Are you still manually hunting for partners like it's 2010? If you aren't using artificial intelligence to handle the heavy lifting, you aren't just working too hard; you're actively falling behind. In this episode of Affiliate Nerd Out, I'm sitting down with a true legend in the performance marketing world, Matt Frary. He's built and exited six companies, and now, he's officially my new boss.

We're pulling back the curtain on Alfie, our new recruitment super tool that's designed to give affiliate managers their lives back. We're talking about saving ten hours of grunt work every single week. Imagine what you could do with an extra ten hours. You could spend more time with your family, focus on high-level strategy, or finally stop staring at spreadsheets until your eyes bleed.

Matt breaks down how we're using Claude and autonomous agents to index everything in our universe (emails, Slack, Google Drive) to make recruitment smarter and faster. If you're wondering how to recruit affiliates without losing your mind, this is the blueprint. We aren't looking to replace the human element because robots talking to robots isn't how business happens. Instead, we're building an assistant that handles the data analysis and outreach so you can focus on the real human connections that actually drive revenue.

We also get into some personal wins, including Matt's son choosing Baylor and a wild last-minute trip to the Final Four. Whether you're a director of marketing or a solo affiliate manager, you can't sleep on these tools. Check out what we're building over at https://www.xpflow.app/ and see how we're changing the game for operators.

00:00 AI Or Get Left Behind
00:33 Meet Matt Frary
01:57 Alfie And The Acquisition
03:33 Building For Family Time
05:50 Final Four Weekend
08:13 Matt's Entrepreneur Journey
09:58 Autonomous Agents In Practice
13:16 Upskilling With Notion AI
14:22 Wrap Up And Goodbye

Subscribe to the channel for more affiliate program growth tactics.

Want to recruit more affiliates? Get started at https://affistash.com

Connect with me on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/dustinhowes

#AffiliateMarketing #AIinMarketing #DigitalMarketing #AffiliateNerdOut #MarketingStrategy #AItools #ChatGPT #NotionAI #AIAutomation #WorkSmarter #TechInMarketing #alfie

Have you heard about Inflektion yet? They are changing the game in Affiliate marketing.The only platform with personalized funnels to scale partnership marketing for brands, agencies, influencers, and affiliates. Catering to the health and wellness space, this tracking soluition is helping build landing pages for partners in a manner of minutes instaead of weeks. They have social listening to capture all the content your brand is creating so that you can find more partners talking about y

For more tips on how to scale your affiliate program, check out https://performancemarketingmanager.com

Moving from consulting to a steady job is a big change. In this recent episode of Affiliate Nerd Out #RealTalkFriday, Christen Evans (she/her) and I talked about the realities of that transition—from the relief of a stable paycheck to the risks of poor tracking and why some businesses should wait before launching an affiliate program.

Topics we covered:

1. Consulting vs. in-house stability
2. Tracking mistakes that waste budget
3. Attribution gaps and reporting issues
4. Why some brands should wait to launch

Consulting can feel like constant pressure to generate revenue from the next client. A structured organization can offer stability many independent professionals miss.

One big takeaway: integrity means helping brands avoid bad investments, even when it means turning down business.

What do you miss most about being an employee when you work for yourself?

🔻 Check the full article: https://lnkd.in/gj9duebS

#AffiliateMarketing #PerformanceMarketing #ConsultingLife #InHouseMarketin g #PartnershipMarketing #MarketingStrategy #Attribution #Entrepreneurship #AgencyLife #RealTalkFriday

Have you heard about Inflektion yet? They are changing the game in Affiliate marketing.The only platform with personalized funnels to scale partnership marketing for brands, agencies, influencers, and affiliates. Catering to the health and wellness space, this tracking soluition is helping build landing pages for partners in a manner of minutes instaead of weeks. They have social listening to capture all the content your brand is creating so that you can find more partners talking about y

For more tips on how to scale your affiliate program, check out https://performancemarketingmanager.com

In this Affiliate Nerd Out episode, Nedarator Dustin Howes interviews Jorge Barbosa from WeCanTrack about common publisher pain points with Affiliate Conversion Tracking, including lacking aggregation, logging into multiple networks, relying on manual sub IDs, and struggling to attribute transactions to sessions, landing pages, and traffic sources. Jorge explains how WeCanTrack pulls transaction data from networks like CJ, Awin, and Impact into one dashboard with hourly updates, compares performance periods, matches conversions to clicks and traffic sources, and pushes commission and conversion data into tools like GA4, ads platforms, and BigQuery to optimize paid campaigns for real sales, CPA, and ROAS.

The episode also covers setup steps for WordPress and non-WordPress sites, performance alerts, benefits for affiliate manager relationships, and advanced features like link testing, link building, and link monetization, plus a 15-day trial link.

Simplify your affiliate tracking—get started with WeCanTrack using the link below!
https://wecantrack.com/affiliate-dash...

00:00 Affiliate Tracking Pain
00:44 Show Intro Guests
04:45 Publisher Blind Spots
07:12 Attribution By Channel
10:53 One Dashboard View
12:44 Quick Setup Tutorial
15:19 GA4 And BigQuery
17:08 Future AI Alerts
24:14 Getting Started Steps
25:46 Advanced Publisher Tools
27:49 Trial And Wrap Up

Subscribe to this channel for more affiliate program growth tactics.

Connect with Dustin Howes on Linkedin: / dustinhowes

#AffiliateMarketing #AffiliateTracking

The hottest affiliate recruitment tool of 2026 is Alfie. There is a 7-day free trial and a no-risk 30-day money-back gaurantee

Go to Dustinhowes.com/trial to sign up

Have you heard about Inflektion yet? They are changing the game in Affiliate marketing.The only platform with personalized funnels to scale partnership marketing for brands, agencies, influencers, and affiliates. Catering to the health and wellness space, this tracking soluition is helping build landing pages for partners in a manner of minutes instaead of weeks. They have social listening to capture all the content your brand is creating so that you can find more partners talking about y

For more tips on how to scale your affiliate program, check out https://performancemarketingmanager.com

Where to Find Honest Product Reviews in 2026 (AI Fakes, Trusted Sources & Affiliate Compliance)

Dustin Howes of Affiliate Nerd Out explains how AI-generated fake reviews are rapidly increasing, making “is this review real?” the wrong question and shifting the focus to whether the source is trustworthy. He highlights review sources that still earn trust in 2026, including Consumer Reports (nonprofit, no ads, large testing budget and possible free library access), Wirecutter (20–40 hours of research per category with a wall between editorial and commerce), Reddit (useful but increasingly gamed), and YouTube reviews that show real product use, while noting AI video is improving.

He also discusses using AI chatbots as a starting point for recommendations, not a final answer, and outlines how affiliate managers should evaluate review partners as Google’s helpful content update wipes out low-quality listicle sites. He notes the FTC’s 2024 rule targeting fake reviews with penalties up to $53,000 per violation and mentions warning letters sent in 2025, then directs viewers to his full article and a free 15-minute exploration call for affiliate program growth, compliance, and AI for Affiliate Marketing.

Looking for product reviews you can actually trust? Check out this curated list of the best review sites here:
👉 https://dustinhowes.com/best-product-...

Subscribe to this channel for more affiliate program growth tactics.

Want to recruit more affiliates? https://affistash.com

Connect with Dustin Howes on Linkedin: / dustinhowes

#ProductReviews #HonestReviews #AffiliateMarketing #FakeReviews #AIReviews #ReviewSites #OnlineShoppingTips #AffiliateNerdOut

Have you heard about Inflektion yet? They are changing the game in Affiliate marketing.The only platform with personalized funnels to scale partnership marketing for brands, agencies, influencers, and affiliates. Catering to the health and wellness space, this tracking soluition is helping build landing pages for partners in a manner of minutes instaead of weeks. They have social listening to capture all the content your brand is creating so that you can find more partners talking about y

For more tips on how to scale your affiliate program, check out https://performancemarketingmanager.com

Dustin Howes hosts Affiliate Nerd Out with guest Brook Schaaf of FMTC to explain why an affiliate coupon API matters for publishers and what opportunity cost sites face without it. Brook describes FMTC, founded in 2007, as a coupon and deal feed (plus product feeds and merchant services like Affistash) that powers many large coupon and rewards sites by ingesting offers from 20+ networks and thousands of merchants, then testing, normalizing, and distributing clean, structured data.

They compare FMTC to raw network feeds and scraped coupon sources, noting common issues like broken links, incorrect fields, time zone errors, expired or invented codes, and the resulting poor user experience and lost clicks. The episode highlights faster integration, centralized deal management, validated offers available via API/UI in multiple formats, and how clean deal data can improve conversions and support business development.

00:00 Coupon API Opportunity Cost
00:20 Show Intro And Guest
01:21 What FMTC Does
02:14 Coupon API Explained
03:11 Why Data Quality Matters
04:56 Conversion And Shopper Behavior
06:06 FMTC Setup Walkthrough
08:59 Integration Speed And Use Cases
10:34 Future Of Coupon APIs
11:34 Final Takeaways And Outro

Start your 14-day FMTC free trial to see how much time you can save. https://www.dustinhowes.com/fmtc

Subscribe to this channel for more affiliate program growth tactics.

Have you heard about Inflektion yet? They are changing the game in Affiliate marketing.The only platform with personalized funnels to scale partnership marketing for brands, agencies, influencers, and affiliates. Catering to the health and wellness space, this tracking soluition is helping build landing pages for partners in a manner of minutes instaead of weeks. They have social listening to capture all the content your brand is creating so that you can find more partners talking about y

For more tips on how to scale your affiliate program, check out https://performancemarketingmanager.com

Stop wasting hours manually updating expired coupons and broken links that frustrate your customers. Pushing traffic to dead deals is a losing game for affiliate managers and publishers alike. Most teams try to manage this chaos with messy spreadsheets and dozens of network logins, but there is a better way to handle your data. You can replace that manual work with a clean affiliate coupon API that does the heavy lifting for you.

In this video, I'll show you how FMTC acts as a central hub for your entire affiliate operation. This tool validates and standardizes offers from over 20 networks and 19,000 merchants into one reliable feed. You can finally stop the constant cleanup and focus on scaling your revenue instead. I'll walk you through the setup process and show you how to access verified deals that are ready to post immediately.

Start your 14-day FMTC free trial to see how much time you can save. https://www.dustinhowes.com/fmtc

Have you heard about Inflektion yet? They are changing the game in Affiliate marketing.The only platform with personalized funnels to scale partnership marketing for brands, agencies, influencers, and affiliates. Catering to the health and wellness space, this tracking soluition is helping build landing pages for partners in a manner of minutes instaead of weeks. They have social listening to capture all the content your brand is creating so that you can find more partners talking about y

For more tips on how to scale your affiliate program, check out https://performancemarketingmanager.com

Dustin Howes and Christen Evans discuss the hidden costs of siloed marketing teams and the messy reality of affiliate management in this episode of Real Talk Friday. They explain why separating your influencer and affiliate divisions limits growth and causes major communication gaps with creators.

You'll hear about common industry headaches like broken SKU-level reporting and the struggle of backtracking through massive spreadsheets to fix commission errors. Dustin shares a raw story about a Little League meltdown that disrupted his week, while Christen offers practical advice for managing burnout. They also explore how to use AI tools for complex data tasks and the future of creator monetization.

0:00 Weekly check-in and Little League drama
5:25 Fixing broken SKU level reporting
7:05 The dangers of siloing influencer and affiliate teams
9:55 Using Claude and AI for spreadsheet automation
12:30 Building content creator partnerships in the food space
14:55 Starting a YouTube channel for the next generation
Subscribe to this channel for more affiliate program growth tactics.

💡 If you’re enjoying these candid convos, make sure to give this video a thumbs up, hit that subscribe button, and click the bell to stay in the loop for future episodes.

🌟 Need help with your affiliate program? Dustin will find you the help you are looking for in a 15 minute call. Book your call now here: http://dustinhowes.com/explore

📩 Connect with Dustin Howes on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dustinhowes

#AffiliateMarketing #affiliatemanager #affiliatenerdout #realtalkfriday #brandinfluencer #MarketingTalk #ContentCreation #CreatorEconomy #InfluencerMarketing #MarketingLife

Have you heard about Inflektion yet? They are changing the game in Affiliate marketing.The only platform with personalized funnels to scale partnership marketing for brands, agencies, influencers, and affiliates. Catering to the health and wellness space, this tracking soluition is helping build landing pages for partners in a manner of minutes instaead of weeks. They have social listening to capture all the content your brand is creating so that you can find more partners talking about y

For more tips on how to scale your affiliate program, check out https://performancemarketingmanager.com

Most brands make decisions about influencer marketing based on vibes and gut feelings; however, that approach usually leads to wasted budgets and messy data.

I recently spoke with Tammy Pham, MBA from Inflektion about why tracking performance feels so broken for most e-commerce companies. One brand they work with had a complex funnel where they only paid affiliates after a customer completed a blood test.

Most platforms can't handle that level of detail, so the brand struggled to see where people dropped off.

Tammy explained how event-based tracking solves this by following every step of the customer journey (even the weird ones).
She also shared a tactic that boosted conversion rates by over 200% for Oura Ring.

Topic Highlights:

1. Moving from gut feelings to data-driven decisions
2. Using event-based tracking for complex customer journeys
3. Boosting conversion rates by 200% with co-branded landing pages
4. Why micro-influencers often outperform big names
5. Keeping creator trust alive through the checkout process

Tammy says event-based tracking maps the whole journey. Oura Ring grew by using landing pages with creator photos and quotes. This keeps trust high through the checkout process.

Even micro-influencers with 5,000 followers can beat big names with the right tools.

What is your biggest ROI challenge? Is it coupon leaks or bad data? Let's talk in the comments.

#influencermarketing #affiliatemarketing #ecommercegrowth

Have you heard about Inflektion yet? They are changing the game in Affiliate marketing.The only platform with personalized funnels to scale partnership marketing for brands, agencies, influencers, and affiliates. Catering to the health and wellness space, this tracking soluition is helping build landing pages for partners in a manner of minutes instaead of weeks. They have social listening to capture all the content your brand is creating so that you can find more partners talking about y

For more tips on how to scale your affiliate program, check out https://performancemarketingmanager.com