Fewer Delays, More Paydays with Richa Dani

Jerrid Grimm (02:19.954)

Richa, welcome to the show.

Richa Dani (02:22.008)

Thank you, Jared. Nice to be here.

Jerrid Grimm (02:23.986)

Yeah, this is exciting. You are the first Impact.com guest, meaning like that works at Impact on the entire publishers playbook. So I’m really excited to have you on here. We’ve known each other for almost three years now. We’ve worked together. So this is the first time though that I think me and you have done like an interview type setup. So something new for both of us.

Richa Dani (02:47.8)

I agree a little bit more formal, but I like it and I feel honored. Thank you so much.

Jerrid Grimm (02:51.836)

Yeah, and I’m curious to know, I know you’ve told me you’ve been at Impact for how long now?

Richa Dani (02:59.416)

Actually over seven years, I was going to say close to, but yeah, it’s been seven and a few months now.

Jerrid Grimm (03:04.022)

Yeah, and how did you start out? What was the reason? I mean, I came to Impact through an acquisition of Press Board, so that’s how I was introduced to Impact. How did you get introduced to Impact in the first place?

Richa Dani (03:15.128)

So there’s an interesting backstory. So I’m going to take you a few years back in the past. So before joining Impact, I was leading the performance marketing team at Dentsu Ages back in Sydney, Australia. So far, far away. But back then, my team was managing a sizable portfolio of clients on a tracking platform that wasn’t up to the mark and wasn’t meeting our team’s requirements. So at the time, I kicked off like a RFP to get a better solution.

And I already knew about Impact.com. It was Impact radius back in the day. And once I started digging into the platform and looked at the advanced features, I was truly blown away. It was leaks ahead of anything else I’d seen out there. And then fast forward to the process. Well, surprise, surprise, Impact won the RFP. And that’s actually where I met Tyus, who was the Impact’s chief revenue officer at the time.

So the reason I’m bringing this story is because there’s some connection to impact.com and me being here. So soon after I made a rather spontaneous decision to move countries. I had no jobs lined up. I didn’t really have a plan, but I packed my bags and moved to the U.S. to start fresh. And during this time, like I was interviewing with some companies and things were progressing well, but Tyus was also in touch with me and he graciously introduced me to the Impact team in the U.S.

So from the very first conversation, it was pretty clear that their vision and culture actually aligned with my passions and goals. And thankfully everything worked out and I joined the company back in August 2017. So the journey at Impact has been, I would say, quite diverse and fulfilling for me. And I have actually worked across a few different departments. So I started as a customer success director, working with some incredible clients like Amix and Shutterstock back in the day.

And I realized quickly that my passion was more on the publisher side of the business. So it pulled me in another direction. And I started as the publisher director, but soon moving into and taking on more leadership roles in sales and business development for Pressport. That’s when I guess we were introduced as well. And Trachonomics, which is our other SaaS tool. And then finally establishing a new team and new product this year, earlier this year in February.

Jerrid Grimm (05:37.556)

Yeah. That’s interesting to come in as a client for like a, where impact is a vendor of yours, you know, like working agency side, it’s like a reverse interview. You’re essentially interviewing all these affiliate networks and platforms for your customers. What a, what a good way to be able to figure out if this is a company you may want to work with in the future. So you’ve been on the agency side of the business. Now you’ve been on the like inside of the business and you

Richa Dani (06:03.33)

Yes.

Jerrid Grimm (06:07.336)

You started out on more working with the advertisers and brands and then moved over to the publisher side. Is that right? Yeah.

Richa Dani (06:13.46)

Exactly. So yeah, and I think that’s an interesting journey, right? So even prior to Dentsu, I used to work at a client side. So I have kind of seen different aspects of the ecosystem. And while at Impact specifically, I’ve been fortunate to lead different teams, I would want to give some credit to people who’ve helped me shape this journey and supported this journey. So leaders like Lisa Riolo, Dave Juano, Pair Peterson some of the early day founders and our CEO as well. And then Price Whiteless and yourself, you’ve been a part of my journey too. So thank you for kind of taking me to that.

Jerrid Grimm (06:51.826)

I think everyone’s basically learning from you. I like that you put that shout out to everybody, but your experience makes a big difference there. So you’re in a new role now, a fairly new role over the last year. And you’re heading up an area of the business that’s focused on partner growth. So maybe explain, you know, why did this role come about in this department and this focus for impact?

Richa Dani (06:57.218)

to be.

Richa Dani (07:16.418)

Yeah, sure. So that’s correct. So I joined as the newly created director of partner growth earlier this year, so in February of this year. So just to give you some context, as a technology platform, Impact facilitates partnerships. It’s through a marketplace where brands and publishers come together and connect. And while this marketplace is really, really good at automating the whole process of partnership creation with thousands of partnerships being created every day, many publishers have unique needs and they require more support. So they basically are getting into this marketplace, trying to reach out to brands, but brands often don’t understand what exactly they’re promoting. And that’s primarily because they’re either doing something innovative, they have a bit more of a complex business. So what they’re looking for is like a dedicated voice at Impact that basically helps them showcase their distinct capabilities and business models.

To address this need, we experimented with the services model over the past few years, and the response from publishers was extremely positive. So that’s how this role came about. And now I lead a team of four people based in New York and on the West Coast, helping publishers support, basically supporting them and help them grow their business. And our team collectively has over 40 years of experience in the performance marketing space with varied backgrounds from working on the network side, publisher side, agency side, and also the advertiser side.

Jerrid Grimm (08:44.01)

Well, I find it interesting. if you’re, if you are a publisher at impact, the challenge is there are a lot of publishers, right? Like a very robust marketplace has lots of brands and then it also has lots of publishers and they can all work together. That gives lots of diversity and who you’re working with, but it also, I imagine makes it challenging. If I’m, if I’m a publisher, I know in a way I’m competing for attention of the brands with maybe 300,000 other partners. Like it’s, there’s so many out there. So I understand why you, this, this department is needed, right? Like, Hey, I’m a publisher. have a unique business model or a unique offering that maybe brands aren’t used to. I’m not, you know, just a specific coupon site or a commerce content site. It’s, not so obvious what I do in it. Maybe it’s hard to get that message across. What are the best practices for a publisher? So if I’m a publisher, I come into impact and I’m like, I’d like to work with brands. I think I’ve got a good audience. I think I can promote some products that I love. What would you say are some of the best practices that a publisher should know?

Richa Dani (09:49.742)

Absolutely. I think even before joining Impact as a publisher, I think first things that publishers should think about is, what is my strategy? What am I trying to promote? What exactly are brands going to look for when they’re evaluating partners? And also very basic stuff, but have a functional website. You’ll be surprised how many publishers actually apply. And when someone clicks on it, it says the website’s coming soon or is in progress.

Jerrid Grimm (10:16.159)

Hmm.

Richa Dani (10:17.39)

So you want to make sure that you actually have all these basic things in place before you apply, so that first of all, your application is approved. And then you also have a strategy in place. So to think of the marketplace, like Impact specifically, but in general, the affiliate marketing industry, you can think of it as like a dating app. Like it’s primarily for publishers and advertisers, but essentially the goals are similar. You want to attract the right kind of brands that align with your goals and you want to make sure that it’s kind of a good match, right? So your profile needs to shine in the marketplace. You want to make sure all the information is filled out correctly and that’s something that brands are looking for. So the question as a publisher to ask yourself is there are thousands of profiles out there, how will mine stand out? To your point, like getting noticed is probably the most important thing and publishers often miss out on this opportunity just because they don’t spend enough time on the profile.

So I would say that’s kind of number one. Get the basics right. Make sure you have a strong profile. And there are certain other things that you can do, like variables, like making sure adding the right search keywords. So as a publisher, let’s say, for example, you’re a BNPL or a Buy Now, Pay Later publisher. At the top of your mind, you’re like, OK, I want to add BNPL as a search term, or FinTech as a search term, Pay In Installments or something. And sure, when brands search for these terms, you’ll show up.

But what about brands who are thinking of budgeting or saving kind of publishers or deal-oriented publishers? You will not show up for that. So especially if you are showing up deals, making sure there are some kind of savings for publishers or for brands, sorry, and their users, you want to make sure you’re adding all these different types of keywords so that when brands are searching for you, you show up. One pro tip I want to add here is that always add your competitor names.

If a brand is looking for a specific company and you’re a competitor, you want to make sure you show up in that list as well.

Jerrid Grimm (12:13.31)

I’ve never actually, I’ve never actually thought of that, that a publisher’s profile isn’t that different than, you know, a dating profile or even like having your website on Google, right? So when you’re trying to get people to find your business on Google, you spend a ton of time making sure you have the right content on there, that you’re on the right keywords, that you’re positioned properly, because you know, there’s all this search traffic that’s coming in and, and they’ll guide you there. But if you think of of impacts marketplace the same way. You’ve got all these brands that are searching for, know, maybe you’re right. Maybe they don’t know like the acronyms, right? Even though they’re industry common terms, like put buy now, pay later, put examples of what it is, do a little explanation, say what competitive set you fall in. All of that’s going to help when I’m a brand and I’m looking for maybe not, maybe I’m not looking for a specific publisher. I’m looking for a type of publisher or like a business outcome.

Richa Dani (12:44.236)

Yes.

Jerrid Grimm (13:10.794)

I never thought of it that way that impacts marketplaces is essentially like a really big search engine for brands.

Richa Dani (13:18.038)

Yeah, and also you don’t know what you don’t know, right? Like as a brand, you may have a certain idea of what you’re looking for, but you may be surprised when certain types of publishers show up. You want to make sure you get noticed in these instances as well.

Jerrid Grimm (13:29.258)

That’s cool. That’s cool. Anything else? Any other best practices? So you make sure your profile looks really good. Make sure you have the right terms. That seems like, Hey, you better do that right off the start. You said something interesting before where sometimes people like publisher won’t even have their website. It’ll say coming soon, which is a really, you know, I could see someone doing it because when we’re online, we think, that’s fine. We’ll just have this thing. But if you were to open a store, like a physical store, you wouldn’t expect to get any customers if

Richa Dani (13:46.605)

Yes.

Jerrid Grimm (13:58.91)

you the door was locked, it said closed, and there was like, you know, brown paper on the windows. So, so kind of treat this the same when you’re doing that. So get a good profile set up. What else do you think is the best practice for publishers?

Richa Dani (14:10.478)

Yeah, certain other things that you can make note of. So having an updated media kit is extremely important. So brands, when they open the media kit, they want to know what promotional opportunities are available, right? If you don’t even have a media kit, again, they won’t know what you’re promoting. If you have a media kit that’s not updated, they won’t know the different opportunities you’re promoting. always make sure you have updated media kits. If you have paid placement opportunities, make sure, again, that they’re up to date as well.

And those are the basics. You want to make sure you have all of this in place. And once you launch your program on impact, then obviously brands are going to start reaching out to you, or you will reach out to brands as well. But one thing to note is that if you have your list of top prospects, and that’s something every publisher should have, once you have that and you’re reaching out to brands, make sure to include a personal note. Again, the same logic applies here. Brands are inundated with applications every single day and you want to put your best foot forward, make sure you’re noticed, add a note, explain what you’re offering and why you would be a great fit for the program. And then yes, once you have all these in place, things should work out smoothly from there.

Jerrid Grimm (15:18.984)

Yeah. I want to touch on that media kit piece for a bit. So, I mean, I come from, I don’t come from the affiliate industry. Originally I come from advertising and media kits are like the primary way that publishers will communicate, you know, what their audience size is, maybe some anecdotal, reader testimonials if they have a website, right? Or maybe they’ll talk about a specific time-based promotion. Maybe we’re doing something for Mother’s Day or there’s something for back to school and we’re offering you know, certain paid placements or we have different products that advertisers can buy. I think that’s something that a lot of publishers I’ve noticed in the performance industry skip over. And I think it’s because the primary business model is this cost per acquisition, which involves, you know, a referral rate, essentially a commission when I drive a sale, which is pretty straightforward. But I think what people forget is that advertisers within performance, these brands, they also buy a ton of paid placements, fixed fee opportunities. So maybe you can talk a little bit around like what is a paid placement and why is that an important thing for a publisher to include?

Richa Dani (16:33.4)

Yeah, sure. And I think you’re right in a way like publishers always viewed it as more like cost per acquisition. If you have a standard business like a coupon, cash back, deal website, or even like content, you don’t need a ton of explanation of what you’re doing. But at the same time, there are companies that are, I like I said, the business models are getting more complex. It’s not always like straightforward of just one type of promotion.

Publishers promote a lot of different things like native advertising, commerce content. I know of publishers who have all of it in one place, right? So that’s like the first thing. If brands want to understand your business model, they need to see something. So that’s where first step the media kit needs to be adding all those details. But yes, to your point about base paid placement specifically, it’s become kind of an industry norm now. Like if you look at some of the biggest media publications like Condé Nast and Wirecutter and like New York Times obviously and CNN. All of these companies are in the affiliate space now and more and more of these publishers are now promoting offers to paid placements. Like if you have Black Friday, Cyber Monday coming up, you can get like almost like an advertorial placement on one of these key websites in a important position then they have to pay a fee for it. So advertisers are getting accustomed to this. And also, if you look at the convergence between influencer marketing and affiliate marketing, a lot of influencers are for flat fees. So brands are getting used to the idea of being on a paid placement fee. Having said that, there are usually some performance metrics attached to it. So you’ll basically see the clicks, conversions coming on the back of it, but pay on a paid placement fee model.

So it’s really important to add these details in the media kit. Make sure that you have very clear segregation if there are tiers, different tiers, the audience segmentation, who are you reaching out to, so that brands have clarity on why they’re charging a fee and what they’re getting out of it.

Jerrid Grimm (18:31.274)

Yeah, and I imagine you can update your media kit more regularly than you could your profile. Like your profile is going to stay relatively static. Your business isn’t going to change that much where you’re going to change the description of what you do. But the media kit is something that you could change maybe every season. And then also around these paid placements, I know there’s certain times a year, like you said, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, all of Q4, holiday, special events. There’s all these moments where brands are very interested in you promoting their products if you’re a publisher, but you as a publisher, this is the busiest time you have every brand. It’s almost like it reverses for a period of time where, where maybe as a publisher, I’m spending a lot of time cross-pecting and trying to find brands to work with. And then these big seasons hit these Q4 seasons. And all of a sudden I can’t even keep up as a publisher. There’s so many people that want to work with me. So I think these like paid placements give that opportunity to say, hey, you might not be able to get it in editorially, right? It takes a long time for us to review products. We’re coming up on this big season, but we do have some other opportunities where you can buy a placement, you know, in a listing. Maybe you could buy exactly like you said, like native ads or a dedicated newsletter. There’s so many different opportunities that fall within there. So make sure your profile looks great. Then… make sure you have an up-to-date media kit that talks about different promotions and offers that you may have for brands and then communicate regularly with these brands, right? I think you can communicate either like with the chat within Impact. You could also email them. There’s lots of like in-person times where you may be able to meet them at like an affiliate summit event or something along those lines. So anything else on best practices before we jump over to maybe some of the challenges that they have to overcome?

Richa Dani (20:10.893)

Yes.

Richa Dani (20:18.838)

No, I think we’ve covered the key ones. And then obviously there are best practices in terms of making sure you’re communicating clearly, that’s trust built between the two parties, just then the partnership. Think of it as a long-term commitment, right? It’s not a transaction. You want to make sure there’s an engagement and a relationship been built between two parties.

Jerrid Grimm (20:38.858)

Okay, so what about challenges? What challenges do you think that publishers need to overcome with regards to their growth?

Richa Dani (20:46.434)

Yeah, sure. So I think we’ve already established that the biggest challenge in this industry for publishers is getting noticed by brands and getting approval. So when I talk about that, I’m primarily referring to either new publishers joining the affiliate space or a mid-sized publisher who’s trying to scale their business. Typically, the established ones have massive user bases and they have strong relationships. So it’s not as big a challenge for them. But the smaller publishers or the mid-sized ones are the ones that are facing these challenges. think of yourself as a new publisher entering the industry. It can be quite daunting. You can be easily overshadowed by the bigger giants who have these user bases already established. So navigating that takes a little bit of time and understanding what kind of the requirements are of the partnership with advertisers. But let’s say that you manage to understand this, navigate it, and then secure some partnerships. The next challenge comes about when advertisers are expecting quick results, like, hey, you’ve been on our campaign for three months. I’m not seeing the results that I expected. Well, maybe we pause the campaign or we reduce the CPAs, right? Certain partnerships and certain types of publishers take time to show results. So that’s something more of an education piece for the industry in general is giving enough time for a publisher and a partnership to flourish. Like it’s basically a stalling the growth before it even gains momentum. So you want to give partnership enough time to show results.

And then on top of that, with all these challenges, there’s also the challenge of relying on platforms like Google. So depending on what kind of models you have, business models, you could be vulnerable to algorithm changes. That could disrupt your strategy overnight. So there is this unpredictability factor that exists in the industry as well. And publishers are always trying to figure out how to navigate these challenges. So these are typically the challenges that come up.

Once even a publisher is established in a certain market, if they want to scale globally, then there are other challenges that come with understanding local cultures and making sure you have enough brand awareness in that space as well. there are certain kind of areas where publishers really need to figure out their way to get in front of the advertisers.

Jerrid Grimm (23:03.902)

I never thought of that, that there’s, you know, there’s kind of these two sets of challenges. There’s, I’m a publisher and I want to work with more brands. So that’s one thing I got to, you know, make sure that the brands know about me and make sure that they want to work with me and they understand what I offer. But then there’s this other set of challenges, which is, okay, fine. I, I, you know, I figured out a set of brands. They want to work with me. I want to work with them, but that dating has worked out and now I’m promoting their products. I’m reviewing their products or I have offers that I’m giving to my audience.

And I have to make sure that that also goes well. You know, I have my own set of challenges there. Like you said, I know Google makes algorithm changes all the time. They’ve made quite a few over the last year that have had some, you know, big challenges for some publishers. So I have to navigate that as well. I have to say, okay, well, if I’m not getting as much search traffic, maybe I have to build up my newsletter audience or I’m going into a new market. So maybe I was in the U S and I’m going to go to Australia, which is like the reverse of what you did personally. Right.

Richa Dani (23:44.024)

Thanks.

Richa Dani (24:02.328)

Yeah.

Jerrid Grimm (24:03.208)

And yeah, of course it’s English speaking primarily, but it’s going to have its own, you know, what products they like, what review sites they like to see. So there’s this whole new set of challenges. almost like there’s, there’s two big areas to, to overcome as well. So I kinda, I think it’s interesting that you started out agency side, you evaluated to all of these performance platforms. You liked it. You ended up choosing impact as a customer, right? When you were on that agency side, then you move to the US, end up working at Impact. then you worked your way through both demand side and publisher side. So I don’t know if there’s that many people that have client side, agency side, demand side, publisher side experience. So I’m curious to get your thought on where you’ve seen it come as an industry and where do you think the future of performance marketing goes? Do you have any thoughts on what that looks like?

Richa Dani (24:59.879)

Yeah, so I think you make it sound more fancy than it is. You’d be surprised how many people in this industry actually move from being a publisher to being a brand or to an agency or a platform. It is interesting. yes, seeing kind of different sides of the industry definitely shows you the challenges that each kind of piece of the puzzle makes. But in terms of like the future,

Jerrid Grimm (25:03.333)

Ha

Jerrid Grimm (25:07.412)

Hmm.

Richa Dani (25:24.736)

I do want to focus more on the publisher side of things. Of course, there’s so many interesting things happening in this space. And if you look at where we’ve come from, so whether you call it partner marketing, affiliate marketing, performance marketing, pretty much kind of all mean the same thing. But the channel has come a long way. So if you look at not too far back in the past, like maybe five or 10 years, it still used to be like a niche channel, often overshadowed by concern of fraudulent publishers. remember early days, we wanted to make sure that we are not working with dodgy publishers because it would affect the conversions and the payouts and everything immediately. So there was always this concern from an advertiser perspective, what kind of publishers we working with, and which is why the adoption was limited. Advertisers were scared to enter the industry. If they did enter and they didn’t have the expertise, they were worried how this actually works.

It wasn’t a long time ago, but basically affiliate wasn’t like a flourishing industry. But fast forward to today, it’s a $10 billion powerhouse. It’s grown significantly. And like I mentioned earlier, some of the biggest media companies work as publishers now. 80 % of the advertisers in the US invest in this channel. So it’s definitely come a long way.

Personally, the way I’ve always seen this channel is as a microcosm of the broader digital marketing ecosystem. So if you look at paid search, SEO marketing, social media, native advertising, all the channels that you can think of in digital marketing, you can find an affiliate or a publisher in that space, specifically working on a CPA model. So a person working in this space has to understand these different models.

Advertisers need to understand these different models as well. there is kind of lot of pros and cons to it. But for publishers specifically, these diverse business models allow them to flourish. They do page search appretrage, for example. So work on CPC model with Google, but then work with advertisers in the affiliate space on a CPA model. So that’s interesting, taking the risk onto themselves.

Richa Dani (27:36.044)

There are creators and influencers coming into this channel as well. Retargeting, commerce content, there’s so many unique different models. And kind of this environment has, it’s created an environment where publishers can flourish, innovate and adapt as well. So I am super excited about the industry and just, would maybe share a couple of things that are interesting as I look in the future. So one is definitely the convergence of create an affiliate marketing industry.

If you again look at a few years in the past, creators used to focus primarily on content production and brand partnerships. So it was more about the awareness of the brands and looking at brands that align with their audience. But now they’re increasingly integrating affiliate marketing into their strategies to monetize their influence and audience engagement. you also see kind of a shift in the buying behavior specifically for Gen Zs.

They are trusting authenticity over hype, right? They are more value-oriented, looking for more ethical and sustainable choices. So they’re doing extensive research. So they have multiple touch points before they actually make a purchase. So this is interesting space to be in because influencers are really helping not only drive awareness, but also drive those conversions. To give you quick example, I admire this company, Quince. I’m sure you’ve heard about them. They’re kind of… pretty active in the social media space and also have a lot of good clothing. So they did an interesting strategy for both creator and affiliate marketing where they teamed up with fashion influencers to showcase their high quality essentials and by creating like a month long capsule wardrobe challenge. So influencers posted on TikTok, Instagram, all the social media channels, featuring like how to style tutorials, outfit challenges for their users.

And they also shared personalized affiliate links with discount codes of $20 off for their followers. not only they were kind of adding to the awareness, they were also tracking these conversions through the affiliate channels. So this was very interesting kind of a business model. And now I think it’s pretty common in this space, like publishers and creators and brands working on a CPA plus a flat fee model.

Richa Dani (29:56.49)

It’s giving an opportunity to brands to create multiple touch points across the entire sales cycle. So I think that’s an industry to watch. I wouldn’t say we are there yet in terms of being in the mature phase. People are still figuring out what works and what doesn’t. And across also like navigating whether working with nano influencers, micro, macro, and every type of influencer has a different price point, right?

Brands are still figuring it out, but I think that’s one of the most interesting developments in the past few years. And then another one that I want to quickly bring up is publishers leveraging their first party data. So of course, with the third party cookie tracking being gradually phased out, more and more publishers are trying to figure out, what do we do to collect and leverage the first party data and deliver more personalized and relevant experiences to their user base? So

Jerrid Grimm (30:33.001)

Mm.

Richa Dani (30:48.908)

A lot of interesting kind of business models have come up and over a period of time in this space. So for instance, there are companies that are incentivizing users to complete surveys, like collecting first party data of behaviors and things that people like and basically delivering them tailored offers on the back of this. And then I’m sure you’ve heard of some on-site retargeting companies, mostly tech-focused companies, using brand first party data to then power dynamic product recommendations and kind of contextual ad placements as well. Another interesting one to watch is financial media networks. So of course, you’ve all heard of the trend that’s coming up in the retail media space. financial organizations, and you can see like Chase and Bank of America and all these companies kind of leveraging first party transaction data to match audiences with relevant offers. And that’s powerful, right? Like they have exactly insights into what

Jerrid Grimm (31:24.02)

So cool.

Richa Dani (31:48.44)

this person is purchasing on a daily basis and what would make sense either providing them with competitor offers with like strong price points or giving them relevant products that are complementary to what they’re buying. So there’s a lot of interesting things happening in this space. So.

Jerrid Grimm (32:04.606)

Yeah. I mean, I think of like these, the way that the publisher side has evolved where at one point, you know, maybe 10, 20 years ago, if you wanted to be in the affiliate or performance space and you were a publisher, you essentially had to be like a coupon publisher. That was essentially it, right? Like you had to offer some big discount and then you put that big discount in some place, in some forum on your website or whatever. I think what the, the performance model allows for now though, is that it doesn’t really matter if I’m, I can be a coupon publisher. That’s fine. Right. But I could also be a major website that does reviews that are long lines about my audience is interested. I can be an influencer or creator and I can use, you know, I can work with brands and like a number of different ways I can either do like, Hey, I want to get a commission when I help promote a sale or I’d like to get a flat fee when I promote your product or whatever the things are. And then even these like, you would never really consider them publishers in the past. Like who would consider chase or, or, you know, a target or a Walmart and retail media, or you have like door dash and these delivery apps, or even your, your ticket master and you’re working with Spotify. There’s like all these interesting ways that what we would traditionally call a publisher and traditionally call a brand. It’s starting to get fairly fuzzy. Like I’m seeing, you know, these brand to brand where

Richa Dani (33:09.057)

Right.

Jerrid Grimm (33:32.104)

I’m a company and I’m not competitive with another company, but we share like a similar prospect of customer. So we, say, Hey, I’ll, you know what? I’ll promote your product in my newsletter. And maybe you promote my product in your newsletter to your audience. So it’s really cool. It’s really expanded what publishers can do and how they can work with these different brands and all kind of allows for it because primarily the, the, the, there’s so many different ways they can contract, I guess, or partner with these brands.

That’s super cool. think that I think that’ll just continue to open up as you mentioned this creator and influencer, merging with this affiliate world. And I think one thing that’s interesting with that, I worked, I worked in the creator space in the past. And one of the limiting things about a flat fee model is that if I’m a creator and I really love your product and I want to promote it to my audience, okay, yeah, I’ll do a post, right? And then I do that post and you pay me X amount of dollars.

And that’s it. It’s over. Our relationship is over. But if I also want to do a CPA, a cost per acquisition model, and you’re comfortable with that, we can say, Hey, I might have lots of opportunities to talk to my audience. You know, I might, you know, go to an event. I might be promoting on different social channels and I’d love to have like an ongoing relationship with you where I promote your product whenever I feel like it, whenever it’s right for my audience. And we always have this like, you know, wiring between us that says, I can do it when I want to and you’re happy with me to do it. It doesn’t have to be just these one-offs. That’s very cool. I love that. I’d love talking to you about this. I learned from you every time. So listeners of the show, and I get to talk quite a bit and I just steal as much information out of her brain as possible. So this is the opportunity. That’s why I wanted to have you on the show. Let everyone else steal a little bit of your brain for a little bit. But if you had one takeaway for listeners, so you just leave them with one thing, what would that one thing be?

Richa Dani (35:10.774)

Seething is me.

Richa Dani (35:30.104)

So I think this is, again, talking about the growth and talking about publishers and brands and the industry in general. I strongly believe in this. I’m sharing it for both brands and publishers. But basically, if you want to succeed in this industry and scale your business, you really have to think of the basics of the partnership. You want to make sure there’s trust between both parties. There’s clear communication of what each of the parties are offering and you’re providing real value. It’s not just a transaction. It’s not like you just mentioned. It’s not a one-off thing that, I promote you. I get a flat fee, and I’m done with this brand. It’s a longer-term partnership. And when both invested parties think like this, it leads to the partnerships growing sustainably. So all I want to share is that both brands and publishers should really think about when they’re entering into an agreement, like what is it that they’re looking for and how do they work together to get to that place. That’s it.

Jerrid Grimm (36:25.226)

That’s great. Well, think if you are a publisher out there and you’re struggling to meet brands or you’d like to learn more from the team, Richa and her team on how you can grow your publication, I’ll put a, I’ll put a link to a, to a form where they can get ahold of you in the show notes. So publishers feel free to reach out to Richard through that form and you can steal a little bit of her brain as well. The way I have been for the last three years. So Richa, thanks so much for being on the show.

Richa Dani (36:52.354)

Thank you so much for having me, Jerrid