An Influencer Marketing Strategy 101 Guide Membership Websites
Unlock the power of influencer marketing in 2025. Our 101 guide covers everything from finding the right influencers to measuring ROI.
Unlock the secrets to successful influencer marketing in 2025 with our comprehensive guide! This video delves into the essential strategies and trends that will shape the future of influencer partnerships. Learn how to identify the right influencers, create authentic collaborations, and measure your campaign’s success. Whether you’re a brand or an aspiring influencer, this guide is tailored for you. Don’t miss out—watch the video now.
Hosts of the show Jonathan Denwood & Nicole Ouellette
Nicole Ouellette
This Week Show’s Sponsors
LifterLMS: LifterLMS
Convesio: Convesio
Omnisend: Omnisend
The Show’s Main Transcript
[00:00:00.380] – Jonathan Denwood
Welcome back, folks, to the Membership Machine Show. This is episode 112. In this show, we will discuss influencer marketing and strategies, a 101 guide. If you’ve got a membership website and you’re looking at influence in marketing. I’ve got my great partner in crime. I’ve got Nico in the house. She’s feeling a bit better from last week but has no hot water. That’s fine.
[00:00:41.290] – Nicole Ouellette
It’s always something, right? I think anybody listening to this understands that it’s always something in life. But we’re all here today, so that’s what counts.
[00:00:52.060] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, right. So, would you like to introduce yourself to Nicole, the new listener and viewer?
[00:00:57.510] – Nicole Ouellette
Sure. Yeah. My name is Nicole Willet. I own a company called Tech Nicole Support, where I do a lot of online marketing stuff, mainly with many small businesses, and I also have a couple of co-working spaces. So, yeah, that’s pretty much me in a nutshell.
[00:01:15.380] – Jonathan Denwood
Right. So, as I said, in this episode, we will be talking about how you might utilize influence the marketing, some of the pitfalls, and some of the tips and insights that will help you get some success with an emphasis on how it fits in. If you’ve got a membership website and you’re trying to market a learning website, it should be a great show. But before we go into the meat potatoes, I got a message from one of our major sponsors. We will be back in a few moments, folks. Three, two, one. Coming back, folks. Before we go into the significant points of the show, I want to point out we have a great list of resources. If you’re looking to build a membership website in 2025, plug-in services, loads of great resources, and some special offers from our major sponsors to get this great list. All you have to do is go over to wptonic.com/newsletter. You can sign up for the WP-Tonic.com newsletter, and then you will be taken to this online resource to consume all the free goodies. What more could you ask for, I say?
[00:02:44.800] – Jonathan Denwood
It’s probably a lot more, but that’s all you’ll get.
[00:02:47.170] – Nicole Ouellette
It’s a great resource if you haven’t downloaded it yet.
[00:02:52.540] – Jonathan Denwood
Loads of people download it, and they don’t get any complaints, so they must find it helpful. So, Nico, I’m in your hand. You’ve got a bit more experience with how we are going to introduce this subject to our beloved tribe.
[00:03:11.120] – Nicole Ouellette
Yeah. So, at the start, I want to say this is a part one of two. So we’re going to get into how this works in general and more strategy, and we’re going to get into more details in part two. So if you’re listening and thinking, Oh, wow, I really want to know more, know that there’s that other stuff coming in. However, I believe the word influencer was added to the dictionary in 2017. You have probably heard of the idea of an influencer; sometimes, they also call themselves content creators. So, content creators or influencers create content on their platforms. So it could be somebody who has a podcast on a YouTube channel and makes content, for example. Or it could be somebody who only posts on TikTok or something like that. The idea is that they have at least one platform, and they post content that they create themselves. And it’s typically around some niche. So, somebody might be an influencer about organizing homework or cleaning, an influencer about technology or AI, or an influencer about any number of things.
[00:04:23.320] – Nicole Ouellette
And the idea is that they’re building an audience, and they’re creating content around this topic. And what What companies have gotten hip to over the last few years is, wow, these people are making content, so they clearly understand how to make content. And they’re also building an audience. And I know what my audience is, and it seems like our audience are similar. So why not to get my product or service in front of some new people? Why don’t I work with one of these people? They can create content about my product or service. I get in front of their audience, they get paid, And it’s theoretically all benefits all around. I don’t know. Jonathan, do you have anything to add? Am I missing any subtleties of influencers in a general way and how they work?
[00:05:14.560] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, It interwines with affiliate marketing, but there’s different model deals, isn’t it? And it’s all mishmash together in my mind. But it’s definitely… But you might disagree with that, but it’s all mishmashed in my view of it all. But they’re very separate in some ways, but they’re also linked, aren’t they?
[00:05:47.170] – Nicole Ouellette
Well, if you’re making content, let’s say I’m an influencer about podcasting, I’m not, but let’s say I was, I could be posting content about making podcasts and I’m following your podcast and stuff across multiple platforms. And I might be approached by a podcast hosting company, for example, and say, Hey, we’ll pay you or we’ll work with you, what are your rates, and I could say, Oh, these are my rates for creating content. I will charge you $300 per post. And I typically do… I would have a rate sheet, and the company might hire me to create content around their service. But the other way that these content creators or these influencers get paid is they will often work out affiliate deals. You will see this. For example, if you’re on TikTok, you’ll see people making TikTok shop videos, or you’ll see people talking about a piece of software, a product, and they’ll say, use my promo code X, or go to this particular link, and you’ll get a special discount, you’ll get a free gift, something like that. There’s some incentive for you to take that extra effort to put it in. And so what that typically is, is an affiliate.
[00:07:03.240] – Nicole Ouellette
So they are getting a percentage or a flat rate per sale. So a lot of content creators and influencers, some will be paid directly by the brand to create content, but some will also work in terms of finding products and services they like and making content around this affiliate and this idea that when they make a sale, they’re going to get paid for it. So yeah, I I think you’re right. I think most people do both. If you’re thinking about your favorite influencer, you probably have noticed content related to both.
[00:07:39.060] – Jonathan Denwood
Yes. I’ve been approached to post on why I’m a hybrid because I’m using podcasting, I’m using this podcast, I use my YouTube channel because I have a physical company that has a service that might be useful to my target audience. I use the podcasting as a mechanism to show Google that I have some expertise or influence, and that’s why I use the YouTube channel, and both are building, but I’m using it as a marketing tool. I see myself as a hybrid because the reason why I say that is I’m not just relying on advertising. I do take sponsorship for the podcast, but it just about covers the expenses of hosting the podcast and getting the podcast edited and some other expenses. So it just covers my expenses for the year. And that’s all I’m looking for because I will take sponsorship, and I’ve had people approach me for writing posts and that, and I have politely refused because I do a lot of posting, a lot of content for the WP Tonic website, but I produce all that content, and I also have a couple of writers that help me. But I’ve just chosen that because I just didn’t…
[00:09:26.840] – Jonathan Denwood
And I’ve had a couple people offer me a fair bit of money to sponsor the show, but plus they wanted to appear on the show regularly, plus they wanted editorial control on that, and that was just a bridge too far from I mean, Nico.
[00:09:46.340] – Nicole Ouellette
Yeah. And I think sometimes, I think what you’re bringing up is a really good point, which is that sometimes people create content, not just to get paid by other companies, but to grow their own company or to grow their influence on a topic. So maybe the word for you would be a thought leader. And yeah, you sell your own products as part of that. But your primary mechanism for running your business isn’t to have other companies pay you to promote their products.
[00:10:17.400] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I’ll just put this concept to you. Because I see is there’s this, and there’s probably even more subsections, but there’s… Oh, sure. There’s there seems to be the influence that got millions of followers. Even though it’s different, it has some of the concept of previous mass marketing, especially television. They have well-known brands or brands that want that. There’s influences in the beauty fashion that have millions of followers. And a brand approaches them, and it’s aimed at a very large target audience because they have a large following. And then there’s people like me that are in niches And we take more sponsorship deals that are more aimed not at such a broad audience, because we We haven’t got a broad audience, we got a micro-audience compared to millions, but it’s more focused. Am I blabbing or did that make sense?
[00:11:38.440] – Nicole Ouellette
No, it does make sense. And the other thing that, there’s multiple studies, and I can’t cite any of them right now, but basically these smaller audiences, they typically have better engagement. A lot of times they’re of better value.
[00:11:53.570] – Jonathan Denwood
Oh, dear. Yeah, Nicole. On our list, we got audience targeting higher conversions and brand awareness. I was saying before we went live to Nicole that I saw it this could have some real benefit for somebody starting their membership journey, their membership business, building their membership by approaching partners like that. It’s in in their industry and also already have an established membership website, but your course, your product is in the same industry but isn’t a direct competitor to their course. But they’ve already got established YouTube channel, they’ve got established TikTok, or they’ve got some audience, and by offering them a package, they might consider promoting your course and you get access to a targeted audience and also the influencer of that individual. What do you reckon about all that, Nicole?
[00:13:19.680] – Nicole Ouellette
Yeah. Well, and I think you’re also, in addition to getting access to their audience, you’re also getting somebody who is trusted in that field to to talk about your product. And so it’s not just you saying how great your membership is, it’s somebody else who’s also an expert in the field who’s outside looking in. Yes, they’re getting compensated in some way for it. But at the same time, their audience trusts them and knows that they wouldn’t endorse a membership platform or a membership service that they didn’t think was valuable. So if you’ve ever tried to build an audience online, you know how long it takes to not only grow that audience, but to gain their trust. So most influencers, because also this is how they make their money or at least some percentage of their money, they don’t want to make their audience just trust them. So if they’re going to talk about a product, it’s something they theoretically really like and use themselves and all of that. So I think there’s a few levels and benefits to working with influencers, whether it’s, like you said, that you’re exchanging money for a certain post or whether it’s in an affiliate relationship or a mutually beneficial relationship.
[00:14:41.390] – Jonathan Denwood
So let’s put some meat on this.
[00:14:43.940] – Nicole Ouellette
Yeah, let’s do it.
[00:14:45.330] – Jonathan Denwood
We can roll over into the second half because we’ve got at least 10 minutes. Let’s say I was a voice coach, and I was specializing in stage fright, and I had a reputation. I had actually helped a lot of people, one to one, come to me in person, being recommended to me, and I had helped those people. Let’s say that may I’ve done a couple of TED Talks on it, TEDx talks on it. And I’ve done some speaking gigs, so I’ve got some authority in the subject, and I built course, and I need to start marketing it, marketing it myself on YouTube, on TikTok, on Instagram. But I was thinking of approaching people in the music industry in the educational music sector that had education YouTube channels, TikTok, trying to teach people to play a particular instrument. Public performance that might be suffering from stage fright. What do I need, based on your experience to develop? And how do I approach these people, and how do I identify them?
[00:16:25.490] – Nicole Ouellette
Well, I think part of it is you want to figure out what you want to get out of it. So maybe you say, okay, my goal with this is to… Let’s say you know that when people get to your website or they follow you for a while, you convert 10 % of them into your Stage Fright. Stage Fright membership, that’s not a very good name, but let’s just call it that. So I mean, what you could do is you could say, okay, if I can convert 10 %, okay, if I got 50 % more traffic to this site. I could obviously theoretically make more money. So what I might do, I think approaching musicians is a great idea. I think anybody who is trying to get good at a craft, there is getting good at the craft, and then there’s the dealing with the crowd part, which is separate. Obviously, you want to learn to play the piano, you want to learn to play it well, but it’s one thing you can play it well by yourself in your room, and it’s another thing to play in front of hundreds of people. So I think that you could approach those people.
[00:17:35.340] – Nicole Ouellette
What I would do is I would find some of these music educators, and I will watch some of their content. I would see, do they make content about other brands besides their particular music course? Because that shows me that they would be open maybe to working with me. And I would see like, okay, it seems like they’ve talked about this sheet music company pretty consistently. Okay. And I can start looking at these brands that they’re working with and see, okay, this seems reputable or whatever. I think what you could do is you could send them a message and say, Hey, I really like your content. I see that you’ve worked with a sheet music company. We’re looking for influencers to promote my Stage Fright course, my Stage Fright membership. I forget what we’re calling it, but A lot of times these people will have some rate sheet or policy or way that they work with people. So what I would do is assume that they might have that already, so I would ask them. And if they didn’t, they might come back at you and say, Oh, I would be interested in that. And what would that look like?
[00:18:45.580] – Nicole Ouellette
And then it puts it on you to come up with what you’re wanting from them and what you’re maybe willing to pay or exchange for that. So yeah, I mean, obviously, as you’re hearing this, you’re probably like, wow, that’s going to take a lot of time. And I mean, there’s a reason that these influencer directories and stuff exist. And whenever you search influencer marketing, your first four or five Google results are paid services that do that thing.
[00:19:17.020] – Jonathan Denwood
But the reality is- What’s your attitude towards these services?
[00:19:23.210] – Nicole Ouellette
I mean, obviously anybody who makes an introduction is going to take a cut, If you have an agent, they introduce, and a lot of them take a pretty big cut, in my opinion, for having a database that they lightly maintain. But I can also see if you had absolutely no idea what you were doing and using a tool like that would save you some money to try it from an initial campaign or two. I’m not entirely against it. I personally think they’re a little overpriced, but I guess that’s my opinion.
[00:19:58.560] – Jonathan Denwood
You’re You’re saving time through the transaction of money, aren’t you? I presume people that are starting out… Because there is a lot of people out there, Nicole, that have the knowledge, have the ability through their course to help people. But they’ve just built it, and they’ve spent a lot of time trying to find the right platform, make the videos, assemble the lessons. There’s a lot of balls in it, but they haven’t thought how we’re actually going to market this course. And without a marketing strategy, without a SEO, without a content, without some ongoing mythology that can get people into a funnel. It’s very unlike. But there is loads of people, and I think influence marketing is one of the ways that you can get the ball rolling. You can get that first 100, 200. In a way that you can do the outreach and it can be affordable. I think we’re going to go for a break, our mid-break, and then when we come back, we’re going to ask her, ‘Oz, Nicole, how much these different influence might want. And we go into some of the other things that you need to know. Hopefully you found the first half useful.
[00:21:46.930] – Jonathan Denwood
I’m sure you did, actually. And we’re just putting some ideas into your mind, just bringing some concepts that you might find helpful. So we’re going for our mid break, folks, and we’ll be back in a few moments. Three, two, one. We’re coming back. I’m going to throw it over to Nicole. She’s going to tell us about her fabulous media platform that saves you a load of time, and it’s fun as well. Back over to you, Nicole.
[00:22:22.540] – Nicole Ouellette
Yeah. So if you are trying to do social media marketing and you’re frustrated by having to make videos because don’t know what you’re supposed to make an Instagram reel or a TikTok or a YouTube short about, I have a service for you called trenddescend. Com. What I do is I track trends across YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram. I find a trending idea that you can use across platforms, and I send it to you in a convenient text message twice a week. So basically, by doing these trends, you’re posting eight videos a month. And whenever I post a trending video, it gets hundreds of views in a way that my other content doesn’t seem to, because these platforms really like these fun, light-hearted trends. So if you’re looking to add to your marketing mix and do more successful short form video marketing, check out trenddescend. Com.
[00:23:17.890] – Jonathan Denwood
Right. You say that you’re in a particular… Let’s say you’re a voice coach and you sign up to your fabulous service. You’re going to be doing videos around music, but you do the hard work about finding popular styles, how the people are doing the video, and you can adapt that style to how you’re doing your particular TikTok or video. Is that… I got it right, everyone?
[00:23:52.000] – Nicole Ouellette
Yeah, and I just sent you the link to the trending audio on the platform. If you want, you can subscribe to TikTok emails and Instagram emails and YouTube emails, and then you could track, you can look at the trends and you can watch a bunch of them and say, Oh, this one’s silly. Oh, this is a complicated dance. I certify all of my trends to be middle-aged woman approved. Anytime I roll my eyes when I see one, I am not going to send that to you. So just know that these trends are fun, but they’re doable by a regular, regular person.
[00:24:26.870] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s great, and it will save you a ton of time and help you get some real results from these social media platforms.
[00:24:34.220] – Nicole Ouellette
Absolutely.
[00:24:34.960] – Jonathan Denwood
So it’s a win-win. So let’s go on our journey around influence and marketing, which I was really looking forward to this discussion because I think I myself should engage in this around WP Tonic to some extent, and find some people and do some of this. Also, I’m thinking of buying some email lists as well, but maybe not next week, because we’ll still be talking about this subject, but next subject, maybe we’ll maybe have a show discussing I’ll ask that, but I will have to ask Nicole her thoughts on that before we do the show.
[00:25:20.670] – Nicole Ouellette
I love it.
[00:25:21.580] – Jonathan Denwood
But I’m really thinking about this myself. So let’s say you’ve built a nice course. Let’s say you’ve listened to Jonathan and you’ve done your minimum viable course and you’ve done your pre-launch, where you got half a dozen to a dozen people to go through the course, and you really interviewed them properly and got their honest input about which parts of the course they really liked, the bits they didn’t, the things that they really found useful, the bits they didn’t, which will give you a roadmap about which bits of the courses you should expand and maybe the bits that you should remove, because I’ve never known anybody, don’t know how much experience that’s developed a course or developed an online product There were elements of WP Tonic. I’ll give you an example, Nicole. I found a really great partner that hosted video, and I was going to have the hosted partner That was part of my package, and it enabled me to white label their service, and it was going to be part of WP Tonics. When I was getting my first, about four or five years ago, I was getting my first customers, they had no interest because almost all of them had already bought a video hosting service.
[00:26:58.600] – Jonathan Denwood
Vimeo, one of We do offer it. We offer a great plugin, but we work with a partner called Bunny. Net, and it’s about one-fifth to one-fifth the cost of using something like Vimeo. And That’s worked great. So I removed that. I spent a lot of time researching that and talking to different suppliers, and the initial interest wasn’t there. So that’s why you want to do a minimum beta or a pre-launch to find out what elements… Because I’ve known loads of people and they say, Oh, they’re going to rave about this part of the course, and they’ve got no interest. And the bits that you think they’re not really interested, they rave about. And that maybe will tell you which parts you should really highlight in your verbraage on your homepage and on your key landing pages. So that’s why it’s important, folks. It’s like one-on-one of marketing, really. But I’m not making out. I’m just telling you what I’ve learnt the hard way, so you don’t have to make those mistakes. So this We’re not talking about… We couldn’t afford big celebrities and influencers. We’re talking about nano or micro influencers. Like Our example of the voice coach who had a course about stage fright.
[00:28:37.250] – Jonathan Denwood
They’re going to be a… What size of YouTube channel? This is you, subscribers? What size of YouTube channel? What size of TikTok? What size of Instagram influencer in subscription size would maybe… With a Individual to be in some budget, but not a large budget, what size can they approach? And roughly, how much is this going to cost them?
[00:29:14.490] – Nicole Ouellette
So I pulled some numbers, and I just used the defining numbers that I found on one of the sources, which is Shopify’s big study that they did on influencers a couple of years or so ago. So a nano influencer is somebody with 500 to 10,000 followers. And obviously, that’s a pretty big range. But the idea is that it’s a small audience. And what’s interesting is when I was looking this up is that if you look at Instagram, so if you had an Instagram audience that size, how much would you charge per post? And it ranges from, in this study, 10 to $100 per post. Now, you got to keep Keep in mind that you’re obviously not going to hire an influencer to do a singular post. The idea is that you have to do, just like with all this marketing stuff, you have to do repeat messaging. And the idea is that you want the influencers audience to grow to trust your brand. So they need to hear about you multiple times. So this isn’t a singular cost thing that we’re talking. I just want to give people an idea of numbers. So 510,000 Instagram seems the average person between 10 and $100 per post.
[00:30:35.920] – Nicole Ouellette
Tiktok, same size audience, five to $25 per post. Youtube, same size audience, $20 to $200 per post. So TikTok being the the lower end of things and YouTube being on the higher end of things.
[00:30:54.910] – Jonathan Denwood
So you say a post, that’s them making a video.
[00:30:57.860] – Nicole Ouellette
Is that? Yeah. Yeah, that’s them making a…
[00:31:02.380] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah.
[00:31:03.270] – Nicole Ouellette
Yeah. Although with Instagram, like I said, these different formats or these different platforms have different formats, right? So with YouTube, it’s all… There’s short videos and there’s longer videos. I guess you could do a community post, but I’m not really sure who would pay to be on someone’s community tab. But TikTok, obviously, is video. But with Instagram, there can be stories and in feed content that can be a still image as well. So some of these have multiple formats. And what a lot of influencers do when I’ve seen their packages is it is a package. They not a per post price, but they might have ways that they group things together with a package pricing. And so if the average person listening to this is just getting started with this or maybe doesn’t have a budget, your two biggest cost savings for this are finding your own influencers to work with. So you doing that legwork and working with these smaller audiences, because the prices obviously go up from there. The next level, just for comparison, is that microinfluencer. So nano is 500 to 10,000, micro is 10,000 to 50,000. And then you’re getting into, for or Instagram anyway, instead of $10 to $100 per post, you’re getting into $100 to $500 per post.
[00:32:36.630] – Nicole Ouellette
So as the audience goes up on the platform, typically the price per post goes up. But like I said, a lot of these influencers have pricing, and they typically do a package because, like I said, they’re not going to be hired for a singular post. They want an ongoing relationship.
[00:32:55.170] – Jonathan Denwood
How long do you think somebody’s got to give give this? Three months, six months, and how much money do they realistically need in the kit?
[00:33:07.980] – Nicole Ouellette
Well, the pricing can depend on not just the size of the audience, but what industry the person is in. So there’s certain industries, obviously, that have higher value products or are more competitive, things like that. The platform, we just talked about how basically TikTok was less expensive than YouTube, and And that makes sense, right? If you make a YouTube video that is out there. Youtube is the second largest search engine in the world. So you can make a video and have it be watched and found years later with TikTok. That’s a little bit harder. So that’s why the value of that audience is a little a lot higher. And then so there are some people who say, You know what, try a short term campaign, especially if you’re new to working with someone, and that short term campaign can be a few days to a few weeks. And the idea is, okay, let’s test this out, and let’s be flexible with how we work together based on how that first little bit goes. But when I was looking this up, I was like, I wonder what the average influencer campaign is, The number I found was 188 posts.
[00:34:18.110] – Nicole Ouellette
Now, remember back to five minutes ago when we were talking about $10 to $100 per post, 188 posts, that begins to add up. But the idea is that, okay, if I was going to If I was the influencer and I was going to post about it twice a day for about three months, it would be about 188 posts. So I think that’s where that number is coming from. But for most campaigns, like I said, you’re going to have some ongoing relationship. That said, I understand if you’re like, Oh, I just met this person. I don’t know how this is going to go. I can understand being a little leery of offering them thousands of dollars, but there might be a way to test it out in a shorter campaign. But it isn’t is going to be a singular post and you do want to give it, I would say, at least a few weeks. I would say a few days is not really that much, especially if it’s a higher value product or something that people are going to be continuously investing in, which is like a membership type product.
[00:35:21.380] – Jonathan Denwood
Do you think there’s people, because some of these microinflors between 10 and 50, it took me almost three to four years to get to 2,000 subscribers on my YouTube channel. But recently, it’s expanded by… Ever since it got past near the 5,000 past that, it’s accelerated quite rapidly. But I’ve also So over the last eight months, religiously put four videos per week up on YouTube.
[00:35:53.000] – Nicole Ouellette
That’s a lot. Wow.
[00:35:53.950] – Jonathan Denwood
So I’ve got over 1,500 videos on my YouTube channel But it is growing, and I do get actually quality leads from that effort. I also post a lot on LinkedIn about it, and I keep doing it, but I haven’t had much from that. It’s been most of YouTube that I’ve had success in using SEO content, an SEO YouTube, they’ve been the main drivers. If we go for the micro, do they do a hybrid? Because a lot of these influencers have a email list. Do you think you probably do a deal where they promote on your YouTube channel, but they also promote you through their email list? And is that where also the element of the affiliate marketing? So is it a bundle where they get paid, but they also get the cut of the sell, or they don’t? But I suppose it’s all mixed up. And I suppose if you’re somebody starting a course and you haven’t got a track record and you’re approaching one of these micro influencers, you basically just got to offer them a much better deal than a more established player, which they can show a track record themselves with other influencers, can’t they?
[00:37:38.400] – Nicole Ouellette
Yeah, I mean, you would want to be able to see their results. And I mean, you would want to check things like their engagement, look out for bots on their account, which is if you check their social blade stats and they have these spikes and followers that are like nice round numbers, or if you read their comments and it seems like really generic comments. So What you want to look for is somebody who has good engagement, and you check their comments, and it seems like people are leaving real comments and having conversations there. Like I said, they have a track record, ideally working with brands, and they might be able to show you results. But at the very least, like I said, everybody puts their packages together a little bit differently. So they could throw in an email or a text marketing arm to their influencing for your brand. They could want to do an affiliate deal. And oftentimes I’m sure that they want to offer their audience something, because otherwise, you could just mention the company name and they could obviously just go look it up themselves. But if, oh, if I type in the code Jonathan and I get 20 % off, well, that gives me a little bit of incentive to type it in and make sure they get credit for that sale.
[00:38:55.300] – Nicole Ouellette
So they probably are going to ask you for some deal so that they’re able to track the sales, because if they want to, they want to keep working with you. And I think a lot of people, especially ethical people, they only want to keep working with you if they’re getting results for you. So the results are for you to track, but it’s also for them, too, so that they can remain gainfully employed with you.
[00:39:23.200] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, it’s a YouTube, it’s a strange piece, because fundamentally, There’s a lot of influencers on YouTube that are selling products and influence about building up your YouTube channel. And to be brutally honest, a lot of their advice that I’ve watched is pretty mediocre. So I have no idea how anybody really does. I think the thumbnails, I think there’s plenty of resources, free resources that tell you. And I have increased the decency of the thumbnails and just the volume. But I tend to link it to my post that I’m going to… And I’m in a micro-sector, people looking to build a membership website, and I review all the plugin services, how to market your membership. And it’s It’s never going to be a mega… There’s only so many people looking to build a membership website, maybe looking to utilize WordPress for it. But it’s also you in the creative So I’ve tried to broaden it out in membership with the creator community, really, to some degree. So we move on. So we never really clarified what budget, if you’re going to try this out, what budget do you think you need?
[00:41:13.120] – Nicole Ouellette
I would say, just doing this math, I mean, I would say a couple of thousand dollars at least, personally. I mean, that’s what the math is doing when I look at the price per post and then how many posts it takes to maybe get some traction. And obviously, you don’t want to just maybe go all in on one singular. Maybe you want to try two or three different people or different companies, depending on how they see themselves.
[00:41:45.070] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, I think if you’re prepared to lay down 500 down and also have an affiliate element as well, and then say, Well, we do it for a couple of months and then we leave it. But if you keep on the affiliate and we’ll be back in three or four months and we have another go at it. You approach these people and then you have a Zoom with them and they can see that you’re starting out and you’re not a wacko. Because nobody wants to do work with people that are just a pain in the posterior, do they?
[00:42:28.580] – Nicole Ouellette
Right. I think I go a little higher in the budget, personally. I’m into paying creators what they’re worth. And also, I feel like that just sets the… Because the thing is, we’re asking people to make videos, right? They have to learn about your product. They have to use your product or get into your membership, see the subtleties of it. They have to think through what they want to say about it. They have to record it, edit it. So I don’t know. I would maybe go a little higher than 500, personally. I would think $1,000 per in my own mind as I was going in to negotiate it. But like I said, the thing is a lot of people, they have their pricing set up. And if, like I said, you’re willing to do the legwork yourself, and you’re willing to look at these people who have smaller audiences, but who have really high engagement- Well, I know there’s one individual who actually took a job as a video influencer for Automatic. Oh, yeah.
[00:43:27.600] – Jonathan Denwood
He managed to grow. My His intention is to grow the WP tonic YouTube channel to about 12,000 to 18,000 by the end of this year. Nice. Even if I have to use paid advertising to do that. But he managed to get his up to 18,000 until he took his full-time job with Automatic. I think he’s not promoting his own channel. He was charging 1,500 per a video advert. He was producing a video advert for somebody that wanted to market on his channel, and he was charging 1,500. I don’t know if that was for per episode or that was for a group of videos. I would imagine a group of videos. But like I said, he had about 18 to 20,000 people. There’s another- YouTube is a more expensive channel for influencer marketing just because it has…
[00:44:32.900] – Nicole Ouellette
Youtube videos have that longevity that a lot of social media content doesn’t have.
[00:44:38.890] – Jonathan Denwood
The biggest in one in WordPress, he started when WordPress started to get some traction about 8, 9 years ago. He’s not making many videos now, but it was the foundation. He had no traction in WordPress at all. It’s a guy called David He built up his YouTube channel, and it’s the biggest in the WordPress space to over 200,000 subscribers. He used affiliate marketing and he actually bought some plugin businesses or bought partnerships. One of them is a very well known. They did a deal together and he actually bought in the company and he made a load of money out of it and it financed him buying plugins and building a real business in the WordPress space. But he’s very good at it. His videos are very good and he The audience really likes him. He built a substantial business on influence, being paid to do placements, but also he made a lot of money out of affiliate marketing It’s still there, but I think it’s become very saturated and a horse like whipped death to some degree, isn’t it? But it still has a It’s a nice place, doesn’t it?
[00:46:16.440] – Nicole Ouellette
What do you- Yeah, and I think when it comes down to it, if you’re going to be working with an influencer, it’s like you’re a person working with a person. Oftentimes, if you want to work together, you can typically to figure out a way to do that that’s beneficial for you both. Like I said, a lot of people who do this, who have thought of doing this, have thought through their pricing. So I would say there’s some good resources out there. Obviously, there’s a lot of white papers and stuff. But this particular website that I use, it’s FYPM. Com, and it’s an acronym for Something You Pay Me. It’s a little expletive You Pay Me. And they are basically a place where people can share brand deals they’ve gotten, what they’ve gotten paid and all that. And they have some pretty specific numbers based on industries, campaign length, audience sizes, and that thing. So I I’ve gotten some good information there, and it really helped me set up my pricing. Not that I have actually gotten a deal just yet, but I’m in negotiations for a couple right now of potential content for pay situations.
[00:47:48.630] – Nicole Ouellette
And I felt very out of depth with pricing that. Like I said, I have a… Running a service business, I understand what I would charge to do a service, but I was like, oh, content, what would that be It just helped me to see what other people were getting paid for all that.
[00:48:04.340] – Jonathan Denwood
I’ve got a small group of people that sponsor the show, and some of them have been with me over three years, so they get a very discounted rate. And I have a couple of others. But I have a lot of people in the WordPress space for my other podcast that’s bigger than this, what goes, it’s essentially bigger audience. They just want me to talk about their plugin or their WordPress service, and they just want to give me a free license. They just want to give me a lifetime free license for one website. That’s not a good deal for you. They think I’m going to talk about their plugin on the show or something, or they don’t even offer me an unlimited license, unlimited website. But even that, I’m probably not going to take because I don’t know if I even like I’m very reluctant to recommend stuff to my audience that I haven’t… I don’t really believe in, or I don’t know anything about it. I never tried it, or I don’t know people that I respect that have tried it, and they said it’s really good. That doesn’t mean that I have to try everything.
[00:49:23.250] – Jonathan Denwood
That would be incorrect. I would be misleading the audience. But I’ve got to have signs and through recommendation or the person has a track record, and I’ve used the products that they have produced, and I know that they produce good quality services and and all the stuff on my list that I promote, it’s all stuff that I’ve either used or have used, and I know the people that are producing it, and that’s why it’s on the list. And some of it, I get affiliate, their affiliate links. Some of them aren’t actually. The bulk are, but it’s all stuff that I offer myself or I’ve used. So I think But there’s other people that just don’t care, do they? If you’re paying them money, they’ll plug it, won’t they?
[00:50:23.900] – Nicole Ouellette
Yeah, and the thing is, like I said, any of us who’s ever tried to build an audience or is building an audience knows how much work it is. And you know that it just takes years to get people to trust you and a few seconds to lose all that. So I think most people who are in this for a long haul believe like you and I do, which is that I have to like the product, I have to trust the company behind it, and I’m not just going to take money from anybody. I think the influencers are doing well in it for the long haul. Think like you and I do. You’ll probably get a good sense when you talk to them, whether they believe that way or not.
[00:51:06.640] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, I do have a… I’m in hosting, but I’m in a boutique micro sector of membership and community hosting. The most prominent sponsors: I do have a sponsor for this show and other shows that are hosting, but they’re into e-commerce and enterprise-level hosting. So, I don’t see them as a direct competitor. If they were, I wouldn’t have them as a… But I have been approached… Some of the biggest companies and most profitable companies are hosting providers in the WordPress space. And a couple of them, not for this show, but for my other show, have approached me, and I haven’t taken the deal because they’re crappy hosting providers. And this is why your audience trusts you.
[00:52:08.450] – Nicole Ouellette
And like I said, a good influencer, their audience trusts them, and you’ll be able to tell that, like I said, by looking at their engagement, by looking at their comments, and by watching their content to see how they talk about businesses that they’ve partnered with. Doing those three things in your research gives you an excellent idea of who these people are.
[00:52:26.570] – Jonathan Denwood
I think it’s a very different engagement. I know other influences on the YouTube channel on their podcasting is notoriously; it seems practically impossible to get any… Whenever I get active, I go to WordPress conferences, and I’m almost starting not on a minute by minute, not minute, but three or four times per day by people saying, I listen to your podcast. It’s great. I’ve been listening to it for years. But you hardly hear from anybody. It’s to silence it when you’re a podcaster. On YouTube, some people seem to get a lot of comments. I think it depends on what you’re talking about. I don’t know, David; he always used to get a lot of comments. I get a bit, but not as much as him. We’re going to wrap this up, Nicole. What’s the best way for people to learn more about you and what you’re up to, Nicole?
[00:53:28.550] – Nicole Ouellette
Oh, yeah. You can check out technicolesupport. Com, and I’m abouttechnicalsupport. Com, and I’m technicalsupport on various social media platforms.
[00:53:37.800] – Jonathan Denwood
If you want to support the show, go to the Membership Machine Show Facebook group. It’s a free resource for WordPress junkies and people trying to build a membership website or community website. It’s free. Also, you can sign up for the WP-Tonic YouTube channel. I post a load of stuff there about building a membership website. We will be back next week with another subject. We’ll see you soon, folks. Bye. Bye.
WP-Tonic & The Membership Machine Facebook Group
Why don’t you sign up and be part of the Membership Machine Show & WP-Tonic Facebook group, where you can get all the best advice and support connected to building your membership or community website on WordPress?
Facebook Group
