Run Your Affiliate and Referral Programs From One Tool

**[00:00:00]** Hello everyone. My name is Armando Perez-Carreno and welcome to the Web Talk Show. Today with us is Alex Standiford from Siren. Welcome back Alex. How are Hey Armando, it's great to see you again. Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure. We had Alex way back in the day when we were starting the show actually. So for those long-term listeners, you probably heard his episode. It was very interesting and we decided as we were chatting about a recent project that we should do another one. The space is super interesting. We're going to talk about affiliates and reps and everything that you could do around that. So, hold on to your seats. You probably heard a lot about how important it is to get referrals in your business. So, let's get into it. And I want to ask you, Alex, for those who didn't hear that past show, how did you get into creating a tool like Siren? Well, um the the challenge that I ran into was I I wanted to create I am my business has always been about referrals. Um I whenever I was working primarily as a freelancer um I was working through word of mouth and I was connecting with people through those things and I realized that there was situations where I wanted to semi-productize some of my offerings. So, um, you know, create like a standard, uh, SEO audit or a standard website audit and charge a fixed fee for that on my site. And I needed a better way to get referrals to those specific products. Um, so I realized, okay, well, a great tool for that would be some kind of affiliate program where I I formalize an actual referral network with my with my people who talk to me and give them a commission. So, I set that up and then I realized that I also needed um a way to allow my customers, my existing customers to refer me where in return they would get some kind of discount. And I didn't want to pay them in cash. I wanted to pay them in basically store credit, right? So, I created that as a second **[00:02:00]** one. And then before I knew it, I had just programs like that, different incentive programs that I was wanting to create. And every one of those programs required a different tool. And it just felt crazy to me that um it was the same process, you know, end to end. And I was using all these different tools. I was logged into all these different interfaces. I was paying for all these different subscriptions. And it I was like, "This is crazy. I I know that this can be done better." Um so I I created it. I created Siren um as a way to be able to allow people to create any kind of um incentive program or referral program or partnership program that they want to create. Um I call it an incentive engine these days. Nice. Yeah. Well, that makes sense. I' I've been through that path myself where like you said it's one tool for affiliates, another tool for referrals, another tool for something else and it becomes a hassle especially because sometimes like even those people might be in two different programs at the same time. So it becomes very messy for payouts and and forms and compliance. It's just a mess. So throw a refund in there and watch. Oh yeah, of course. Yeah. And that's the other thing like once once you not to get too technical here, but if you try to implement it with nowadays, you know, there's cloud code and codeex and all this. So you can basically build out anything even if you're not necessarily a developer. But once you start looking at this monster of concept affiliates, you can think, yeah, for sure I can build my own little affiliate thing. And and you might, yeah, for sure like create a thing where there's a link and it's tracked and it when someone purchases through that link, you get someone else referred. Cool. That part is easy enough. But like you said, throw in a refund, throw in taxes, throw in shipping, what part of it goes into it, what goes back, what's the holding period? Like there's a bunch of things that go into it, **[00:04:00]** right? Yep. Yep. And then in and almost every conversation I have with people, it always starts with, "I just need something simple. I just need something small. I don't need this. And then 6 months later, they realize that they have all these teeny tiny little special cases where they have to uh it increases that complexity where, you know, like you said, uh maybe some products aren't eligible for the program. So now they have to make sure that they're filtering those things out. Um or maybe they have one of their uh affiliates or their collaborators, partners, whatever you want to call them, uh want a different rate than everybody else. And now all of a sudden they have to ac accommodate that. And it just it it starts it always starts simple. So um that's why um with Siren that's one of my favorite things is it doesn't have to be a big complicated thing. It's built to allow you to create something simple now but know that you have the capacity to add the complexity if you ever need it when you need it. Yeah. when uh if you read any of the Alex Homosi books, the like 100 million money models or leads, right? Um those those are all great books, especially the money models is is a very good read. It's very simple to read and just go through it. It's fun. It's got little u drawings, kid drawings and stuff. He he says he wants to make it so that anyone can read it. Uh but there's a lot of logic in it. you once you go through it, you're like, "Yeah, for sure. It makes sense to follow these steps if you want to grow a company." And a lot of it that that he talks about in his videos and all that is the referral part, which again, sometimes we're scared to try it out. But hey, if you have a customer and they're very happy what you did, asking them, hey, do you know anyone else that might be benefited from this? It's not a big ask. Like unless you're doing something that they might be ashamed of or whatever, but if they actually genuinely love your product. Yeah, I recommend people all the time. I see a tool like I just recommended this the the prompter, the Elgato prompter. I **[00:06:00]** was talking with a client and I was like, "Yeah, I use this thing. You can put it up. It's a second screen. You can have your thing talk to the camera and he sends me a message a few minutes later." He's like, "I just got it. It's amazing." Right? I'm not I don't lose anything by that. I could have gained something if I gave him a referral link or affiliate link from Amazon, but I didn't. But but there's all these avenues where if someone's getting a benefit already, hey, why not refer? Especially with customers. I remember there's this this client was um they already had an affiliate thing like you're saying, but then they wanted to do the customer thing like AG1. You get the athletic greens, you like one of those vitamin drinks and you're drinking and then they send you, they always have in their email the thing where, oh yeah, just share this link to your friends. You'll get 10% off the next one or or you'll get a free packet of this thing and they'll get whatever off. Also, why not? Win-win for everyone. But doing it, I remember doing the research being like, "Yeah, yeah, let's see what's out there." And there were all these tools that these mega corporations are using. They're tremendously expensive. So a startup can't use it. And we we go into that whole like trust pilot thing. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. People use it, but have you seen how much it costs to run it as a bit? It's not it's not feasible for many businesses. So I definitely see where you saw that that area of opportunity. um prompted you to go the WordPress route? how how did that happen? Were you already working with WordPress at the time or what was the the main reason you you got into that? So the interesting thing about Siren is it's actually not exclusively WordPress anymore. Um so it was originally built whenever I originally built it, actually since day one, I've never intended for it to live **[00:08:00]** in WordPress exclusively. Um, nice. I started in WordPress because that's where my background is. That's where my network is. And I knew a lot. And again, it's about partnerships. I thought even whenever I was creating Siren, I was thinking about what are the partnerships? What's the referral network? Where is my opportunity to find what I call multipliers, which are which are companies, people who have access to a large number of contacts that I need access to. And um those in my case when I started were integrations right so integrating with Woo Commerce easy digital downloads lifter LMS was a big one for me right um learn dash uh you know there's gravity forms ninja forms in the future um other things like that so so talking about those and I realized that was my goto market strategy with siren it was I'm going to create siren I'm going to create the essential um integrations that I absolutely can't launch without. And then I'm going to target and find as many of these uh other integrations inside of WordPress that I know personally from from my years in WordPress. Reach out to them, see if they would be interested in doing some kind of partnership where I create the integration, I set them up, I give them an affiliate link, and then they promote the integration through their channels. Um so, so the entire reason why I started in WordPress was for me was strategic. It was also practical because of course I know WordPress the best too. Mhm. Um, but since day one, I've built Siren very intentionally to turn it into a uh tool as well. Now, that doesn't mean that the WordPress version is going away or anything like that. Um, but there there are two additions now. There's the WordPress edition and then currently there is a cloud edition that is it's currently only reserved for um as of today it's only reserved for um customer uh bigger companies like you know 10 millionish you know manufacturers who have entire sales teams uh pharmaceutical companies things like that or or **[00:10:00]** real estate whatever um who who need big sales systems set up to manage their sales ops but um in the future I will be creating a uh from that that version I intend to create a a SAS model that will be you know more affordable and and more reasonably priced that would allow you to work on Shopify work in multi- channelannel stuff like that. Nice. Oo multi- channelannel sounds Yeah, it's a big one. Yeah. Yeah. Cuz you I there's people who have like WooCommerce for something maybe for their learning, but then they have Shopify for the for the merch just because it's easy to handle merch there CRM or a CRM, right? And uh being able to do multi- channelannel for something like this is is really good. What are the typical things that you see small businesses for example using something like Siren for like what what's the typical scenario where you start thinking hey this this might be something I need or can help me in my Yep. So I think the by far the most common one is a refer friend program. uh you can't especially in software um it seems like you can't open up a software app these days that doesn't have a refer a friend you know refer your friend with your code they give you a discount and then your friend gets a discount too right so I see that one all the time um some of another one that I see that's pretty common of course is a traditional sales uh system a lot of people are using siren to track their sales operations um and things like that so um if you have you know if you're selling, maybe you're selling a product in e-commerce. Usually what also works alongside those people who are selling stuff via e-commerce is they're also selling to they're selling to bigger deals and those bigger deals are usually being managed by a salesperson. Uh things like that. So those kinds of things also **[00:12:00]** sometimes have programs. Of course, a good oldfashioned affiliate program like what I described earlier comes to mind. Um so those are probably the the most common ones that I see. Uh, but there's also some really interesting ones I've seen where people will create like websites that have um that are more platform shaped. So, okay, think about like uh Netflix or something like that. Obviously Netflix is I mean Netflix isn't using Siren, but but a company like Netflix where they uh have all these videos on their site, right? And those videos, they have some kind of agreement with those companies. They don't make those videos. That's a right? Um, I've seen people create uh platforms like that with Siren where it um their views and it pays them a share of the revenue based on their So, so things like that even I mean technically YouTube fits in that model right? YouTube or Udemy or those like where you people can put on their course and then based on viewership then they get a cut. Yeah, that's a bit more of an advance like a I don't know if course is the right word but that's a that's complex. definitely more niche, but um there are people that have built their entire business model around what Siren can do. Wow. Yeah, those are excellent use cases. It's not the typical affiliate or referral part, but but also I can get your mind spinning like, oh, okay, so I don't need to track sales necessarily. I think that's a big unlock. It's like oh so what you're saying is I can have a platform where actions happen and then based on those actions maybe someone is attributed points so that they can be paid off based on those point system is that yeah that's exactly right okay so learning as well so let's say you have an LMS you mentioned lifter learn dash right like maybe you have an LMS and then if people are taking the courses maybe They pay a hundred bucks a month or whatever for for like a flat fee for the platform, but then maybe you have multiple **[00:14:00]** instructors and then if an instructor's course gets viewed more than others, then they might get a bigger cut than just is that also Yeah, exactly. Uh we call them distributors, but that's the distributor model. Um so, and what's interesting is what you just described uh is focused not on sales, that's focused on retention, right? That conversation you're talking about there is for uh uh whole keeping the customers that you have. So a lot of a lot of c companies whenever they're first getting started the big thing that they're always talking about is how do I get sales? How do I get sales? How do I get sales? And then they get sales and all of a sudden they're saying how do I keep my customers? How do I keep my customers? How do I keep my customers? So siren, this is what I mean about how siren can grow with you. So you can start by focusing on those sales, creating a program around those to help you grow those and then you can start creating things that focus on the next problems that you have such as retention and stuff like that. uh through distributor programs and stuff like that. Uh great example of this uh the course example is a good one, but another one that comes to mind that I think might be uh a little more common in terms of bricks like off offline. Um I have somebody who is using it for their gym. So they have a they have a gym in their low in my in my area and they um they have trainers right who are on staff and um they pay their trainers a distribution of the members who are at who are um the they pay their trainers a distribution of the uh memberships that they're earning the the recurring commission money that they earn and they take like 20% or something like at of that total amount of money and they pay a share to each of those trainers every month based on how many people booked and stayed at their um their classes that they host. so it's all that's all about retention. So now those trainers are motivated to get people in their classes. They're motivated to get people involved. They're having conversations with them. they **[00:16:00]** all of a sudden are a lot more engaged not just in bringing in customers because a lot of times your trainers are effectively your sales people. So they have an affiliate program in place, a sales program in place for those. So they get commission whenever they bring in new customers but then on the back end they also get paid based on how well they are contributing to that retention and they are tracking that by keeping track of how many times how many people are actually showing up with their courses. Oh okay. Yeah, that's a good one. That's brick and mortar. Like it's just Exactly. And a lot of it already happened by hand. So a lot of these companies are doing it in spreadsheets and they're just checking, they're counting every week and okay, so how many people went to John's class and how many people went to Jen Jennifer's class and based on that they're doing it. But you could have something like this running. Now let me ask you if let's say someone doesn't have WordPress and the I don't know they they but they want to run something like this. Maybe their website is just a basic Wix or whatever. They just have a website. It's not related to the program at all. But could they stand up a WordPress that's sort of private for them to have the affiliate program and use it as their tracking mechanism for things? Is that something people do? Yeah, that's definitely doable. Um the only limit the biggest limitation on that is um some situations where you maybe only want a program to apply to a specific channel. So maybe you have multiple sites um and you only want this program to work for one specific site. Um you're a little limited on that because you can't filter by your channel uh because the that's only on the platform version that's not on the WordPress version. But that limitation pretty deep in the in the flow. Um and most of the time you can work around it in other ways like uh you know well-created categories and stuff like that. Um but and and honestly most of the time um it's it's I mean I'm using it in that way right now for Siren's website because Siren's website is headless. So um Siren is running on Woo Commerce and it's running uh Siren in the back end **[00:18:00]** and it all just uses the rest API for for the whole site. Um So yeah, you can absolutely do something like that. Um and the uh the gym example that I provided there um that one was a bit that one was one of my clients, right? So, that was a custom one that we did. They're on a hosted setup. They're not on they're not on WordPress. Um, and we had to integrate with their um we integrated with their CRM system and their their system so that it can track all those events and make all of that run. But, uh, with it all set up, you know, they were they've been really happy with it. So, so people can also if it's a more complex engagement can work directly with your team and be like, "Oh, can you help us customize this so that it works for us?" Yeah. Exactly. So, so there's that's that's exactly why the I call it uh a two-pronged approach or a barbell approach. So, there's the WordPress plugin, right, that has all has the features. There's a free version of the plugin that goes all the way up to um a pro version that has a very wide range of feature sets depending on what you need. Um and that's for um anybody who's already on WordPress or somebody who is comfortable with spinning up a WordPress as a host hosted headless thing like what you talked about um or you know I a lot a lot of SEO agencies uh companies like that will actually work with Siren to use it for upsells. So they'll work over there and then um but if you are a company like a manufacturer or a real estate agency or you're uh an insurance or something like that and you have some kind of sales system where you're managing it all with spreadsheets or or it feels messy or something like that and you you it's a painoint for you. we absolutely do that. There's there's call to actions on the site where you can contact us, reach out with us, and uh we do we do engagements with people to be able to set those things up and and make sure that they have what they need. Nice. Yeah, cuz that's that's one of the main questions that I would see with **[00:20:00]** people who want to integrate with the restaurant, right? So they they have their point of sales system and then that point of sale system might have a way to push out web hooks or events or things like that when certain actions happen. So if there's a way with the system, you already talked about the rest API for so for those who are not technical at nature. Uh rest API an API is just a way for systems to communicate among themselves. So if you think of maybe you have your point of sales system or you have your employee tracking system or you have your sales system, whatever most of those have ways to send out events when something happens. And so Siren from what I gather can receive those events such that something can happen offline somewhere else and those events could be pushed into Siren so that they could be tracked and then you can do something about them. It doesn't just have to be purchases or actions that happen on the site. Is that accurate? That's exactly right. Um and and you know that that's where the brick-andmortar stuff often comes in. Um so the gym membership example I gave you another one. I'm still waiting for this one. It hasn't happened. And I'm waiting for a consignment company to come to me. Somebody who's selling furniture or something in their shop uh on consignment. Uh because Siren would could so solve that entire problem for them. Uh they they continue to elude me someday maybe though. Yeah, those are very local, right? So it might might be more of a them having to meet you locally. Um but there there's a lot of those here in town. There's a lot of those consign like high-end consignment stores with with furniture that would have gone in an estate sale for example, but uh they you can find good stuff. Sometimes it's expensive even at those, but you can find some very neat neat artifacts in some of those. when I want to build a program, is the program the right? Yeah. Okay. So I want to build a program. **[00:22:00]** I want to be able to have collaborators that participate in a program. And for some, I might want to have them as affiliates like Amazon does where I can give them a link and then if if people buy through their link, then they get a commission. Great. Right. And then I might want to have like a share with a friend thing and allow them to if they're customers of mine, they they could be able to refer someone, get a bonus or something for that. and then um their friend gets something as well. Now these seem simple but I guess there's a lot of variations among them. So I in my experience with other tools when I go in it's like oh my goodness it's almost like a blank slate. How do I set all this up? How have you used your experience so that in Siren people can get off to the races faster and sort of just jump in and have something sort of preset up? Is is there anything like that? Yeah, that was a big focus earlier this year actually. Um, one of the one of the, you know, Siren and all of its power and all of its capability uh can be overwhelming for somebody who's just getting started and just, you know, new. Uh, which is why anybody who buys Siren, they also, even if it's the WordPress version, uh, they get a opportunity to schedule a one-on-one with me. So, I'm able to give them a consultation, talk to them, give them advice, help them get started where needed. Um, but in addition to that, uh, I've created we realized that most people have they they're coming to Siren saying, "I need this. I need this kind of program." So, we created something called recipes. And basically what they are um on our site all over the place um on the site there's a big there's a page full of all these different pre-made programs that we see oftent times that people are trying to create or want to create. So what you can do is you can go to there you can go there you can search you can find uh what programs are there and uh with one click **[00:24:00]** you can then well I guess it's like three clicks you can install that specific program uh into your site. So, it serves as kind of like a template. So, it imports it automatically into your site. Once it's added, then you can tweak it or customize it there if you need to. Um, and then on top of that, actually, if um if you're not finding what you're looking for, um, we have something called Beacon, which is an AI agent, AI powered agent, um, that works both as, uh, more technically, it works as an MCP server. So you can you can connect it with your cloud code or codeex or well not codec cloud code or or whatever. Um but if you don't want to but we even created one that's more simple than that as just as a custom GPT and chat GPT. So if you don't have the technical capabilities or interest in learning how to make like make an MCP server work, you can literally just on siren site there's a link on the beacon uh landing page that takes you to the custom chat GPT uh GPT beacon and it knows how to create um it knows how to create recipes and it can talk to you conversationally and you can describe to it what you're wanting, what you're trying to do and it is able to then say oh well for that you would need you know one program a program group and a distributor or maybe it's like this is just a simple thing you just need one program and it'll actually give you the recipe and then you can actually click from there and install it into your site directly from there as well. Well that's super practical. So you have the recipes there, but then if they're there's something they not they don't necessarily match, then then you can still talk with the AI and based on what you're telling it, it can give you something. That's great. I've seen that being done in like NA10 and Zapier and a lot of these tools out there where where for the technically inclined they want to build everything but then **[00:26:00]** when you're just starting out you might want to use and they have templates and then now many of them start adding that sort of AI layer where where you can ask it and when it works it's amazing because it saves you so much time. So I'm I'm glad to see this in a product like like Siren because it's not like It's not typical. You see it in the bigger brands, right? They're they're people sometimes don't understand how complex it is to set up an AI agent that will actually have grounded information and give you valid data. Like there's a lot uh into it and and to have spent the effort to do it for your product is is is very valuable. It's I I remember the first time I saw Siren a few years ago. It was one of the things that caught my attention was that on the site you had all these Well, it was all like the little draw the cartoons, right? Um but I really like that you had the the explained. So it was like if Sarah has this and John has this other thing then they would and so you had all these sort of stories of the different types of programs which brought it down to earth as like a natural language version of oh okay so that's what that program does because many of these tools just have like a very generic description and then all the technical stuff so there's a gap of understanding like well what what's the the one I and and I really like that. Are you still using that sort of thing? Are you was was did that influence in any way how you set up the recipes part that you have now? Yeah, definitely. So, so what I realized is a lot um is the experience that you just described uh was very similar. So, one of the big So, obviously I take my one-on-one calls uh like I said with **[00:28:00]** my customers and uh they get a lot of value out of it, but it seemed like every one of my calls for a while revolved around here's the program I want to do. I know Siren can do it. I'm not completely sure I know how to set it up because I've never used Siren before. So, I said, so most of my calls were taken up just walking them through the process, which is fine. I have no qualms with doing that ever. But I realized that um clearly there was something missing because um my my customers were leaning on me for for that setup. So um this entire year to be honest in terms of content on the site and additions and improvements have been all around the idea of making sure that we can um simplify and express and explain Siren and translate and keep it as easy to use as possible while simultaneously not sacrificing the power that it also brings to the table. So that's where recipes come in and that's kind of how they're bridging that gap. Nice. and you made them visual, right? So, it's not just the tech like this recipe does this, but then you had these sort of tree maps of how how they look and like who this person gets paid and all that, right? I'm actually working on making videos for all of them too to show like to to do that explainer to tell the story in the way that you just described it. So, that's been that's something that I'm doing right now actually. Nice. Nice. Have you used hyperframes? Uh the video tool the Yeah. Well, it's an open source library that Hunen released. Um, has nothing to do with Hen itself, but they their company released it and it's um it's super nice because you can you install it. You just get the repo from GitHub and then you can tell your cloud hey, use hyperframes to add captions to this video or add this graphic or like this is a demo video, click through the page and do this thing and then animate these arrows coming in and put it on the screen and you just tell Claude and it does all that. You know, all these videos that came out on X from like Remotion and **[00:30:00]** Framer and all that. It's like that but it's all open source and and uh it's called Hyperframe. It's really neat. I built my own. Yeah, it's really like I I've had people that are non-technical just start using it they're like, "What is this sorcery?" That's awesome. It's It's really good. The other day you were talking about the clips before the call, right? And um I I've traditionally used Opus Clip. I used to use Zcript and then I used Opus Clip and they're good, but it is my opinion that they're probably not using the best models, right? Yeah. Probably not. Scalability. So what I did was I created my own trimmer that grabs the transcript from the video cuz I have the video files after the recording. So I grab the transcript using assembly AI. I use uh their universal 3 pro like like a very high-end uh which is very cheap like it's free basically but it's like a high-end transcriber and for a video it's nothing like you don't pay anything. So I transcribe it on disk and then it's like I have it I have the perfect transcription and then I use claude whatever 4.8 eight if I want to go through it and get the best parts based on my prompt. But now I'm using a high-end model to do that and then I once it has that it knows all the cut points then it can go in and using hyperframes before I cut actually or does the order doesn't really matter but I use hyperframes to put captions on it like animated captions that are in sync with the the text the time the text with what you're saying and then it chops them up. you say ffmpeg on disk again and so it just chops off the video but it's chopping the original like the 4K version not not a compressed version that's on the cloud and so these come out amazing I I've run some I haven't published it any any of them yet because I was waiting to set up my scheduling layer so that I could also schedule them the same way I did on Opus just finished that yesterday using Postis which is another open source tool so now like I have all that layer locally **[00:32:00]** and hen I mean hyperframes was a was a great part of the thing because you're like, "Yeah, you can put captions on them, but they don't look as nice as some of these other tools." Their captions are legit. Like, they're really really nice. That's cool. I have to check that out. You're definitely a little ahead of me on that cuz I' I've been using I'm just using Remotion right now and I'm just try it. Try it. It's really neat. Like they're they're they're doing a good Like to the point of I told Claude, "Hey, this is an interview show." Okay. So, typically there's going to be two people. So, you're going to chop off. Okay. So, you're going to you're going to grab the person who's talking and you're going to put them on the screen first because I I think the videos that that have two people on screen off the bat don't perform as well. So, it's like full screen one person whoever's talking then after a few seconds change to second view so you know it's an interview and then swap between them. And so I did that and then I told it, well for for the captions, if you are in full screen, put the caption at the bottom, but if you have split screen, move the caption to the middle and no one does. And so it's really nice because you see it and it's like the caption zooms up to where so it doesn't cover anyone's face. And it was all done with just telling COD to do that. So that's awesome. That's so cool. Yeah, that's a whole Oh my gosh, there's that's that's a deep well that I'm I'm just now starting to dip my toes into is a lot more video stuff. So, that's that's really cool. Um yeah, and then what's interesting related to that is um a lot of I've actually seen um people will directly use uh Siren for influencer programs. So, which is more which is more along which is you know using that vertical format. Um, you know, Tik Tok obviously is a big one. Um, I actually have seen some people are using cuz Tik Tok has its own program built in like its own incentive system built in. Um, so I'm seeing people strategically **[00:34:00]** are starting to use that as a way to find and identify the right partners and then they work toward reaching out to them, communicating with them and then bringing them into the better programs that they have on Siren. So, they're kind of using it like a lead genen tool where it's like, "Yeah, sure. You can we can work in we can work in Tik Tok. Here's what Tik Tok offers you. Here's the downsides to what Tik Tok doesn't do, and here's what they're taking from you as a result of them being in the middle. There is nothing saying that we're not allowed to have these conversations outside of this. Would you be open to and okay with, you know, working directly with us instead?" Obviously, there's implications there, merchant of record and stuff like that, but the right kind of company that that is is um growing and and working with that a lot, there's definitely potential there and using that as like a funnel. to be able to pull people in. Yeah, the the influencer programs, I hadn't thought of that use case. That's a good one, too. Yeah, because you might have your your team of people that are doing their videos and you track all that and you track the views and then you use that as a reference for for your point system. Yeah, totally. Podcasters too obviously. Podcasters. Yeah. Well, yeah. And podcasters are are the the podcast is growing tremendously because well, this is my take because there's so much AI right? There's so much AI content out there. Yeah. They want authenticity. And then these these long form shows are like, yeah, there's these there's tools you can have it like do a podcast. Sure, but it's not the same thing, right? Because it's not, you know, it's not a real person. And people are sort of starting to look for the genuine, for the authentic, for the real. Even though for some things you might consume the AI stuff, more and more you see that. And so we like directly since it's an interview show we see a lot of PR companies reaching out to get guests on the show because for their people their their **[00:36:00]** clients they now need to have more content online if they want to stand out in AI search right they need to be mentioned in multiple places. So by the business owner appearing in multiple podcasts more people are talking about them in different spaces then that helps them and then know the transcripts and the videos and all that of course as well. So yeah, I think to your point, the podcasters are are going to be growing a lot more more than they were. And podcasters are such a great example of how um and we didn't really get a chance to get to this much, but uh I think that partnership programs and stuff like this are a really big SEO play. So more a little more technical of course, but like because you can use them you can use your SEO research to one find partners who are ranking on terms that you wish you were ranking for but you can't or you don't have the authority to do so or whatever. There's there's tons of reasons why. Uh so you can reach out to those people, make them partners, have them create a link, right? That's one strategy that I see a lot. Two, of course, is just what you're talking about. Uh podcasting itself is an SEO play, especially in the era of AI and stuff like that. more links out there, more conversations. It it just helps um a lot with that. Um and oftentimes, you know, it it helps grease the wheels a little bit whenever you say, "By the way, I'm also going to give you a coupon code so you can, you know, share that coupon code at the end of the episode." Um or or whatever. It definitely increases your likelihood of being able to get in, too. Nice. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. Yeah. For all those things. And if you're making any sort of appearances, if you're speaking on stage or anything like that, you want to have a way to attribute anything that's coming through that Into the rest of it. I And I this is something I want to stress. There's no there's no affiliation here, funnily enough, with with uh um Alex, I at some point I think you set me up with an affiliate thing. I don't I don't use it uh in reality. I just recommend people over to Siren because I think it's just just a cool tool. **[00:38:00]** So, one of the things that I really like recently is that we for a client needed to do something very unique that was not necessarily in Siren at the moment. It might I don't know, maybe something like that exists later on. I'll let Alex tease that later on. But the the part that I really enjoyed working with Alex is that I reached out. I said, "Hey, we want to do this. Um, is it possible?" And Alex said, "Well, let me check." And so he went in and he did some some research and figure out, hey, no, for sure this is possible. Maybe we could do it this way or this way or this other way. And it was really interesting to you here like going through it and like actually focusing and iterating on what the best way, not not the hackiest way, not the quickest way, but the best way to make it work was. And so whether we use that version that might like fit into Siren's general part or whether we need to extend something. I really enjoyed the openness to be like, hey, this is possible. You can do it this way or you can extend siren because it's extensible in this way. So you can create your own distributor or program or whatever. I don't know the full nomenclature, but you can actually create your own pricing model, whatever inside the engine. And so the fact that it has that extensibility I really like because that way I know for a project like this, I don't have to hack it together and then fingers crossed it doesn't break in the next update. I can actually put in using siren primitives to make it work for my use case. How did you think of like making it so extensible from the start? Like that's not something common that we see with with smaller software. Like that's something that comes later on uh in the game. Yeah. So um the the big thing about Siren and the big reason why it works is is because of what you talked about the primitives, **[00:40:00]** right? So it's there's it it takes complicated things and it breaks them into small pieces and then those small pieces combined together create the aggregate program that you're trying to create. Um and because of that posture and that positioning um it allows me to uh think through and iterate on a lot of things like what you're talking about makes it very extensible. Um and there's so many different little surfaces where you can extend Siren to be able to you know make it work in the way that you need. Um and in your case um I the the challenge that you were running into was related to um collaborators having basically sub collaborators. So sales teams uh the use case that comes to mind for me was sales teams um a sales team maybe having uh people under them and maybe the manager gets a cut of the commission based on you know their performance of their team or something like that. And um what's interesting is usually I've been able to solve that problem with the the primitives that I have in place with distributors and programs. Um but as you and I were talking, like you said, we it became apparent that the specific way that you you needed this problem solved wasn't something that was doable um with Siren exactly without you needing to do what I would consider more extending than I think you should have to do if you're using Siren. Um, one of the biggest things for me is I believe that Siren should be able to create any kind of program you want to create and if it and and it was there was clearly a gap as a result. So after our conversation, I iterated several times to see if I could figure it out and there just wasn't I just wasn't happy. So uh I I you know I turned around and I said, "Okay, well we're going to then solve this." So what we ended up creating was a new feature that's actually coming out very soon uh called uh collaborator groups. And basically what that does is it makes it possible to um create these group structures like what you're talking about. So if you wanted to **[00:42:00]** have uh a sales team and then you know pay and have points or payouts trickle up or trickle down uh you can you can now set that structure up and create that. So that was what we uh kind of did up to kind of you know put together and things like that. But I think the big thing for me uh that I I really want to highlight there is you know you you serve some clients obviously you have customers and you have people who um have needs for for um their they have business needs right and they could potentially be using Siren. So the biggest thing that one of my biggest motivations for working with you aside from the obvious fact that of what I just said about Siren's positioning where I think Siren should be able to run any kind of program and when somebody comes to me with a program I can't do I yeah I can't sleep until I figure out how to make it happen. But the other thing is also um you know companies who are serving businesses like that and working with them. Um I am very keen on working with them. Um I have upcoming I don't have it right now but something that I'm working toward this year is a um is some licensing options um and some uh for Siren so so agencies and like customer marketing agencies and things like that can uh buy bulk licenses of Siren uh so that they can use it for their customers. Um I'm working toward creating a uh an agency partnership program of course um or some and things along those lines. So those that's still a little early for that, but um I definitely have a lot of appetite for that. I'm looking for other people um to collaborate with as it turns out um on on projects like the one that you're doing. So um I guess that's another thing that comes to mind if there's somebody in your you know audience who maybe they're looking for a new way to upsell some kind of new service to their customers or something like that. um Siren can absolutely be the engine that um allows them to be able to offer up something new. **[00:44:00]** And um I've been actually talking with some agencies about that oneonone, kind of coaching them, talking through how I'm doing that, how I'm selling Siren, um and giving them some ideas on how they could potentially do it, too. So, if there's somebody out there interested in that, definitely reach out. Nice. Nice. and we'll we'll put your contact information or like socials uh on the show notes as well, Alex, if anyone wants to reach out and find more find like what sire can do for them, but then also maybe they're curious uh maybe they're not ready yet, but but they're curious. What's the best place to find content about Siren and and like understand what it does and and if it can do the right thing for them? Sure. So, um of course you can go to Um, that is where that's the website itself. Uh, from there, obviously, you can look around as you see fit, but there's a demo at, uh, as well, so you can actually see the interface, exactly what it looks like, how it works. U, but then on top of that, you can also look at those recipes at sirenaffiliates.com/re recipes. If you want to learn more about me specifically, um, or anything like that, I also have a blog for founders that I maintain at alexander.com as well. Um, they can find me on social media as well. Uh, I'm basically Alex Standiford, one word everywhere. So, I'm on LinkedIn, I'm on X, and I post on both of those platforms pretty regularly. Nice. Nice. I'll put all those in the show notes. Alex, this has been a pleasure. There's always a lot more to learn about in this space and I'm glad even more tools are coming out. I I have to check out Beacon. I haven't tried that yet. That's going to be super fun uh as we work on this. So, everyone, if you haven't liked and subscribed to the show, please do so so that you are aware whenever we release new episodes like this one uh with Alex. And then also make sure to like and subscribe to Alex's stuff. I'll put the handles in the show notes as well. Thanks again, Alex. And uh we'll see everyone in the next one. Thank you.