Leveraging Affiliate Networks in Your Business with Nate Lind

Remember when you first decided to start your eCommerce company? It probably felt like a roller coaster, with so many decisions to make, so much potential to grow and still, so much risk masked by unknown factors.

Now, when you decide to sell your company, that roller coaster starts all over again.

On today’s episode of Deal Closers - A Tech & Internet M&A Discussion, Jason and Ron from WebsiteClosers.com talk with an expert of affiliate companies, Nate Lind, about the benefits of joining affiliate networks for your business.

Nate Lind has successfully launched 23 supplement and eCommerce brands, grossing over a million dollars each, since he started, in 2011. He brings a high level of experience in this sector and fully understands the day-to-day challenges of Internet Entrepreneurs.

[01:12] What was Nate’s first eCommerce selling experience like?

• He was interested in buying a supplement company, but the problem was that the owner was the brand and it was hard to separate the two of them. The owner didn’t want to continue to be involved in the business, so the transition was going to be really hard. Nate managed to partner with a couple of folks and successfully launched the supplement brand.
• The upside of this deal was that he got to learn so much about the supplement and eCommerce businesses, just through the due diligence process and from his previous business experience.

[04:24] Have you found, yet, what a good buyer is?

• The easiest ones for me are people that I’ve got a personal relationship with. They’ve been coming to my events and there’s hundreds of people that have been to my past trade shows or my masterminds, and I’ve got a personal relationship with them.
• I’m guessing every broker within the firm has an inner circle of buyers, people that they know have funds or they know can qualify for funding. What happens over time is we build relationships with each other, and that turns into an immediate win.
• Also, the people that I’ve done business with are through a third party – so there’s a lot of referrals too.

[06:47] Why would affiliate and off-Amazon direct sales companies also appeal to buyers?

• Most of the businesses in the off-Amazon universe and in the Amazon universe are home-based businesses, and that’s what most people are looking for. They don’t tend to have a brick & mortar presence.
• If I were a family office and I had a couple of brands sold on Amazon, before I started rolling up too many of those, I’d really look into an affiliate network, I’d look into some alternative sort of company that will give me the spread of risk into other opportunities because the entire world that we know here, in the Amazon space, can completely change overnight.
• Amazon banns certain products, but that doesn’t mean they are illegal – it’s just that they have their own rules as it relates to what they will and won’t sell. When it comes to the additional platforms, it makes it a lot easier to launch new products and a lot less risk.

Resources:

• websiteclosers.com