to make money on because they know the value of every square inch. It's the old square inch analysis in a magazine or newspaper. I mean, I'll take it online, square inch on the screen. They know that this little inch by inch spot, every time we put something there, it should be worth $50,000 or whatever the number is. Do you see this where they like they want to see some history, some conversion history, some other stuff that you've done before they'll take you? Generally, it's just the person coordinate. They just fall in love with your product. Oh, that's so great. I love it. I don't care. I'm gonna put it in. Richie Carreon: Generally, yes, they want to see some history and that'll be generally on the CPA model, cost per acquisition model. And that's why we also recommend a CPC model for, because if you don't have a history, they have lower risk on them. They know that if they at least drive a click or visit to your listing, they're getting paid out for that versus the CPA model, which, you know, they're only getting paid out for the conversion. Kevin King: Yeah. I mean, even in my newsletter, I mean, you guys advertise in my newsletter and Beehive, who I use, the platform that I use for it, They have a built-in advertising system, unlike a lot of others, where people can come in there and run ads. One of your competitors was running a bunch of ads through that system originally. They have a CPC model, which is cost per click, and then they have a cost per impression, a CPM model, cost per impression. And the amount that they were paying and the amount of traffic they were getting, I was like, there's an imbalance here. You need to actually switch outside of this. And I quit taking ads from them and said, if you want to continue taking, you want to continue advertising, you got to go to my sponsors page, sponsors.billiondollarsellers.com and actually pay real rates, not the rate. So I use now Beehive for all my remnant stuff. So if someone goes into Beehive and their advertising platform and I have like I have really high conversion rates on a lot of my stuff. I have like 30 ad opportunities in there right now. And all I can do is hit a button and create it all there and automatically adds it into the newsletter and a whole nine yards. But some of them will offer me a CPC, a cost per click of $3 or $4 or a dollar or whatever. And other ones will do a CPM and I'm like, I'm not going to run this because I know what this is going to do and you should be paying a lot more money. So I only run those as remnants if I have nothing else there. Stack Influence is who I was talking about and they now We're on outside of that and they're paying what they should be paying because, and they didn't hesitate because they know it's valuable. So that's the same thing when these other publishers are looking at it. They know, so that's an issue where I think some people when they complain, no matter which platform they use, and some people are using all the platforms. I mean, because there is some overlay, but there's nothing you should actually probably, I don't know if you guys encourage that or not, but you should use multiple platforms. Richie Carreon: I mean, we always love when people use Levanta, but also people have D2C direct-to-consumer Shopify stores, BigCommerce, etc. They have their D2C presence and we don't support D2C. So yeah, we recommend if you have a D2C presence, consider an affiliate strategy for those properties that you have. And you mentioned something interesting about your ad inventory, Kevin. Yeah, I'm a big believer in not using an ad tech. We're an ad network, unless you have available inventory you're trying to sell off. Otherwise, go direct. Direct is gonna be the best rates, in my opinion. You'll probably get the best placements and a lot of ad networks, that's what they're designed to do, is to fill those available inventories. You ever go on Hulu and it's like, please wait, and you're just like, oh, I wonder why there's a blank ad. Well, their sales team couldn't sell the ad, that inventory. Exactly. Kevin King: Yeah, I have that happen sometimes. Football games or something. It's like just some music playing in the background. We'll be back to the show here. And I'm like, all right, that's a spot that didn't sell. Richie Carreon: Yeah. Kevin King: I think they're local spots because they have to carve off, they have to give, especially in like NFL games or something, they have to give, I don't know what the exact is, but 60 seconds or 120 seconds every hour, hour and a half to local. And I think a lot of times they don't end up selling the local. Um, cause if you ever noticed, like on a, you're watching a, you know, NFL football game, There's certain spots where it's always the local news doing a promo or it's some local car dealership or local plumbing guy or something. Those are spots that they have to carve out for the local stations and Hulu has some of that built into and a lot of times they don't sell it. I just had someone else on the podcast just last week actually right before this episode came out that We were talking about the opportunity in all these video ad networks and she was just like, there's massive opportunity right now on advertising on Amazon Prime and advertising on Hulu and all these places. Do you guys do anything with those kind of placements too through your network? Are any of those guys doing affiliate type of stuff or they're just taking straight up ad buys? Richie Carreon: Yeah, so we don't necessarily plug into any of those DSPs or SSPs. However, affiliates themselves can take the tracking links and put them through any medium. Kevin King: Yeah. Richie Carreon: So, you know, we're enabling them for the tracking component in terms of the channel, the medium. That's purely up to the creator on how they want to push that content out. And, you know, like we're starting to see things on TikTok where it's supporting various types of link types directly in feed. A lot of people are using their link tree. People create, you know, various types of stores. We've even seen people integrate our links into blog content, newsletters like you see with your stuff. And yeah, and it's actually quite interesting. I remember I was at a company called Yumi and we had launched one of the first what's called addressable TV ad units in the CTV space. And so like you'd be watching something like, I don't know, I'm just going to use Hulu as an example since we're talking about that. Product for kind bar shows up and it was the first time you can actually scan a QR code and make a direct purchase on Amazon this was like circa 2017 2018 so yeah, and and we've come a long way now on Amazon on when they're showing NFL games It's you like this just hit enter on your remote and we'll connect you directly. Kevin King: I mean, it's it's moving the technology is getting pretty pretty cool pretty soon with the With the glasses or the meta glasses, I'm just gonna be able to look at something though. I want and it's just kind of like take you take you there. Where do you see this going with with what you guys are doing? Do you see this? What's on the roadmap? What's a where's that? What are you most excited about like now everybody now you can click links and you do this but man, this is what's coming. We're gonna be able to really blow up Levanta. What's coming that people should be anticipating or getting excited about? Richie Carreon: Yeah, you know, I believe in this world that we're at, brands are realizing they need to meet the consumer where they are. We're starting to see that reality come to life with Buy With Prime now on Shopify integrations, which you would never have thought was a thing recently in the last couple of years. And so I think as marketers, as a seller on Amazon or any marketplace thereafter, You need to be thinking about where do I meet my consumer? How do I meet my customer? And I believe affiliate is one of the most powerful channels to meet your customer and also identify new addressable markets you never thought was possible, to be quite frank. But at the end of the day, we're most excited to really just enable Amazon sellers to really do, be able to really drive their revenue up and through really, really thoughtful partnerships. And I think at the end of the day, it's all about partnerships. I was actually doing a presentation and the idea of partnerships, this idea of affiliate has been around since I believe the Julius Caesar era and their first affiliate program that really is written down in some type of poor myth history was Julius Caesar would award a soldier, I believe it was 50% year salary for any soldiers that were recruited into the army and the military for that. So that was like, I believe, one of the first forms of affiliate programs. And the other is like, that's just how we buy. When's the last time you just, I mean, how often do you ask a family member or friend like, hey, what do you recommend for this? Or I'm in the market for, I don't know, this new cool toothbrush or an air fryer for God's sake. And your friends and your family are going to tell you what their recommendations are. You're going to do your research. You're going to look to creators of various types. You're going to read articles and even go to Reddit for really, I believe, organic conversations about those types of products. I just think that overall affiliate, the idea of partnerships is going to be a big component of how we buy in the future and going forward. Kevin King: It's also, I mean, it's affiliate or incentivizing people to do things or workers to do things. You look at, was it Frontier Airlines back in December, they went through in front of Congress and they were grilling them. Gate agents at Frontier Airlines are actually paid if they actually catch you with a bag too big. For every bag that you come and it doesn't fit in a little sizer that they make you check, they actually get like $20. They incentivize them. So that's almost like its own little internal affiliate. It's not an affiliate. You're not bringing the traffic. You're bringing in money. And I think there's a massive opportunity, I don't know if maybe this is something you guys are working on, you don't have to say, in rewards right now where you have the tech where you can actually motivate people from both sides, from the creator side and the buyer side or seller side to actually integrate a reward system because you have all the tech and the tracking there and you extend that into a true reward system, like almost frequent flyer or some sort of reward system. I think there's massive opportunity. And that and tying those together and even with affiliates. Having them having a reward system in place for them to motivate them to actually use more of a Levante or to engage more to sell. There's a lot of cool stuff. I could give you some ideas on that. I think nobody's doing it may have good opportunity out there. But yeah, there's a lot of money for that type of consulting. Richie Carreon: So I mean, you know, we always love to have a we always love to treat you to a nice dinner and you can We're always open to ideas and you know, you know, you mentioned an interesting thing there Kevin like I Creating those incentivization opportunities and that's all it is. Think about your sales team, right? Think of these folks as an extension of your sales team. How are you going to get them motivated, right? It's the exact same model. Kevin King: It's just that they have I mean take care of them. I think a lot of people they just go to Levanta and they just say they think the 40% or 20% or whatever is good. You said you have a direct relationship. You're one of the few platforms where you have a direct relationship. Use that. Find out when their birthday is. Use AI to follow their social media and they just posted, I just got engaged. Send them a freaking congratulations card or I just got married or I just lost my dog or my grandmother just died or whatever it may be. Use AI and make it humanize that and watch what happens. I remember someone, Someone used this technique. I haven't used it yet, but I should be using it. They're a guest on podcast and they went on a podcast and they were promoting their service of some sort. And the host of the podcast let him say, yeah, you know, for more information, contact me or go here, go there. And they just left it at that. Two months later, they tracked it because the person gave out a special URL. It's like, go to KevinKing slash 21 or whatever to get the download the PDF. So they knew where the track was coming off that podcast. Two months later, they sent the podcast host a check. Unsolicited, unbeknownst, it's like, thank you for, it was great being on your podcast. Here's $832 because we got some business off you. And they're like, whoa, what the heck? Surprise and delight. So like you just said, these are your salespeople. They're an extension of you and your brand. Treat them that way. And I think a lot of people don't do that. They just see them as a number, just as a balance, something on the balance sheet. But if you cultivate real relationships with these people, you can, it can go a long way. Richie Carreon: You're absolutely right. Kevin King: I think that's a missing piece for a lot of sellers. They're not thinking about that. Richie Carreon: You're right and also you have to remember you're also competing with other competitive brands perhaps in your category and that could be the reason why they would prefer to promote your product over Any other dog bowl or maybe supplement product. So you're right. It is all human relationships. You have to nurture them. They take time. You know, Kevin, you and I have gotten to know each other in the last nine months and look at us here. We're on a podcast, right? It's taking time. It's taking coffee in the middle of Seattle to kick that off. Kevin King: And you dropped a couple coins sponsoring my newsletter and who knows what else you may sponsor down the road. But also it goes both ways. It's like I'll promote you without you having to pay because there's a relationship and VPN and stuff. It's the same thing with influencers. When someone asks me who should I use, if I'm on a Q&A session on some webinar, one of the first names I come out with is You should sign up for Levanta and try Levanta. And you know, you're not paying for that. I'm not getting an affiliate commission. I didn't say go to levanta.com slash Kevin King, blah, blah, blah. I just, you know, it's, but it, it, these relationships and these affiliate relationships are critical. And I think you're right. It's because we're in a society now where people don't trust mainstream advertising and they don't trust big brands and even Amazon doesn't trust you, the seller. Why is Amazon now using AI to analyze the reviews and what the review sentiment actually is playing a role in how you rank and what they show, in addition to sales and other things, but it's becoming more and more important because they know the customers are going to more likely, yeah, there's some customers that will say something. But in general, the customer's gonna say it like it is, not like you, the brand owner who's proud of this and you're just trying to sell a piece of shit. And it's the same thing here. People trust these everyday people that are creating this stuff and they build audiences and you leverage that and you use tools like Levanta to make that seamless and easy. Richie Carreon: You're right. And you know, we've used a lot of these crazy words, right? Creator, publisher. I haven't even mentioned media buyer, right? Affiliate can be, it can feel like a very big world and it can feel very confusing, very fast if you're new to it. And we just rolled out this new ebook that all it is, it's just like all the basic guiding principles of what affiliate is. It kind of really breaks it down. Like these are the types of affiliates, why you might use those affiliates, what are some KPIs you might use to track. It's not promoting Levanta, it's just really focused just on the principles of this as a channel. I highly recommend folks go check that out because I've learned after talking to a lot of sellers, they're like, oh, influencers. I'm like, yes, and there's more. Let me tell you about it. If you're trying to get schooled up on that and you're interested in learning more about it, I highly recommend checking out that resource. Kevin King: How do you get that resource? Richie Carreon: Yeah, I'll share the link with you guys. We always like to, we love a good tracking link. But there's, if you go to our website, levanta.io. Kevin King: I don't spell Levanta for people that don't know how to spell Levanta. Richie Carreon: Yeah, so go to our website. I'll say it and then I'm going to spell it, folks. So levanta.io forward slash resources and to spell Levanta, it's L-E-V-A-N-T-A dot I-O forward slash resources. Kevin King: Now I'm an Amazon seller listening to this and like, all right, this sounds good. I've heard about this, but I want to give it a try. So I go to levanta.io and Sign up. What am I paying a monthly fee? Am I paying a piece of the Commission to to you? Am I paying a finder's fee every time I get how does the process work for me as a seller? How does it work? What am I looking at? Richie Carreon: Yeah, so we have a broad range of options based on you as a seller size, etc So if you want to sign up for an account, it's free to sign up for account so you can poke around and See what kind of inventory is available. When I say inventory, the types of creators that are on the platform. You can just kind of look around. You can't necessarily launch your affiliate program without a paid account, but we have three tiers. We have our standard account, which you are paying a flat rate of $150 with a commission that is paid out to us at 5%. Yes, per month. That is month to month or you can do an annual. Kevin King: 5% commission is on sales or on the amount of royalties? You pay the creators on the sales. Okay, so I pay a hundred the basic ones. I just make sure everybody understands. I pay a hundred fifty bucks a month. You cancel any time. I'm assuming and then it's five percent of the sales. So if I if I just to make as an example, if I'm selling a hundred dollar item make it easy in the math. And I'm telling the creator, I'll give you 30% for every one that you sell. That's the commission. Cause I set that rate. You make some suggestions, but I set that rate. So I'm basically out every a hundred dollars sale. I'm paying $30 to my affiliate that you've connected me with. I'm paying $150 a month, which hopefully I'm selling enough. That's marginal, hardly any cost. And then off the a hundred dollars, I'm giving you five bucks. So it's really, I'm paying 35% in this example is what's coming out of my pocket. We're actually using your services and software and you managing everything for me. Richie Carreon: Correct. And don't forget, you can actually bring that back down to 25% because you get the Amazon referral bonus, which is an average of 10%. When you start to hit that scale, the economics start to make more sense. And then the minimum commission for this is 20% on that plan. But our golden enterprise plans, you have full control of that commission. So it could be 0% all up to 100%. And we're taking a smaller variable fee at 3.5%. The monthly fee for that is $7.50. And that usually is an annual contract that has, you know, you can negotiate that with our sales team. But because you are all talking to Kevin here and listening to us, we do have a special offer through Kevin King. So we actually offer 20% off that monthly SaaS fee for the first year on our Golden Enterprise accounts. So generally I think it's a lot of 1,800 annual savings, which is pretty good. And you know, you also can work with our account management team where they can provide some recommendations on creators. They won't necessarily connect you directly with those creators, but they will provide you during your onboarding process, provide you a recommended list of creators you should consider reaching out to. And also keep in mind too, once you're on the platform, there's creators that are already looking at your products or ASINs and will apply to be a part of your program. Kevin King: So I'm just doing some hypothetical math in my head here based on what you've said. You said that your ARR was $13 million right now, was recently. So let's just assume you have a thousand sellers on the platform and they're all paying the base rate of $150. That's $150,000 a month. That's $1.8 million a year. So that means the other 11 million is coming off the 5% in this particular example. So that means that you're generating $220 million, if I'm doing the math right, 11 million, 5% of that times, yeah, about $220 million of actual sales off of just that simple little math right there and it's growing rapidly. So that's significant numbers. Everybody's at that base rate. I mean, I'm just guessing here with a roundabout numbers. I don't even know what the numbers are. You don't need to tell me, but I'm just giving people an idea of like how big this actually is. And that's why there's about a hundred different people trying to get into this. Just like everybody's trying to get into, you know, when Katita was one of the first ones to do refunds and everybody's like, Oh shoot, there's some real money in this. Now Tom, Dick and Harry is doing refunds. Or white labeling it or I don't know maybe you guys even white label of Levanta I'm not sure but or maybe that's on the road ramp map, but it Okay, so there's serious things in it. If you're a seller listening to this and you're not sitting at the table, you're missing out. Richie Carreon: Yeah, I mean, I can actually share some numbers with you. So during Black Friday, Cyber Monday, just on Thursday, on Thanksgiving, all the way to the second of Cyber Monday, we generated about $12.5 million in GMV for Amazon sellers, just in that window. And looking back at our overall year, looking at our last 30 day trail, we are projected to hit $286 million in GMV for our Amazon sellers. To your point, you're not bad of your math, by the way. But $286 million in GMV. Kevin King: I'm just doing roundabout numbers, but yeah, it would vary because you have people on different plans and different expense things and whatever. I like to do that sometimes. People come on the podcast sometimes and say, we're doing this and this. I'm like, all right, let's see if this math actually works. So that's awesome. Yeah. It's great. Right now you said it's just Amazon, but what about Walmart or what about any of the other marketplaces? You said earlier you're not doing DTC, so someone has to use another company. I would think that that's probably something that you guys are working on to try to like, you don't want, I said another name earlier and you're like, hey, don't say that name. But you got to make it so that they want to just use you. So I'm assuming it's on the roadmap to expand to other marketplaces. Richie Carreon: Well, today we're purely supporting Amazon. That's what we're built on. And Amazon is the largest marketplace out there to date. And that's where we're going to invest most of our time. However, we do have, we do support five Amazon geos in addition to the U.S. or including the U.S. Kevin King: I was going to ask you, besides the U.S., what do you support? Richie Carreon: Yeah. So as of today, it's U.S., Canada, We also have Germany, France, and I believe, let me double check, you guys, it's Friday for me, so just heads up, it's Friday. US, UK, Canada, France, and Germany, as of today. And then over the next couple of months, we are also gonna be rolling out into, I believe, two more geos, if I'm not mistaken, but with a total of five geos on the roadmap, so that's including of the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Mexico and I believe, did I mention Italy already? Kevin King: No, Japan. Richie Carreon: Not Japan at the moment. But you know what's interesting, Kevin? I was actually at a conference called New York Now. This was like during the summertime. And I don't know if you... Have you heard of New York Now? Kevin King: Yeah. Richie Carreon: Okay. Kevin King: Yeah. Richie Carreon: It's massive at the Javits Center. It was insane. And there were a lot of Japanese sellers, like tons of Japanese sellers. So I thought that was pretty cool. And the last one I mentioned, forgot to mention, is Spain, by the way. So, these are pretty big markets and I know in Germany, I believe they are, I believe they're like the third largest in the EU, if I'm not mistaken, for Amazon. I don't know what number one is, so don't ask me. I don't have that data. Kevin King: If you haven't tried Levanta, you should try them. Maybe you've tried somebody else. Even if you're using somebody else, it doesn't help to diversify. There might be some out there, 7,000 people might be on another platform, but there's probably a lot of differences and just try and see. I know like John Dirkitz, one of the Dream 100 members, he uses like seven different platforms out there. Some of them are better at some things. Like you guys, like you said, you focus on Amazon. That's what your bread and butter is. Some of the other guys, maybe they got their hands in a bunch of different things and so they're not quite as good at Amazon or something. So it's Levanta.io if you want to check it out, Levanta.io and you guys are going to be out and about. I mean you just got a bunch of money so you're going to be making, people can see you probably, I'm assuming probably at the Prosper Show. Maybe even Billion Dollar Seller Summit, you never know. Richie Carreon: You know, we are very, you're actually, you know, you're literally where I was on my list today as I was reviewing events. So, to give you some context, folks, we will be at the, we'll be at ETEL, most likely at ETEL West. We'll be at EE Miami. Of course, we're gonna be at the Prosper Show, the Million Dollar Seller Show, as well, I think I mentioned Shop Talk already. There's a couple of New York events, like you're gonna see us. Kevin King: Shop Talk's the same time as Prosper. Richie Carreon: Yes, and our sales team has gotten bigger, so we're going to have plenty of humans to cover both of those. Kevin King: And then right after that, they're just going to be like taking a day or two break and then hopping on a plane to Iceland to come to BDSS. Richie Carreon: Exactly. Exactly. Kevin King: Exactly. Richie Carreon: You know, it was funny too, Kevin, like I had joined. And they were like, yeah, we sponsor this thing called BDSS. And I was like, what is that? And I looked, I was like, oh, this looks cool. And they were like, yeah, we did the competition. And I was like, keep an eye on the shirts. It was really, it was a really cool. It was funny, too, because I saw people chasing chickens. I was like, why are they chasing a chicken? But it's just it's common in Hawaii. Kevin King: And the Levanta team, I think did, I have to go back and look, I think they did well. Richie Carreon: That's what I hear. Yeah. That's what I hear. Kevin King: I think they did really well. And there was like thousands of photos being posted. That day all over social media it was just it was blowing up because that's part of the point system. Is everybody wearing a Levanta shirt or whatever team they're on? There's 28 different teams and post to social media to get extra points and which was a lot of fun. Created a lot of FOMO and that's why all you guys listening that hopefully you're coming to Iceland as well. It's April 4th to the 9th and that's the BDSS 11th. And in Iceland so it's just a quick flight from the UK three hours if you're in Europe about five and a half hours from from New York and it's going to be awesome times. Richie, I really appreciate you coming on and sharing today. This has been great. Besides Levanta.io, are you out there anywhere else on LinkedIn or anywhere else? Any other way for people to reach out to you? Richie Carreon: Yeah, you can reach me directly on LinkedIn. It's been a while since I've actually pulled up my LinkedIn URL, but if you just search Richie Carreon, you'll find me or you can go to search Levanta and you'll see if you type in Richie under the people section, you'll see me pop up as well. Kevin King: Awesome. Well, I appreciate you coming on and I'm sure I'll see you out and about somewhere at some event here soon. Richie Carreon: I think we'll definitely run into each other and love to do a private dinner as well. Unknown Speaker: Yeah, do that. Kevin King: Exactly. Richie Carreon: With some good sellers. Great. Well, thanks for having me, Kevin. As always, it's always a pleasure. Kevin King: Awesome, man. We'll talk to you soon. Richie Carreon: All right. Thanks. Kevin King: If you're not using affiliates right now, you should be. As you can see in this discussion with Richie, affiliates can really help you launch a product. They can help you maintain rank and they can help you actually make more money and get your brand out there across multiple platforms. Levanta is one of the best to help you maximize that opportunity when it comes to selling on Amazon. We'll be back again next week with another awesome episode of the AM-PM Podcast. Also check out my other podcast Marketing Misfits. I do that with Norm Farrar. It's not about Amazon. It's about marketing in general, but you might like it. Marketing Misfits. You can go to marketingmisfits.co, marketingmisfits.co, or you can find it on Apple or Spotify or wherever you listen to your podcast. And don't forget, I have a think tank coming up next month in February, February 20th to the 24th in Austin, Texas. If you want to come out and join us, I have about 50 of the Dream 100 members there. Some people from Helium 10 will be there. It's just go to BillionDollarSellerSummit.com, BillionDollarSellerSummit.com. Check out the Market Masters Think Tank link. You get all the information. You can see a video about what it's all about. It's life-changing. It can really make a huge difference in your business. Probably the best event of all the events that I do is what people say about this event. It's that good. Before we go, I've got some words of wisdom for you. You know, you don't need to do anything wrong To get death threats or to have people threaten you or to blackmail you or whatever, all you need is a big enough audience. See you again next week.