#432 – Amazon Traffic Hacks: How Influencers & Big Blogs Drive Millions with Richie Carreon
Richie Carreon from Levanta graces our latest episode to unpack the fast-paced world of affiliate marketing, sharing his extensive expertise in ad tech and marketing technology. As we weave through this insightful conversation, Richie lays out how platforms like Levanta are bridging the gap between e-commerce sellers and influencers, creators, and major publications. Discover the transformative power of automating these connections to supercharge traffic and revenue, particularly during high-stakes sales events like Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
We also dive into the magic of Amazon’s affiliate traffic, revealing tricks to boost your product’s organic search rankings and maximize your return on ad spend (ROAS). Uncover the untapped potential of passing along Amazon’s brand referral bonus to entice creators and elevate your offers in a crowded marketplace. Whether you’re a seller aiming to streamline administrative burdens or a creator seeking the perfect product fit, Richie shares how to effectively navigate this dual-sided marketplace of 7,000+ vetted influencers.
Rounding off our episode, we highlight the human element in affiliate marketing and podcasting — building relationships that go beyond mere transactions. By nurturing genuine connections with podcast hosts and influencers, you can foster trust and drive organic promotion. Richie emphasizes the critical role of appreciation in these partnerships amid rising competition and skepticism toward traditional advertising. Join us for a transformative discussion that underscores the strategic use of affiliates and the immense power of relationships in today’s marketing landscape.
In episode 432 of the AM/PM Podcast, Kevin and Richie discuss:
- 00:00 – Affiliate Marketing Strategies With Richie Carreon
- 03:52 – Affiliate Marketing Success Stories
- 08:24 – Leveraging Amazon Affiliate Benefits
- 15:07 – Innovative Affiliate Marketing Strategies
- 18:51 – Affiliate Marketing and Advertising Strategies
- 20:45 – Newsletter Advertising With Beehive Platform
- 22:53 – Maximizing Ad Inventory Sales
- 26:24 – The Power of Affiliate Marketing
- 30:48 – Building Relationships for Affiliate Success
- 32:16 – Building Business Relationships Through Sponsorship
- 35:03 – Amazon Sellers Membership Pricing and Expansion
- 39:02 – Competition for High Base Rate
- 42:38 – Exploring Diversification in E-Commerce
- 47:33 – Kevin King’s Words of Wisdom
Transcript
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 of this 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 going to talk about all that, how you can do it and more. Enjoy this episode with Richie. What’s up, Richie Carreon? How are you doing? Welcome to the AM/PM Podcast man.
Richie:
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 Levanta, so a lot of people listening may have heard of Levanta. If you haven’t heard of Levanta, 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 and, like the last, I mean 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, uh, doing similar stuff. We’re connecting influencers to sellers e-commerce sellers and connecting e-commerce sellers to media uh 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? Were you working for somebody else?
Richie:
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 programmatic, so those big brands working with these large agencies like Havas and Digitas, et cetera, going to Cannes Festival 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, et cetera, 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 Attution 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 talks about it. 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 can be 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 on not always, but on the big-time affiliates. What you guys are doing, we’ll talk about that. It’s a little bit different in some cases. I remember when we were starting the Freedom Ticket with Helium 10, it was a 50-50 deal. Uh, and so when I in 2017, I was getting frustrated with all the crap that was online on YouTube and on Facebook and there, 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. Uh, and I was like no, you don’t, um. And so I was like I’m going to do a course and so I was going to do it on my own. And then I talked to Manny and Gui had Helium 10 who owned it at the time and they’re like why don’t you just? And I was like, I don’t know, you know, that’s our thing about, you know, 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 agreements where I created and we did a revenue share. And then 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 the software, and then they pay me a flat fee, which we kind of did an averaging thing, and so it works out. It’s a good deal.
Kevin King:
So 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 would pay them you know, this was an influencer more than a creator space at that time and I would pay them $200 or $300 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:
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 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. Um, 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, Meredith.dash, 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 really varies on what you’re trying to achieve there.
Richie:
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, and 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 it improves their ROAS, as an example. Or sometimes they’ll pass that 10% to the creator and so they’re willing to give 30, 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, um, more interesting to the creator than somebody who’s offering 20%. So those are some of the benefits. Other also at the end of the year, like 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 of weeks? 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 hard 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 they, you connect them. So basically you connect them with the creators. Then you, 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 kind of correspondence and communication?
Richie:
Yeah, 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? And 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, hey, 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 dog 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 a. I set the commission amount. I’m willing to give, let’s say, 20%, and then I go out and I type in who are the dog creators out of the 7,000. And I reach out to them and say, hey, you’re interested in promoting my bowl. That’s one way. The other way is a couple of those 7,000 creators are maybe like you know what I’m going to 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 would be good if I had some dog products, what’s available that will 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 know you could have mixed results so you might go in there, and if your product is, there’s 100 other products, you know, weighted baby blankets in there. You know 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. In 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 is crap or they don’t want it or it’s the 100th weighted baby blanket, it ain’t going to 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:
You’re right. Also, remember, these creators are promoting your product to their audience, who trusts them. So if I have a community and you know, Kevin, you have a community.
Kevin King:
Yeah, I’m not going to.
Richie:
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, Loom Deodorant, Caraway, Hexclad 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 gonna I’m only gonna do 10% commission plus, plus I’ll give the 10% referral bonus, so 20% total commission, because you know that’s my a cost on Amazon and that’s I need to make a little bit of money. I’m not in business of giving stuff away. I’m of the opposite. I’m like give the damn things away and get this, get the halo effect of your organic ranking and everything on Amazon. Don’t come in at 20% if everybody. 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. You know that 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%.
Kevin King:
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 of everything you do that gets my launch going. And I’m going to have a contest whoever our you hundred affiliates uh, extends the most traffic, because we’ll log in here to Levanta all the data, like you said. It’s all transparent there. I’m going to give you a free cruise. I’m going to give you a free iPad or free laptop or whatever, and that’s just going to be a marketing expense and I’m going to use the platform in that way and I think hardly anybody does that, uh, and they don’t approach it that way. They just approach it as like, okay, 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:
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. That’s a new one for me. I haven’t seen that, that approach but you. But high ticket items and doing quick promotions, I think is also very helpful, especially if you’re trying to launch something new. You have to remember these creators are trying to monetize their audiences, they’re trying to earn as well. And 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. Driving, driving 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 that influences and creators there? You also specialize in all these, these lists, these guides. You know, a Wirecutter is owned by what the New York Times right?
Richie:
Yes.
Kevin King:
A major source of revenue for a lot of people don’t realize that if you look at the New York Times financials, the Wirecutter Commission’s and they’ll feel the money they make off of that is significant.
Richie:
Yeah, we call those listicles actually that’s I guess it’s like the, the proper terms, I guess they call them. I mean, there’s also like advertorials and all types of other things which you would might find more on what’s called performance PR, which is a very interesting space. I actually didn’t quite recognize. I realized that was a thing until I got into the affiliate space.
Kevin King:
Performance PR or performance marketing?
Richie:
Performance PR.
Kevin King:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, where you’re on the 10 best new dog bowls of 2025, or whatever.
Richie:
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. It’s just like hey these are the top 10–
Kevin King:
Especially if it’s an odd number. It’s not, top 10 works, but also like top seven is another magic one because it’s an odd number. 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:
Absolutely. It’s essentially—
Kevin King:
They’re not supposed to do that, I mean technically, but that’s what they do is say’re here’s, here’s the best and the best, one’s given them 50% and the rest, next one’s giving them 40%, and so on.
Richie:
Um yeah.
Kevin King:
Those can be super powerful too, cause they come with a lot of built-in credibility.
Richie:
They do.
Kevin King:
And a lot of SEO.
Richie:
Yes, I actually was talking to a seller, um, here in New York. This was probably during the summertime and you know I was just, you know I didn’t want to sell him and I was, we were just chatting and he was like oh yeah, I heard of you guys and he’s like. You know, when I was a couple of years ago, I got picked up by the New York times and 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 for most, one article like where I was mentioned. Um, 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 could have control over that scale, like that’s super powerful for me, especially when advertising costs as we know it today is. It’s not as predictable or cost cost effective to my bottom line as it used to be for a lot of folks, for many reasons.
Kevin King:
Now, those guys, though, are a little bit more picky. I mean the real professional ones, because 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 of the screen. They know that this is this, this little inch by inch, spot. Um, every time we put something there should be worth a $50,000 or whatever the number is. Uh, and so a lot of them are going to like uh, do you see this? Where they’re like, they want to see some history, some conversion history, some other stuff that you’ve done before. They’ll take you or just the uh, 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 going to put it in.
Richie:
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 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. And one of your competitors was running a bunch of ads through that system originally and I was. They have a CPC model and they have a which is cost per click and then they have a cost per impression, a CPM model, cost per impression. Um, and the amount that they were paying and the amount of traffic they were getting, I was like there’s an imbalance here. Uh, 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 cause, 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 gotta do is hit a button and creative is all there. It automatically adds it into the newsletter and a whole nine yards.
Kevin King:
But some of them will offer me a CPC, a cost per click of three dollars or four dollars 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 run 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 I mean because there there is some overlay, but there’s nothing you should actually probably I don’t know if you guys encourage that or not, but, um, you should use multiple, multiple platforms.
Richie:
I mean we always love when people use Levanta. But also people have DTC direct to consumer Shopify stores, you know, big commerce, et cetera. They have their DTC presence and we don’t support DTC. So, yeah, we recommend, if you have a DTC presence, consider an affiliate strategy for those properties that you have. And you mentioned something interesting about your ad inventory, Kevin. Like, yeah, I’m a big believer in not using an ad tech or an ad network unless you have available inventory you’re trying to sell off. Otherwise, go direct. Direct is going to be the best, the best rates, in my opinion. Um, you’ll probably get the best placements and a lot of ad networks. You know that’s what they’re designed to do is to fill those uh, uh 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.
Kevin King:
Yeah I have that happen sometimes on like 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:
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, as you have noticed, like on a you’re watching a, you know NFL football game, there’s certain spots where it’s always the local news, uh, doing a promo, or it’s some local car dealership or local plumbing guy or something. Those are spots that they have to, they have to carve out for the local stations and who have some of that built into, and a lot of times they they don’t sell it. I just had someone else on the on the podcast just last last week, actually right before this episode came out. Uh, that was we’re talking about the opportunity and all these video ad networks and what’s. She was just like there’s massive opportunity right now on, like advertising and Amazon, prime and advertising on Hulu and all these places. Do you guys do anything with those kinds of placements too, uh, through your network, and are any of those guys doing affiliate type of stuff or is it just they’re just taking straight up advice?
Richie:
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 that’s—
Kevin King:
Ah, yeah, yeah yeah.
Richie:
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. Um, and you, we know like we’re starting to see things on TikTok, where it’s supporting various types of link types directly in, in, in, in, uh, in feed, uh, 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 were talking about that product, for a 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.
Kevin King:
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. I mean it’s, it’s moving. The technology is getting pretty pretty cool. Pretty soon, with the glasses, with the meta glasses, I mean, you’re just going to be able to look at something and go, I want, and it’s going to take you there. Where do you see this going with what you guys are doing? Do you see this? What’s on the roadmap? What’s a? Where is the? What are you most excited about? Everybody now you can click links and you can do this, but man, this is what’s coming. We’re going to be able to really blow up Levanta. What’s coming that people should be anticipating or getting excited about?
Richie:
Yeah, 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 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. Like 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 form of history, was Julius Caesar would award a soldier I believe it was 50% your salary for any soldiers that were recruited into the army and the military for them.
Richie:
Um, so that was, like, I believe, the one of the first forms of affiliate programs, um, and the other is like that’s just how we buy. I mean, when’s the last time you just I mean, how often do you ask a family member or a 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. So 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 and the 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 in traffic, but 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 could 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 extend that into a true reward system like almost frequent flyer or some sort of reward system. I think there’s massive opportunity in 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 Levanta or to engage more of the cell. There’s a lot of cool stuff. I could give you some ideas on that. I think nobody’s doing that. May have good opportunity out there, but yeah. I’ve charged a lot of money for that type of consulting, so-.
Richie:
I mean, we always love to treat you to a nice dinner and you can we’re always open to ideas. You mentioned an interesting thing there, Kevin, like 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, it’s just that they have—
Kevin King:
Take, care of them, I mean take care of them. I think that a lot of people they just go to Levanta and they just say they think the 40% or 20% or whatever is good. No, 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.
Kevin King:
I remember someone used this technique. I haven’t used it yet, but I should be using it. They went on. They’re a guest on podcasts and they went on a podcast and they were promoting their, their service of some sort, and the, the, the host of the podcast, let them 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 they gave the person gave out a special URL it’s like go to Kevin King, slash 21 or whatever to get to download the PDF. So they knew where the traffic 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. Uh, here here’s a $832,. You know, because we’ve got some business off you and they’re like oh, what the heck? Surprise and delight. So, like you just said, these are your salespeople. They’re, 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:
You’re absolutely right.
Kevin King:
And I think that’s a missing, a missing piece for a lot of sellers that they’re not thinking about that.
Richie:
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. Uh, 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.
Kevin King:
Yep.
Richie:
Uh, it’s taking coffee in the middle of Seattle to kick that off so.
Kevin King:
And you, you know you dropped a couple coins, uh, sponsoring my newsletter and who knows what else you may sponsor down the road. Well, it’s but also it goes both ways. It’s like I’ll promote you without you having to pay because there’s a relationship, you know, and we be in the stuff. It’s the same thing with influencers. You know, when someone asks me who should I use, if I’m on a Q&A session on some webinar, you know 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. But these relationships and these affiliate relationships are critical and I think you’re right 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 is going to say it like it is, not like you. The brand owner who’s proud of this and you’re trying to sell a piece of shit is, 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 use tools like Levanta to make that seamless and easy.
Richie:
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. Um, 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. Um, and so, yeah, I highly recommend folks go check that out because, um, I’ve learned after talking to a lot of sellers like, oh, influencers, I’m like, yes, and there’s more. Let me tell you about it. Um, so it’s, if you’re trying to get schooled up on that and have a better and you’re interested in learning more about it, highly recommend check out that resource.
Kevin King:
How do you get that resource?
Richie:
Yeah, I’ll share the link with you guys. Uh, uh, we always like to. We love good tracking link. Uh, but there’s, if you go to our website, levanta.io.
Kevin King:
How do you spell Levanta? For people that don’t know how to spell Levanta.
Richie:
Yeah, so go to our website, I’ll say it and 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 IO 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, and am I paying a piece of the commission to you? Am I paying a finder’s fee every time I get it? How does the process work for me as a seller? How does it work? What am I looking at?
Richie:
Yeah. So we have a broad range of options based on you as a seller, size, et cetera, um. So if you want to sign up for an account, it’s free to sign up for accounts so you can poke around, see what kind of inventory is available. When I say inventory, the types of creators that are on the platform, you know, 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. Flat rate of $150 with a um, a commission that is paid out to us at 5%, yes, per month. There’s a that is month to month or you can do an annual. um and you—
Kevin King:
5% commission is on sales or on the amount of royalties of commissions you pay the creators.
Richie:
On the sales.
Kevin King:
Ok, so I pay one hundred, the basic ones. I just make sure everybody understands. I pay one 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’m just to make as an example, if I’m selling one hundred dollar item, make it easy in the math and I’m telling the creator, I’ll give you 30% for everyone 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 I’ve ever 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 $100, I’m giving you $5. So it’s really I’m paying 35% in this example is what’s coming out of my pocket for actually using your services and software and you managing everything for me.
Richie:
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 25%. 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 gold and enterprise plans you have full control of that commission. So it can be 0% all up to 100% and we’re taking a smaller variable fee at 3.5%. The monthly fee for that is $750. And that usually is an annual contract that you can negotiate that with our sales team. But because you are all talking to Kevin here, you’re 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 1800 annual savings, which is pretty good. And 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 1,000 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. That means you’re generating $220 million. That, if I’m doing the math right, 11 million, 5% of that times. Yeah, but $220 million of actual sales off of the just that simple little math right there. And it’s growing rapidly, so that that’s significant numbers. That’s coming. 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 100 different people trying to get into this, just like everybody is trying to get into you know, when Gatita was one of the first ones to do refunds and everybody’s like, oh shoot, there’s some real money in this. Uh, not ever. Tom Dick and Harry is doing refunds. Uh, or white labeling it, or, uh, I don’t know, maybe you guys even white label of Levanta, I’m not sure, but or maybe that’s on the roadmap, but it um, okay. So there’s serious, there’s serious things in it. If you’re not, if you’re a seller, listening to this and you’re not sitting at the table, you’re missing out.
Richie:
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 sorry Cyber Monday, we generated about 12 and a half 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, you are good.
Richie:
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. But I like to do that sometimes. When people come on the podcast, sometimes I say we’re doing this and this. I’m like all right, let’s see if this math actually works. So that’s awesome.
Richie:
Yeah, it’s great.
Kevin King:
Right now. You said it’s just Amazon, but what about Walmart? Or what about any of the other marketplaces? Or to my shop. 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 want to be, 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 use just use you. So I’m assuming you’re on the roadmap to expand other marketplaces.
Richie:
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 US? or including the US.
Kevin King:
I was going to ask you besides the US, what do you support?
Richie:
Yeah, so as of today, it’s US, Canada, we also have Germany, France and I believe let me double check because, 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 going to 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? No, Japan, 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, uh-huh.
Richie:
Okay, yeah, 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 the, I think, 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:
Well, no, so I think everybody I mean, if you have, you’re not, if you haven’t tried Levanta you should, you should try them, or maybe you know, if you maybe you’ve tried somebody else, or or if you’re, even if you’re using somebody else, you know it doesn’t help to diversify and because they do have, 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 and because 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, so, and 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, uh, or something so, um, so it’s Levanta.io, if you want to check it out to Levanta.io, and you guys are going to be out and about uh, 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, um, maybe, maybe even Billion Dollar Seller Summit. You never know.
Richie:
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’ll be mostly at ETEL West. We’ll be at EE Miami. Of course we’re going to 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. You’re going to see us.
Kevin King:
Shop Talk’s the same time as Prosper.
Richie:
Yes, and our sales team’s gotten bigger, so we’re going to have plenty of humans to cover both of those.
Kevin King:
Then, right after that, they’re just going to be taking a day or two break and then hopping on a plane to Iceland to come to BDSS.
Richie:
Exactly, exactly, exactly, exactly billion. You know, it was funny too, Kevin. Like I had joined and they were like, yeah, we sponsored 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 uh, the, the um, the, the competition. And I was like, keep an eye on the shirts. It was really. It was a really cool one. It was funny too because I saw people chasing chickens. I was like why is there? Why are they chasing a chicken? but it’s just, it’s, it’s common in Hawaii so.
Kevin King:
The levanta team, I think, did I have to go back and look? I think they did well.
Richie:
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 just blowing up because that’s part of the point system. There’s everybody wearing a Levanta shirt or whatever team they’re on. There’s 28 different teams and posts to social media to get extra points, which was a lot of fun, created a lot of FOMO and that’s why all you guys listening hopefully you’re coming to Iceland as well it’s April 4th to the 9th and that’s the BDSS-11 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 New York, and it’s going to be awesome times. Well, 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:
Yeah, you can reach me directly on LinkedIn. Um, let me. Actually, it’s been a while since I’ve actually pulled up my LinkedIn URL, but I but if you just search Richie Carreon, uh, you’ll find me. Or you can go to a search Levanta and, uh, 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:
I think we’ll. We’ll definitely run into each other and love to do a private dinner as well.
Kevin King:
Yeah, do that exactly.
Richie:
With some good sellers, so 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:
Alright, 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, and 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. Just go to 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.
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