What is Siren Affiliates and how will it change your ideas about marketing with Alex Standiford

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hey. How you doing, Alex? I'm alright. How are you? yeah. Really good. Alex is here today to join us on the WP Build, webinar series, and he's got a really great product for you. I think it's going gangbusters as far as I can see from all of the different bit bits and pieces on social media.

You've had a very nice week so far.

[00:01:22] Alex Standiford: Yeah, it's been exciting to say the least. Yeah, done. So it's brand new. So we're here really for two purposes. firstly to show what Alex's brand new plugin, which is called Siren Affiliates can do. but also, maybe you are one of the lucky ones who got one of the, the deals already and you've got the plugin in your back pocket.

You've had a play. and you've got some questions, so this is your chance really to talk to Alex as well. firstly though, before we get into that, the lifetime deal, as far as I know, the lifetime deal is still currently running, so I might as well just get's this out the way. you could even buy it whilst you're watching it go and install it in playground or something, and then come back and ask some questions.

So there is a QR code there. We can share the URL later. But, it's not that difficult. You could probably Google SAR and affiliates at this point, but if you've got a camera out and you want to just QR that you can do it. and you'll get yourself a lifetime deal, which I think is selling out.

yeah. Yeah. Yep. I'm selling a hundred of them in total and, I think I have less than 15 left at this point, okay. Rush. Go. Go. Yeah, go everybody. so I've been, I've been going through 'em pretty quick. Oh, nice. After that, I'm still gonna do an annual, but I'm taking down the lifetime. Okay. pretty much indefinitely.

I don't know when I'm gonna do it again. Maybe someday, but, okay. this is a pretty special thing. So you got, you got, there's maybe 15 or so left. That's brilliant. Yeah. Yeah. do you wanna just say the URL in case the QR is not working? where are we? Yeah, sure. Sure. so you can just go to siren affiliates.com.

It won't be hard to find a button to get to the checkout screen. Trust me, they're everywhere. that's probably the easiest way to describe it without Text.

[00:03:05] Nathan Wrigley: yeah, that's fine. So siren affiliates.com, go check it out, I'll take that off the screen. so yeah, that's the reason we're here today.

We maybe top out on an hour or something like that. just a couple of bit bits of housekeeping, a little bit boring, I'm afraid. But we've gotta do it. that is to say that if you wanna make a comment, there really is only one place to do that, and that's on our website. So go to wp builds.com/live. and it's really just because the platforms more and more are locking down the ability to get comments outta their system.

for example, if you watching this on Twitter, which you may be you, if you put a comment there, it'll just be stuck in Twitter. We won't see it the same in Facebook. We won't see it. and LinkedIn exactly the same. So head to wp build.com. Slash live. And on the right, if you're on a desktop, on the right of the, video player is a YouTube, comments chat box.

So you need to be logged into Google for that. But we've gotta back up. If you don't like Google and you don't have a Google account inside the player itself, right at the top actually, where the other way, the other top, when the logo WP builds is in the top right hand corner should be a button labeled live chat.

And if you click that, you don't need to be logged into anything. you just type in your name. And what have you. And so I'm gonna be saying that repeatedly during this podcast, but just go there, make a comment, and then you've got a chance of getting in front of Alex and what have you. And it looks like, oh, that's nice.

Few people have already made the effort to do that. So Cameron Jones coming to us from, I love all this, is so fun. coming from Australia, Cameron regularly joins us on our Monday show. We do that this week in WordPress. And then Armando. Hi Armando, nice to meet your acquaintance. He's excited to be here.

Cheers. Alex, Sam White. well done for the launch, Alex. She says, that's really nice. Thanks, Sam. Taps her pocket with the plugin. Oh, nice. don't, Ron don't walk people, she says. So keep those comments, comment. Honestly, if you've just got something like Sam to say, just drop it in. if I think it's worthy, I'll put it on the screen, but would appreciate it anyway.

But if you've got a question that would also make quite interesting, Entertainment for want of a better word at the end of the show. So I feel I've done a bad job of letting you introduce yourself, Alex. So can we just have the elevator, elevator pitch bio. Who are you and what have you been up to these, many years?

[00:05:33] Alex Standiford: Yeah, sure. so I'm Alex Danford. I, I've been a WordPress developer since 2015. I've been a WordPress user since 2009. and my first foray into WordPress was actually a, a DVD montage business that I built. And I always chuckle when I say it out loud 'cause I realize like how old that makes me sound.

Yeah. But I was, even at that time, I was actually creating partnerships with photographers. So just to, promote and have them basically resell my montages. So even at that time I was thinking about affiliate programs and partnership programs and things like that. since then I've ran, an agency where I was doing a lot of partnership programs like this as well.

And then on top of that, I also worked, for Sandhills Development and I worked on the, I worked on affiliate WP for a little while as one of their developers. I left a several years ago, but I had worked on that plugin and I used both as a user and as a developer. So I've got a lot of experience in this specific kind of facet of, e-commerce and, WordPress in general.

[00:06:45] Nathan Wrigley: Nice, nice. Always good to get the, the backstory, especially when it really relates to what you've been doing. Yeah. Alex and I have been talking about this back and forth in, in our little, back channels. I don't know how we managed to do that, but we do. and this product, I think, has been a long time in the making.

You've, yes, you've poured your heart and soul into it. I think it's taken you a little bit longer to build than you anticipate. I dunno if that's 'cause you've got like scope creep on yourself or something, but, yeah. I want this. Okay. I'll build it. but it's ready, it's out the gate. It's ready to launch.

Yeah. And so we're gonna show you that. Now, really the way this is gonna work is Alex is gonna take over the screen. He's gonna instruct me if he wants me to show one view or another view. So I'll try to do that, but I'll get out the way, I'll keep an eye on the comments for y'all and if, if you've got anything worth saying, then then I'll try to put it on the screen.

I'll try not to intu interrupt too much. But Alex, where do you wanna begin? Dashboard or customer? You know what, let's just stay here for a second. Stay here for a second, then I'll switch over. 'cause I just have a little bit of an intro. Okay. Lovely. so, yeah, we'll talk about it a little, talk a little bit about the difference and stuff like that and what I'm gonna actually present and then we can switch over to the screen after that.

[00:07:55] Alex Standiford: Lovely. Okay. Okay. really for me, the key difference with Siren versus, other plugins or other solutions is that, it doesn't use a single affiliate program to describe your online partnerships. instead it allows you to create multiple programs, each one with their own set of rules and their reward amounts.

multiple programs and trigger rewards for many collaborators at one time. Or they can be grouped together so that only one program is chosen for a reward. the idea there is that it gives you like a lot of extra flexibility that you don't really see in other programs. for example, in the example that I'm gonna present today.

We're gonna create a program that's lead focused, and then we're gonna create another program that's conversion focused. in other words. So one is focused on generating traffic to the site, and another one is focused on converting those people, from just traffic from tire kickers to actual sales.

So the lead program's gonna reward the affiliates for driving traffic to the site, and then the conversion program is actually gonna reward affiliates for making actual conversions with a coupon code. Nice. yeah, so the idea there is it creates a way for your affiliates to be able to work together organically where lead focused affiliates are driving results early in the customer's journey, and the conversion focused affiliates are converting those sales when the customer's actually ready to make the buy.

so I chose this use case because I think it's a really, it really helps illustrate how multiple programs and siren allows you to create more effective partnerships online, particularly if you're selling really expensive, high touch things that are otherwise difficult to sell. In fact, this is basically the dream program I wanted to have that I couldn't get whenever I was running my own agency.

I wanted to run an affiliate program and I wanted to have a way to be able to convert people when they're selling these really expensive, thousands of dollar custom website builds. But I didn't have a great way to actually convert those people because affiliate programs are always geared for that impulse buy.

You know what I mean? yeah. yeah, so that this approach allows me to create that lead focused one where the conversion is actually just getting to them to the site and getting eyes on your offering first. And then the conversion focus one is more like a tradition can work a little bit more like a traditional sales program where the person's actually, maybe they're doing webinars, maybe they're doing, one-on-one sales calls or podcasts or other things that are more focused on like really making a pitch.

You know what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah. So, I think this approach Does a better job of recognizing that journey that's longer, especially for these bigger sales. But to be honest, sirens are gonna be running an affiliate program as well, and I'm literally just gonna use this program for that as well because I think it's, I think it's a really great way to be able to recognize podcasters and YouTubers who don't always get the conversion, but tends to be the first person that people, that bring in the traffic and bring in the leads.

And I think it just creates a more fair and, interesting way to be able to reward those people without necessarily forcing them to be salesy. I. That's really interesting. So the, we're used to that sort of model of you've gotta do the purchase, but you are offering options to have a whole different range of things, which are the primary goal, okay.

[00:11:23] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. Yep. And then ultimately, no matter what, nobody gets paid until, in my case, in the way we're building this, nobody gets paid unless the customer actually buys something. So even the lead focused program isn't going to actually, you're not giving them money for a site visit. You're giving them money for a site visit that later turns into a sale.

[00:11:45] Alex Standiford: So it's really a more, like the lead program is pretty much just what you imagine what a normal affiliate program is. it's a little different, and I'll get into that in a minute, but the, but but yeah, so that, that's the idea there. Okey doke. Okay. So let's go ahead and switch over to the dashboard.

[00:12:04] Speaker: Okay. Here we go. Okay. what I have set up here is a basic WooCommerce site. with Siren installed, I've already set up the collab, a few collaborators on the site who are signed up. and just for context, collaborators, and siren are actually what most people think of as affiliates. So I'm probably gonna be saying both of those terms throughout this, just because my marketing speak and my technical speaker melded into a very confusing goo.

[00:12:32] Alex Standiford: But, just know if I say collaborators, affiliates. So I have a few collaborators that a preset in this as well as a lead generation program that's already built. we're gonna actually build the conversion focused one together, and I'm also going to, set up and, run through a couple scenarios with the two programs.

Finally, we also have a couple of obligations that we have to pay out, which are basically just rewards for customers too. So you can see here Brad and Amy have already, Received a few, referrals, in other words, right? So I'm ob I'm obligated to pay these people this money because they've already, actually, generated some sales.

And you can see here, I'll click over just to show you the collaborators that we have right now. I have three of them. I have Brad, Amy, and Steve. And you can see Amy is currently on the lead generator program, but Brad and Steve are not. And we're gonna, we're gonna, update that in a second. And then finally, if I go to programs, you'll see we have one program right now called the Lead Generator Program.

Okay. So we're actually gonna click on this lead generator program and take a look at, what's going on under the hood here. So the lead generator program, again, is, it rewards affiliates, it rewards our collaborators with an affiliate link. if I scroll down here, you'll see there's an expiration time here set in days.

And basically what that is, the expiration time defines how long before you consider this lead to be invalid. So if a person visits this site, and within 60 days makes a purchase, the affiliate who referred them would get credited for the sale. If I change this to five days, that means that they only have five days to actually get credit for the sale.

Otherwise, they don't get the credit. So this allows you to set some limitations on, on how, like how long you want your sales cycle to be or anything like that. Yeah, yeah. yeah, so like for the lead generation program, I'm setting a 60 day window because I want to give them plenty of time to be able to work with them.

'cause I'm expecting the lead generators to have multiple touch points over a period of time and I wanna give them plenty of time to be able to, Give the people the information they need, let that customer go through the journey and still give them the credit. so the next thing here is a program structure.

And, basically what this means is it defines the rules that determine which affiliate gets credit for a sale. in some cases this also applies to multiple affiliates. So you can actually do like a shared engagement pool or perform, or a performance weighted pool. And, they're a little more advanced and there's, they're outta the scope of this webinar, but you can totally set this up to where you're dividing, a referral among multiple people if you wanted to do that.

this is mostly, I'm, the use cases for this is more along the lines of an LMSA lifter like Lifter or Learn Dash or something like that. Yeah. Where you have like multiple creators creating content and you wanna sell, give them like a percentage of profits or something like that. But in our case, we're just gonna use oldest engagement wins.

and basically what that does is it makes it so that the first person who visits the site, the first referral, the first affiliate who gets credit for this visitor will be the one who gets rewarded. So it's the oldest engagement, the first engagement. you'll see later whenever we do the sales focused one, it's actually gonna be the newest engagement.

'cause it's the opposite. We wanna pay the last person to talk to them, right. So when we have, yeah, so when we have two programs here, we're gonna be paying the first person who introduced them and the last person who talked to the customer before they made the sale. top score wins it, it's, this, so if I'll get to that in a minute, we're just gonna Yeah, that's okay.

Yeah, we'll talk about that. Yeah, that's fine. I don't wanna get too thick into the weeds here. and then engagement. So then from there we have engagement tracking events. And basically what this does is it defines what actions and affiliate must take in order to be credited for the purchase. In this case, we're going to, credit the affiliate if they get somebody to visit the site with an affiliate link or if they, if somebody uses their coupon code at checkout.

So either one of these will give them credit. So basically what this program is saying is, reward the first collaborator. That's oldest engagement wins whenever they successfully manage to get somebody to visit their site, your site with an affiliate link, or if they use a coupon code before they actually make the purchase.

And then finally we have the incentive structure. And basically what this does is it defines how much and how you're gonna pay for the transaction itself, right? in this case, there's fix per product where you pay like a dollar for everything that's in the cart or whatever. Fixed per transaction, which is, a fixed price for every time somebody makes a sale.

And then percentage of transaction, which we're using here, which pays out a percentage of the total of the transaction, I like percentage of transaction for pretty much everything by default. I think it's, it scales well, right? the amount of money that you pay is relative to the amount of money you made and motivates collaborators to sell big ticket items and motivates them to sell more things.

And, it's also really easy to budget for, right? Because, you're just, you just assume that you're not making that 10% for these sales and you can account for that. Yeah. Nice. Yep. you also notice right here, credit conversions for sales renewals. And then there's this auto-approved option.

So this, these two check boxes here, sales and renewals. Basically what this is saying is, we're gonna give you credit every time you make a sale. But we're not gonna give you credit if there's a renewal. So in some cases, maybe you're using a subscription, right? Or something like that where there's a recurring revenue, you can set up your program so that it pays people on a recurring basis or not.

and there's a pretty neat little trick with this related to multiple programs that I'll get into in a little bit. so yeah, that's, how the lead generator program is set up. we're gonna go in and create a conversion. Program. But before I do that, I wanna stop and just make sure, are there any questions or anything that, that I need to answer so far?

[00:19:28] Nathan Wrigley: No, there's no questions that are coming on the chat, but I do have a question. Sure. And it was that, when you were back in the, you were creating the conditions there and you, said, and no, you said or, between those two engagement tracking events, so that's an or that's not an, and it's not like you have to visit the site and use a coupon code.

It, I mean's actually in that sense, they both satisfy, I'm sure at the same time, but it's, it's an OR condition That's right. If any of these things happen. Okay. And what's interesting here now that you're bringing it up is, as this pro plugin is developed, I'm gonna be creating all kinds of different events.

[00:20:05] Alex Standiford: that you can trigger and you'll be able to set it up and you'll see this value here. I didn't really get into that too much. Yeah, I was wondering, I just thought that was binary one zero, but there's more to it than it. Oh, no, it's, yeah, it's, a generic, I, have a bug report to make this more clear, but the idea is basically so performance way to pull in top score wins.

They use this value to be able to figure out how much they should pay out. So maybe you have a site visited is only worth one point and maybe a coupon code is worth 10 points. Oh, okay. So, yeah, you can figure out, oh, okay, the top score because the coupon code was used 10 points, they get it.

That's really useful for performance weighted pool and stuff like that. And it'll, come into play a lot more as I create more engagement events. for example, again with the learn dash lifter, LMS, Use case, maybe an engagement tracking event is every time a person, completes a lesson on a course.

So maybe you credit the course creator every time they, actually get somebody to, to do a step in their course and you give them points based on how much engagement they're getting out of the premium subscribers for this site. And then at the end of the month, you can take the point totals for everybody and divide up how much you pay out to everybody based on their performance that month.

Oh gosh. So yeah. Yeah. So, there's, that's what I mean whenever I say Affiliate programs are just the beginning. this is just the initial easiest, most well-known use case that I can think of. But we are really on the tip of the iceberg for what this thing's gonna be able to do in coming months.

[00:21:44] Nathan Wrigley: Like a full engagement program, you've got a bunch of people in your LMS and three of them are just on fire, interested on fire, making the platform more usable for everybody else commenting and things. You can incentivize there. Collaboration, if you like, there Exactly. Interest in there.

So we don't have a question, but we've got a, just a couple of nice comments. They're both coming from Armando who says, glad it supports renewals. Oh yeah. As in an opt-in opt out. Yeah. I think the intuition is that, it's, you can go whichever way you like there, but some people, you make that one sale at the beginning and, and that's the way it ends.

And then points idea, like in that, weighting things in certain ways. And then Graham, hi Graham. I dunno if this is a question or not. He said excited to see the launch. Alex, I'd love to have a discussion with you about how this could integrate with Body Boss. Ah, okay. Oh yeah. So there's some homework for you Yeah.

Right after this. So Graham, send me a message. We'll talk. Yeah. Thanks. Thanks Graham. Appreciate that. That's brilliant. Okay, let's carry on. Okay, so we're gonna go ahead and create that conversion focus program now. so I'm gonna click on add new, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna probably move through this a little bit quicker just because.

[00:22:58] Alex Standiford: I wanna make sure that I'm respectful of everybody's time. That's okay. But you're in the same menu as you were in a moment ago, so we've seen this. Yep. Okay. Yep. Alright. Okay. You can be as quick as you like in that case, if that's fine. this time though, the only difference is we're gonna set this up for a, like a three day expiration, maybe a five, so you're, gonna give people in the sales program five days to be able to actually make this sale.

And what's interesting is you can put all, I'm gonna actually put all of my collaborators in both programs so you can set it up to where if you create the referral for somebody and you sell that person the product. in a five day window, you're gonna get both of these, referrals. Referrals for both of these programs.

So you can earn a higher percentage. So remember the lead generation program was only 10%. We're gonna actually make this one 15%. Oh wait, you're stacking the rewards as well. Yeah. You can stack the rewards. Exactly. Nice. Yeah. So, now you can set it up to, so now you're able to incentivize people to generate leads, but you're also able to incentivize them to generate leads and then give them, you can almost think of this like a bonus for some people where it's I'm gonna pay you another 15% if you get this person to convert in five days.

so I'm gonna set newest engagement wins. Yep. And, we're gonna use the same two things, Site visited and coupon code used. We're gonna leave that a percentage, and we're gonna credit sales and we're gonna auto approve completed transactions. This basically just makes it so that the, the obligations that come through are automatically approved once the sale is done.

Okay. you don't have to set that. You can manually do that if you want, but, all right, so now we have two programs. We're gonna go over to our collaborators, and I'm actually gonna add Amy and Brad, we're gonna add them both to the lead generator program, and then we're gonna also go ahead and add them to the conversion program.

So both Amy and Brad are on both lead gen and conversion, but Steve is not, he's not on any programs right now. Okay. So now that we've added them, oh crap. I forgot. I wanted to mention, we could also back on the programs here. If we wanted, we could actually set this up. Remember, because these things stack.

We could create a third program optionally for the con, like related, that's identical to the conversion program Uhhuh, where you could set it up to where it pays 5% instead of 15, and the conversion program pays 10. So there's three programs now. There's a 10 and a five totaling out to that 25% max.

You can make it to where the conversion program is split, where there's a 10% and a 5%. And the same affiliate would get both of them every time. But you can make the 5% recurring. So you can make it to where they get, oh, like a 25% sign-on bonus. Yeah. And then after that, they're able to get like a 5% recurring revenue if you don't wanna pay that full 15% on a recurring basis.

I was struggling to keep up with you, and then the penny dropped. Yeah. yeah. So let's say that you offer, oh, I don't know. Let's pick a number. Let's say, I don't know, 40% in total. Yeah. But F 10% will be the recurring portion. 30% will be that first hit. So you'll get something. There's an incentive to keep that going over.

[00:26:16] Nathan Wrigley: That is clever. Yes. Yeah, so this is what I mean whenever I keep saying the multi-program approach really changes how you can manage affiliates because it's not just a single monolithic program where you have to, like on a case by case basis, create all these settings, like. All, the competing solutions that I'm seeing.

[00:26:37] Alex Standiford: They have all these extensions to create specific programs, but what I've built here is a system that allows you to build programs in a much more nuanced and dynamic way. Yeah, so it's oh yeah, of course we can do that program that you have to, that you have to pay for extra money for with an extension, right?

Because you just build a couple of programs and you put 'em together and you're able to create that. This is neat. Yeah. all right, cool. So that's, there is a question now Cameron's just go up and it felt like a natural pause there, so let's, yeah, that's great. Let yeah, let's do great. Do it.

[00:27:16] Nathan Wrigley: So here we go. I'm sure you'll get to it, but I'm curious to know how much is automated versus how much needs manual reporting, like if conversions happen offsite now, if that's gonna derail the presentation, Alex, we'll come to that at the end. conversions happen offsite. What do you mean? I'm sorry, I don't understand.

[00:27:32] Alex Standiford: Hey, I'm not sure either. Cameron, can we get more clarification on that question if you don't mind? da dah, Yeah, I'll just, I'll sync that comment for now, but Cameron, when you come back to us, we'll, we'll raise that one a bit later, sure. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, if I have time, I'm gonna get into the fulfillment process and the payouts.

so that's definitely gonna be a part of it that might actually answer Cameron's question. Okay. Okay. another thing is, so we've talked a little bit about how programs stack, right? You can see how, the multi-program approach works, right? Multiple collaborators are able to receive rewards from a single transaction.

But what about cases where you don't want more than one program, like both programs to apply? So say for example, you offered some of your partners a variation of my, the lead generation program, right? maybe in this variation you offered different terms. Than what you offered to the general public, right?

So maybe they get a different rate, maybe they get, the recurring revenue or something like that. in those cases, you probably wouldn't run a reward. Both a lead program, both lead programs, right? You on, you don't want those to stack. You only want one of them to stack. You wanna basically treat them as a single program.

most, solutions out there, they would solve this by putting the rate on the affiliate, right? So you would go to that affiliate, you would give them a special rate or something like that. But I found that's a real pain in the butt to maintain because it's buried inside of the affiliate settings.

And there's this game that you end up playing where you're like, I wonder what this affiliate's getting paid because I've got all these different programs that are like loosely created based on their special rates and it's just, it becomes a mess. but that being said, I wanted to be able to make sure that not all programs stack.

So to solve that I created something called program groups. Basically what this does is it allows you to group multiple programs together and say, only reward one of these programs. Don't reward both of them. Only pay out for one of these programs, whenever an engagement happens. So if you go in here and you create a new program group, we'll call this the, lead generators.

and then we can set, let's see,

and then we can set this to, oldest engagement wins, right? 'cause it's the first one. And then take the lead generator program. And then later on, if we wanted to create another program, another lead generator program specifically for. Oh, I see what you're doing. You're separating out, and at the end of that flow a minute ago, you, pick one of the boxes and if you pick both, it would've been for both.

[00:30:19] Nathan Wrigley: You can make it one for That's Right. I got it now. So in, in this case, actually, yeah, sorry. Go on. You. That's okay. No worries. so in this case, I'm actually creating the lead gen program and I can actually set them, set that group in here. You could also have done it, like you were saying on the creation step too.

[00:30:33] Alex Standiford: Yep. maybe the, and then this is just a completely different program, right? The rules can apply however I want. It can be completely different from the other one. The only, thing that matters is that the oldest engagement, out of all of the programs is gonna be the one that picks which program wins.

And that was dictated by the group. so I know I'm moving a little faster. I'm just trying to No, it's okay. We've seen this. We got it. Now we're all good. Yeah. so percentage of transaction, and maybe this is a 15% instead of 10, and maybe you're paying them renewals on top of that. Okay, so now we have two lead gen.

The both of these lead generators are in a single group. so only one of those two programs are actually going to win. so let's go ahead and, scroll up here. Okay. So just trying to figure out where I'm at. It's alright. Take time. We're not in a rush. Right? Okay. So we've set up the conversion program, we've set up the lead gen program.

We've set up the lead gen group, and, I think the next thing to do is really to Oh, of course. And then finally, we need to set up coupon codes, right? So I've already set one up for Amy, but I'm gonna set one up for Brad real quick. And this actually happens in WooCommerce inside of the coupon screen.

So if I go to marketing. Okay, so you're binding it to WooCommerce in this scenario. got it. In this, yeah. Yeah. I try not to do this as much as I can. I hate, I don't wanna bind to specific integrations. My goal is to try to make this as, separate as possible, but this is one of those cases where I just don't have a good way to do it.

so you can see Amy already has a coupon here called Amy Rocks. we're gonna create a coupon for Brad Wellington called Doing And, we're gonna give him a $5 discount and we're gonna assign it to Brad Wellington. We're gonna hit publish, and that's it. So now the, coupon code is associated with Brad.

So whenever, the checkout happens, if they use that coupon, he's going to get credit. Okay. So the final thing I want to do is, I'm actually going to add Steve. I. To that special lead generation program we created earlier. So now I have, so Steve is on the special lead generation program and Amy is, Amy and Brad are both on the regular one.

So what's gonna happen is the first one of these three is going to be the person who gets paid out. Steve is gonna get paid a higher percentage 'cause he's on this special program, whereas Amy and Brad are on the regular program. So if Steve happens to be the one who creates the initial, visit for the site, Steve's gonna be the one to get credit.

He's gonna get the 15%. But the other lead generat, the lead generator program here won't apply for Amy or Brad. Got it. Okay. So let's go ahead and try to make a purchase. So if you wanna switch over to the site. Okay. I'm switched over. Yep, I'm switched over too. Alright. Yep. Good. Okay, cool. So we're going to, visit the site.

I'm gonna do ref, I just happen to know the coupon code or the ref, the, I have how the affiliate link looks memorized in my head, but, the collaborators have access to their own code inside of their dashboard. I don't think I'm gonna have time to get into that. No, that's fine. But they get a code somewhere.

[00:34:16] Nathan Wrigley: They get a code. Yeah. And it's, and also that code is customizable so they can change it. So like this is, it says Amy. and Steve is just three random characters whenever he was created. Oh. So it's not just some sort of random pseudo random noise thing. You can make it WP builds or whatever you want.

Yeah. And what's cool is, it generates one randomly, but if they ever wanna change it later they can. And all of the old versions of their ID still works. Oh, nice. Oh yeah. So you don't have to go hunting around for off ho no, that crap. Yeah, no, it just works. Yeah. okay, so we're gonna say, lemme make sure I do this right.

[00:34:53] Alex Standiford: So I wanna think this through. So we're gonna do. we're gonna have somebody visit the site as Amy first. And then after that I'm gonna have them visit as Steve, just to show you that Amy wins instead of Steve. So what we're imagining here just to, I just so that it's clear in my head. Yeah, sure.

[00:35:11] Nathan Wrigley: Amy, through whatever system she's got has encouraged somebody to click on that link and her her Amy referral link, which you just added, appended at the end of the URL that would come from an email newsletter or whatever she's doing. That's right. that's right. So she's landing on the site and she's about to get some kind of referral.

Okay. the cu the, customer is, yeah. yeah. So the customer's on from her link. Yes. Yeah, that's it. Thank you. No worries. And then Steve is gonna basically do the same thing. So I'm gonna now have the visit. So maybe, they clicked on the site with Amy and then two weeks or so later they're watching Steve's content and they visit the site as Steve.

[00:35:50] Alex Standiford: Oh, again, just to be clear, you are using two separate browser browsers here. The Amy one was done in a different browser and the Steve one's done in a different No, same browser. Nope, same session. Interesting. in this case, so in this case, both Steve and Amy are, have been credited with this visit, but they've not been rewarded with an obli, like a payout or anything like that yet.

'cause nobody's actually bought anything. I, I see. Okay. Okay. Thank you. What's gonna, yeah, no worries. Whenever this, whenever it's actually purchased though. Amy's going to get credit because she was the first person to drive the traffic. So you did Amy first and then a moment or two later Steve went in.

[00:36:31] Nathan Wrigley: So we now Okay, got it. Okay. Yeah, it's all adding up and because the lead generator and the special lead gen program are both in a group, only one of them are gonna pay out. So only Amy is gonna get this credit this time. Okay. and then if we go to the shop, we're gonna go ahead and for the 10000th time in my life, buy a beanie and a belt.

I wonder how many times you've done this. Oh my gosh. Yeah. We're gonna go to the cart. Oh, I'm gonna add a coupon and we're gonna add Doing well. All right. I remember that. Yep. Yep. And that, if you remember that was, that was your boy Brad's Brad Wellington's coupon code. We're gonna proceed to check out and I'm gonna.

[00:37:19] Alex Standiford: Look at all the tests. I don't know if you see the popup test, all test, test all the way down. It's such is life. Yeah, it's okay. I would pay for a WordPress plugin that just automatically I bet there's a browser. Yeah, I bet there's, yeah, like a browser extension or something. Yeah. All right, so we're gonna place the order.

All right, cool. So the order went through, now I'm just using a, so if we go back over to the dashboard. yep. One sec. The way I set up we're back, the way I set up, WooCommerce in this case, it's just using a check payouts for testing purposes. not so the purchase went through, but it's on hold.

Obligations don't actually get created until this is marked as complete. As soon as you mark this as complete, it's gonna trigger and it's gonna create those obligations. so the obligations are the payouts? the rewards. The rewards. The rewards, Got, got it. so I'm gonna go over to, so now that I've completed that, I'm gonna go over to the obligations and you're gonna see there's actually gonna be more than you might expect here, because I had already done some earlier today, but, you'll see that, where'd it go?

Hold on a second. Oh, there we go. so you'll see the Amy Rockwell, oh, you know what? For some reason Steve didn't get the credit. I wonder if it, I wonder if I did something wrong in the setup there. I know this worked earlier, but, this is, you know what, Alex, if you'd have got through this without something going wrong, it would've been a miracle.

You know what I I told my wife when I was before, I was like, something's gonna go wrong. And she told me, she said, it's okay. When it does, you just look at the screen and you go, we're professionals. So that's right here. We're, no, I get it. Like you did a, you had a whole, you had a pyramid of things you had to do Yeah, To get that out. And I like, I don't think anybody here is gonna think this is working this, it's just, there was something in the steps up to it. Something I, maybe I had a typo. Who knows? Yeah. Yeah. But either way, both Brad and Amy got credit for that sale. and you can see that here. so if we actually go to, sorry.

Okay. So that's how that works. And you can see that these are all marked as, Pending because they're pending payout, they're waiting to be paid, right? what we can do from here is we can actually pay out these affiliates, or, and in order to do that, you can do it in a couple different ways. One, you can select individual ones that you wanna pay and create, and click Create Fulfillment. And then it'll actually create, a fulfillment specifically for those records.

Or you can just create click, create fulfillments from pending. And basically, with Siren. I wanted to think a little bit more about how the payout process works, because, I realized that there's an extra step that a lot of program, a lot of solutions isn't really, aren't really doing well. And that was this whole payout experience.

Oh, this, can be horrible. Yes. You be spreadsheets and Oh, calculator on the desk. Yeah. And it's all, yeah. So I, you click create fulfillments from pending and basically it's just gonna grab all these pending obligations here, Uhhuh. It's gonna tally 'em up and it's gonna group 'em together and tell you how much you owe and which obligations it's gonna mark as complete.

So you would do this like once a month or however often you actually pay your collaborators, right? so we're gonna click generate fulfillments and what's gonna happen is it's gonna tally up for each collaborator how much you owe them and in whatever currency you're paying them in. and create a fulfillment for each currency, for each collaborator as well.

In my case, I'm only using US dollars in almost all cases. It's gonna be a single currency, but I want it to be able to cover cases like, store credit or other things like that. And this will allow you to do that. Okay? That's neat. you'll see that the fulfillment was created. So if I click on this fulfillment, you'll see it, it slurped them up into two records, one for Amy and one for Brad.

And you can see how much money I owe Amy and how much money I owe Brad. And then, you can have multiple fulfillments that are set up, right? So, if there was a different, so maybe, and the reason for that is so that each month you have a, trail, a record of like where you paid, when you paid and all and all of that stuff.

So you would, and the fulfillment screen have multiple fulfillments down here you'll see how many you haven't paid yet and how many you have paid, et cetera, et cetera. if you're doing this manually, obviously you can pay out these individual people, you can tick the box and mark them as paid manually.

you can mark 'em as unpaid. You can, you can, basically, this is a way for you to be able to keep track of who you actually owe, what you actually owe them, and all of that stuff over time. It's completely separate from the obligations and all of that. let's go ahead and click fulfill payouts.

And, at the moment, the only way to do this is by exporting A CSV. but as a person who's going to be using siren, believe me when I say I am very motivated to automate this. Yes. So it's pretty high on my list. I already have a couple of different ideas on how to implement it. but you click download CS CSV and fulfill items.

And basically what it's gonna do is, download the CSV and mark all of those payouts as paid. So there we go. I got my fulfillments there. so if I go back to my fulfillments and I click on this, you'll see that it marked both of them as paid. And, I can't open that CSV because of the way we're set up with this live stream.

It's, but basically it's just a spreadsheet, right? with the data that you need to be able to import it. but yeah, I marked them as paid. So now from there, you can then go into your payment processor, use the CSV to, pay your, pay the affiliates in whatever way you want. but what's really cool about this to me is since it's separate from obligations, if something goes wrong, let's say maybe I'm able to pay Brad, after I've exported this, I've gone to the bank.

I paid Brad, no problem. let's say maybe something went wrong when I was trying to pay Amy, right? I can come back here and I can mark this as unpaid, and it just basically undoes that. Oh, so now I know. Okay. I still owe Amy this money. So she comes out in the next CSV. Got it. Yeah. And then if I did it again, she would exactly come out in the CSV next time.

So this allows you to, keep track of who you owe above and beyond. Just like a one step process. that's the thing that drove me crazy about other solutions is that it's, it was always a one step process. You click this button and you do it, and then you have to manage any of those problems outside of this system completely.

And it just, it felt, it feels unfinished to me. It feels okay, we created the referrals, here's the CSV, good luck. so I wanted to make sure that there was a way to actually like, take care of this step of the process as well. Yeah. So you can, if you haven't got enough funds or whatever it may be, you come back, you mark somebody as incomplete and you just, use that CSV, then trash that one, then start again.

[00:44:57] Nathan Wrigley: Got it. Yeah. Got it. Exactly. Yep. Yeah, that's the bulk of the demo that I really wanted to show. I had, I have, I, yeah, that's it. I don't really, I don't really have anything else. I really wanted to show, I wanted to drive home how the multiple programs worked, and I felt that was by far the most important thing to talk about here.

[00:45:14] Speaker: yeah. so I think that's the thing that I'm taking away from it, is that you can stack like so many different things. you've showed just a couple, but I can imagine if you got creative, and I bet your community, your recent purchases are gonna start to get interesting and creative and fill your email inbox with ideas of, can we go this way please?

[00:45:33] Nathan Wrigley: And that'll be interesting. But the idea that you can, it doesn't have to be just one click. One, sorry, one size fits all. You can have a variety of different things. You can weight things differently and the grouping thing allows you to pay out in different ways as well. And Yeah. Neat, neat, Yeah. okay, so we do have a couple of things coming in, so we'll clarify Cameron's question first. So here we go. So this was the beginning bit that got us confused. So Cameron said, I'm sure you'll get to it, but I'm curious to know how much is automated versus how much needs manual reporting. Then he followed up with a new website build, for example, that sort of things, that wouldn't normally be purchased through e-commerce.

does that help you? Yep. Yeah. Okay. at the moment, I don't have a way to manually create, obligations. and there's literally no reason for that other than I just didn't, I just didn't think that it was necessary. But I gotta be honest, I've had a few people ask me about it, since launch.

[00:46:38] Alex Standiford: And I think it makes a lot of sense. I guess in my case, whenever I was thinking about the agency scenario where you're creating custom things, I was imagining that you would do a, like an e-commerce, like a WooCommerce, checkout process or something like that with, 'cause there's extensions that exist with, different e-commerce platforms.

Even just a forms plug in with a payment processor where you can get some of those details that you need to be able to start figuring out the calculation and then that would create the reward. And, you can you, I can't remember if you can edit them. No, you can't. but yeah, I think, you're right.

I think there is a need to be able to go in and manually adjust. And create obligations on the fly. yeah, that's definitely on my radar. So this isn't a question from anybody else, but this just occurs to me at this point and probably worth saying at this point. So Alex, this is brand new, right? You, anybody watching this?

[00:47:34] Nathan Wrigley: You are literally in like day three or something like that Yeah. Of this product. so, how open are you to suggestions like that? Like realistically not, wishing to get you to over promise or anything. Yeah. Is this fast becoming what Alex does? Are you thinking that this is gonna consume quite a lot of your time and, suggestions are welcome, we'll get a roadmap going, all that.

[00:47:58] Alex Standiford: My, I have a roadmap already. I just have no idea how to prioritize it. Yeah. And I'm gonna be using the customer's feedback and what's important to them, what's important to me in the moment, to be able to figure that out. But yeah, I honestly, I, my goal is to make this, the latter half of my career, is, building this plugin, creating this platform and.

Really redefining what a part, what it means to create a partnership online. Like I think that there's so many better ways we can do it, and it just drives me crazy that it's seen as like sleazy and snake oil salesmany and all this stuff. And I wanna show the world that you can do this without being that and give them a tool to let them do it.

[00:48:40] Nathan Wrigley: Okay, great. I'm gonna take the, I'm gonna take the screen off just for a moment because Sure. That's all I'm, but I'll, I'm bring it. yeah. I'll bring it back if, if something comes up that needs that. Sure. we've got a few more minutes, maybe five, six more minutes, so we'll, get through what we can.

so lovely creative, first of all, hello. trying to figure out how I could use this for my photography business. Lots of manual closing leads versus automatic, since it needs to be a much more personalized sale. So yeah. Less online, more Real world, How do we cope with that? I actually have a link, I have a blog post on siren site called How to Sell Expensive Things Online.

[00:49:20] Alex Standiford: And there's also one that's like a 1400 or so word blog post that I wrote as a blueprint for web agencies on how to do this. But really it can apply to any agency that's doing white glove service, like what you're talking about. the key things are one, to give your collaborators, your affiliates something to sell.

So maybe you're selling prepackaged lower cost things that they can sell, and then the custom things, you can use those opportunities to lead into, higher priced custom, offerings and things like that. And then, to Cameron's point earlier, if you're able, once I set it up to where obligations can actually be changed, you could actually create a lead form, right?

Where somebody fills out a form and maybe they submit like a. Deposit to be able to start working with you or something like that with a scope and with the sales process at that point, the sales team would be a little more hands-on. so having them separated like that kind of helps.

It just depends on how you wanna approach it. If you wanna have people who are like directly contacting and working with your customers to help define that stuff, you could do that. you could also not do that and just focus on selling the lower price stuff and use that as a way to jump into selling the higher price stuff.

[00:50:38] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, I think, I think that's a really good answer. Thank you, Alex. Appreciate that. Okay, so the next one, I dunno when this came in, but it arm, Amanda was just saying good one. I, can't remember, but there was, I tried to remember and then it's gone. But anyway. Good one. That was a moment where he thought that was great.

I like that. okay, Blaine, by the way, keep the questions coming. We've probably got a couple more minutes. wp builds.com/live. Go there, use the comments, Blaine, is this going to, ah, this? Yeah, this is interesting. Is this gonna be WooCommerce only or you will you integrate with other shopping carts in the future?

And there's a couple of SaaS ones mentioned, shortcut, thrive Cart, et cetera. So my, at launch I offered WooCommerce specifically, just because it was. The, best option that I had based on my knowledge and my network. I am very interested in doing more integrations with other plugins and other things.

[00:51:36] Alex Standiford: And, in fact, my entire pre-launch flow, whenever you signed up, for the site, I set it up to where people could actually suggest what integrations they were interested in, just so that I could get a, a feel for what people are people want to see. so yeah, in fact this, the initial use case for this wasn't even for WooCommerce, it was actually for LMS based solutions, specifically Lifter.

yeah, I'm very keen on doing a lot of integrations. in the future. that's pretty high on my list of things to do. So WordPress plugins, you mentioned the lifter and so on, but also it's not out of the bounds of possibility to go outside of that and get involved with, SAS platforms like thrivecart Appify.

[00:52:20] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. I've got experience with thrivecart and it's such a nice experience when you work Yeah. as the person selling through Thrive Car. It's an, it is pretty neat. I've gotta say. I like it. Okay, so another one from Blaine. Thank you Blaine. can, will this be able to set up Oh, non-monetary compensation.

So what, like gift cards or, I don't, what does that even mean? That's brilliant. yeah, it can, right now it doesn't have a way, there's not a comprehensive way to do it through the interface. You have to have a little code snippet to be able to register a custom currency. But yeah, programs can pay in any currency that you want to.

[00:52:59] Alex Standiford: And if you wanted to create a, if you wanted to pay in high fives, you just gotta register that currency and, pay out those high fives. But it could be, a better example of course would be, store credit. That's a common, there you go. There, there's Blaine right in there, just saying exactly what you said, credit for future purchase and so on.

[00:53:19] Nathan Wrigley: Okay. So again, get into Alex, tell him what you, want as your feedback and, and so this is in reply to Oh no, wrong one. Lovelace is just saying thank you, to the reply that you gave about photography websites a moment ago. Pleasure. It's great. Okay. Blaine's on fire. Blaine needs some sort of affiliate system to reward him for the amount of comments he's made on this platform.

That'd be nice. As a follow up, can conversions be tracked that aren't necessarily a sale, such as paying for a lead to sign up for a new, for a newsletter? That's where the other integrations come in. so if I, so whenever I set up a, forms, I'm gonna be doing a forms plugin integration. And obviously that's gonna allow you to create a better signup form for your collaborators.

[00:54:10] Alex Standiford: there is a signup form that's built into the system. I didn't have time to show that today, but, if you wanted to create a more robust one, you could do that. But on top of that, if you wanted to create a lead form and actually give people credit whenever that form is submitted, then yeah, that's the whole reason why those engagement tracking events, all those different check boxes with the, the affiliate link and all that stuff.

But I was saying earlier, there's gonna be so many that are gonna be available in that based on what integration you're using, based on what integrations you have and what are compatible with that. so yeah, a, lead generation form is a great example of something that could, not only be something that you pay somebody for, but it could also be something that you, Create as a referral. So maybe instead of giving credit for whenever the person visits the site, maybe you give them credit for filling out a specific form. So there's all kinds of different ways to integrate with forms, plugins, and different integrations. And that's why I had to launch with just WooCommerce, because if I didn't, it would be 2030.

And I'd still be building it. Yeah. We're not sure of, form plugin solutions. Yeah. Speaking of which, Blaine's already getting on the roadmap. he says, his suggestion would be, fluent forms or popular forms, like plugin solutions. I've gotta talk to them. Yeah. I think I've had about a dozen people tell me I want fluent forms and fluent CRM, yeah.

[00:55:26] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. Okay. Oh, yeah. Okay. CRM. Yeah. Okay. That'd be interesting. da So da duh. Brilliant. again, Blaine, fake currency. He likes that idea. I think that's good. And we'll probably round off on this one, which isn't really a question. It's just a, some commentary really. And it's Cameron Jones saying it's a small thing.

but he is liking how it fits into the WordPress ui. too many plugins. These are too opinionated. Yeah. So was that an, was that your, was that just a decision that you made to keep it WordPress? See, because it looked just like WordPress. There was no kind of UI overhaul that you went through there. It was nice.

I. I'd love to say that was the original intent. some of the reason, so I was building out this big fancy interface and doing all this stuff, and I was like, why am I doing this? I spent two months building the interface and I was like, and I was even close to done, and I was like, I'm never gonna launch at this rate.

[00:56:17] Alex Standiford: And I said, forget it. I'm just gonna use WordPress, this stuff. And I just completely trashed this react based fancy ui and I just said, I'm just using WordPress. And I just threw together the interface way faster than what I was doing with that just because I was hugging WordPress tight.

And it was just a, it was a humbling and, and, Strong reminder on why I was here in the first place, right? maybe I should just use some WordPress speeds up your WordPress, it speeds up your workflow. Anyway, so that's what unique, but I agree. I do, I do appreciate that it's built in, actually, the affiliate dashboard is also just a part of the WordPress dashboard.

Yeah. So your affiliates and collaborators actually like, they, and the reason why is because if you wanted to have a, maybe one of your collaborators is a blogger, as a writer on your site, I wanted to be able to like automatically let other plugins actually extend. The functionality of this naturally.

And a really easy way to do that is just to use the dashboard. Yeah. Because that's, it's already easy. I'm with you. I'm with you. Graham Hoffman says, fluent forms would indeed be a good option. So there's two people to add to your, to your roadmap. reach out to Jewel. I can connect you with, jewel if you please do that after this.

[00:57:29] Nathan Wrigley: Yes, that'd great. Yep. Yep, That's good. And very last one coming in from Karen. is there a catalog where all our options show on sites are, you mean, do you mean all the different, I'm assuming you mean all the different programs that you can choose from. So the way that works and stop me, Karen, if, that's not true, but, basically you can create a form.

[00:57:54] Alex Standiford: it's a block, it's a word, it's a Gutenberg block. So basically you can just create a form with the block and you can specify when somebody signs up on this form. You can like have it, give them permission or they have to ask for permission, whatever. There's all kinds of settings there. But the key ones is when somebody fills out this form, sign them up for the following programs.

Like you select which programs you want them to sign up for and it'll just automatically register them for those programs. So that lets you create as many or as few pages as you need for your different programs on the public facing side of your site. So the answer is yes, there are ways to do it. Yeah, I suppose so.

[00:58:31] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. Yeah, Sorry that, that came out the wrong way. It's okay. Apologies. Your answer was much better. okay, so we've hit the top of the hour. I, thought that was fabulous. A nice smattering of questions at the end there. Just a quick one. there's a QR code, but we'll give you the URL in real terms, but it, at the beginning of this, live q and a, there was, there were a few, there was a handful left.

good luck. I hope that you managed to, to get some of those. Hopefully Alex has shown it off in there to make you think, A, that he has built something that you think is gonna be useful to you, b, that he's gonna support it. In the near future, which like is a big thing. And I heard that come outta your mouth and that makes me feel happy.

and see there is no c just go to siren affiliates.com and there's, there'll be a button, there'll be many buttons. Oh yeah. Say, yeah. There's so many yellow buttons. so many yellow buttons. But you can also point your camera at that video. What's the deal though? if we fail Yeah. Cook.

It's so hard to get you, I know. To get your finger to go where you want it to go. What's the deal though, if, if somebody watches this a couple of weeks from now and is inspired, how's the pricing gonna work going forward? Do you just ramping it up slowly or is it just going straight into subscription from whatever those sellouts?

[00:59:48] Alex Standiford: Yeah. Once I run out of, once I sell these a hundred lifetime deals, I am done selling lifetime. I don't know when or if I'll ever do it again. Yep. I haven't decided, but I know I'm not doing it. indefinitely for sure. Okay. from there I'm going to offer, annual payout, an annual plan, actually still pretty heavily discounted for $49 a year.

Oh, that's all right. Yeah. So even if you miss that, you're gonna have a week to get that. And then after that, it's gonna bump up to my actual price of 99. Okay. So the launch has been in several phases of how late you are into the game, and the deal is getting progressively, still really good, but not as good as it was, the day before.

Yeah, I bet we've got fun figuring all that out. Yeah, it's, it was quite a dance. Oh, honestly, thank you so much. So siren affiliates.com, go there, find a yellow button, grab it whilst you can, you'll be able to grab it forever, but grab it while the price is cheap. anything else you wanna drop just before we knock it on the head, as we say in the uk?

No, just thanks Nathan. I really appreciate you, man. You're awesome and I'm really glad that you're in this community. Oh, I'm, pleased about it as well, and I'm, I sincerely hope that, we're hearing from SO and affiliates into the future. Thank you so much for joining me today, Alex. I will see you.

[01:01:08] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. Thank you soon. Cheers mate.