
Key Links
Key Topics Covered:
- Introduction to Sandy Edwards and Bluehost’s Web Agency Partner Program
- Differences between a broad affiliate program and a specialized agency-focused program
- Strategic considerations in building an affiliate program that supports agencies beyond just commissions
- The value of creating a supportive community within an affiliate program and providing resources tailored to the audience
- How focusing on a specific audience (agencies) improves program quality and relevance
- Leveraging advisory councils and direct outreach to strengthen partnerships
- Direct outreach methods, attending industry events, joining social media groups, and creating community dinners
- Bluehost’s strategies for keeping affiliates engaged: product trials, premium support, LinkedIn communities, and an advisory council
- Practical tips for scaling down affiliate strategies for small businesses with fewer resources
Key Takeaways:
- Tailored Affiliate Programs Deliver Better Results: Focusing on the needs of a specific audience, such as agencies, allows you to offer more targeted benefits that go beyond basic commissions.
- Community Is Crucial: Building a community where affiliates feel supported, heard, and valued is key to maintaining engagement and loyalty.
- Specialization Enhances Program Effectiveness: Customizing programs around specific products or services, like cloud hosting for agencies, adds more value than a one-size-fits-all approach.
- Direct Outreach is Powerful: Attending events, joining relevant social groups, and hosting networking dinners offer effective ways to connect with and grow your affiliate base.
- Long-term Success Requires Engagement: Maintaining strong relationships with affiliates through continuous communication, personalized support, and providing value-added resources keeps partners motivated.
- Solopreneurs Can Succeed with Limited Resources: Even without a large team, solopreneurs can effectively engage affiliates through social listening, time-blocking for outreach, and leveraging notifications to stay connected with their communities.
Transcript
[00:00:00] Alex: Welcome to Partnership, where your network is the wind in your sails. I’m your host, Alex Standiford, and I’m here to redefine online partnerships for bootstrapped businesses. I believe in working with top talent to expand your sales channels and enrich the lives around you, not just the pockets of big corporations.
[00:00:19] Alex: Today, I’m interviewing Sandy Edwards. Sandy is the mastermind behind the Web Agency Partner Program at Bluehost, and she has a wealth of knowledge about building community around affiliate programs. In this episode, we’ll explore how you can create a strong community within your affiliate network, tailor your programs to specific audiences, and the incredible benefits these strategies can bring.
[00:00:43] Alex: If you’re just starting out, This conversation is packed with ideas and inspiration you won’t want to miss. There’s a lot to share in this episode, so let’s just get to it.
[00:00:54] Alex: Why don’t you give it like a brief introduction to yourself and kind of tell us a little bit about how you came to be where you’re at now.
[00:01:01] Sandy: Absolutely. So for just a little over a decade, I had actually run a digital marketing agency with the focus on , analytics. So, we were called data driven labs and our focus was to build websites with analytics at the forefront and not an afterthought, I love numbers and I love spreadsheets.
[00:01:21] Sandy: And that makes me kind of unique. A lot of people find them boring, but not me so much. That brought me eventually to Bluehost, where I focus on building everything for agencies. So programs, products, solutions. I’m the one who is helping internally really bring agencies to the forefront.
[00:01:43] Sandy: That’s not something that Bluehost has been known for in the past. They’ve been known as the company that goes straight to solutions for small businesses. And we really want to be there for the agencies that empower the small businesses. So it’s a little bit of a shift and a little bit of a new muscle.
[00:02:02] Sandy: And I’m super excited to be honored with the ability to kind of lead the ship on that.
[00:02:07] Alex: Yeah, that’s awesome. Yeah, that’s been, that’s something that, we’ve been talking a lot about on this show is how you can create informed partnerships with other people who just naturally would be a good fit for you. And what I really love about this, , agency program that you’re, that we’re going to talk about here is that it isn’t just specifically.
[00:02:26] Alex: An affiliate program. It’s not just a generic, affiliate program. It’s actually tailored for agencies specifically. I just think that’s really cool because it gives you a built in market and a whole bunch of other benefits. what are some of the strategic considerations that led you to design specifically an agency program rather than just a broad affiliate program?
[00:02:44] Sandy: Yeah, so we’ve had a broader affiliate program for a really long time at blue host. A lot of agencies are actually signed up for it, but the focus here was to not just be an affiliate program. So while there is a. Commissions component, there’s also a lot of other benefits that you get for being part of the program.
[00:03:08] Sandy: And so the real focus here is how do we provide solutions that help agencies grow and thrive? That isn’t just. Throwing money at the problem, we all want to grow our revenue, right? Like recurring revenue and knowing that thing, money’s coming in is such an important business model and a business practice.
[00:03:31] Sandy: But it’s really so much bigger than that. And so I took a look at how do we support agencies in a manner and way that works no matter what their business model is. So that way, we can. Be at the forefront. Of what they need and providing solutions to them.
[00:03:51] Alex: That’s cool. Yeah, that’s great. So I know that whenever, I was running an agency, actually, I’m still doing a lot of, project work now anyway, but, like the agency stuff, whenever I was running my own, I was looking, I was really motivated by these kinds of, by programs like this. I was particularly struck by your offer, not just for the discount, but also, The, the community and the other aspects that I was seeing whenever I was looking at the landing page, I really think the idea of giving, agencies like special specialized support and priority support is a great idea because I know that I, whenever I have a lot of customers, I don’t really want, I don’t necessarily care so much about the recurring commission for the hosting with you guys.
[00:04:33] Alex: In fact, the fact that you’re giving me a discount just allows me to create a bigger margin with my customer instead anyway. I’m already making money off the customer, you’re just setting me up to be able to not only make more money off of them, but it also allows me to better support from them in the process, so I just, I really think that’s cool.
[00:04:47] Sandy: Yeah. Well, I think the biggest thing when it comes to the mindset that I had in creating this was how do I give agencies back their time? when we’re talking about agencies, you’re talking about billable hours. And so if you’re not actively billing your client for whatever you’re working on in that moment.
[00:05:07] Sandy: You’re technically losing money. And so having that mindset and understanding that fundamental business practice of billable hours within an agency allowed me to say, okay, well, when I ran my agency, what did I want? I wanted Premium support that I didn’t have to start with. Did you turn it off and back on again?
[00:05:28] Sandy: I wanted to start at here’s the 16 things i’ve done What am I missing and why is it still not working? So We put wordpress experts That’s who you’re talking to is a WordPress expert directly, not just your tier one support that you would typically get.
[00:05:46] Alex: as an agency owner, I want, I’ve already unplugged it and plugged it in. Right. So like you said, it’s, it’s, you’re saving them time by avoiding all of that hassle and all of that stuff. And if they’re contacting you, they probably need something done on your end. Maybe you, maybe they got to flip it, switch, you have to change some kind of configuration or something small.
[00:06:03] Alex: Most of the time. I don’t know that for sure, but I know that like, whenever I’m in a situation where I’m actually contacting my host support, it’s often because I actually know what they need to do. I just can’t do it. You know what I mean? so being able to save that time is a big deal.
[00:06:18] Sandy: exactly. And sometimes it’s a matter of, Hey, I just need to reassign a technical resource or I there’s something timing out. And so you need, longer timeframe on something. So those are things that you typically can’t adjust on your own and you don’t want to go through three tiers of support.
[00:06:35] Sandy: So we kind of skip the line is how I look at
[00:06:38] Sandy: But Technically, that’s not true either because you’re not even going to the standard support Levels you’re going to a completely different department. So we’ve set it up in a way to give you back your time. You touched a little bit on 1 other thing a 2nd ago.
[00:06:53] Sandy: And that was that, having those discounts bakes in a margin. And really what we focused with this program on was making sure we met agencies in their business model. So if you’re owning the hosting, then you can get those discounts and bake in that wider margin. If you don’t want to own the hosting and for various different reasons, some people just don’t want to do that.
[00:07:17] Sandy: Then you can do the referral link and get a one time lump sum payment. That’s 75 percent of their cart total, which. I think is absolutely crazy and I love that we offer it because you don’t find that high of a number very often,
[00:07:34] Sandy: in a program like this.
[00:07:35] Alex: so can you tell me a little bit about, I mean, we’ve kind of already touched on this a little bit, but it seems like there’s a lot of advantages to focusing on an agency. You talk, focusing specifically on an audience, you can already, I can already see from our conversation that. You’re able to think about their needs.
[00:07:50] Alex: And if you think about this program, it is very different than an affiliate program. Can you tell me a little bit about what some of the key advantages of tailoring an affiliate program to a specific archetype, such as agencies, is compared to, maybe a more generalized approach, like how has this focus on this specific type of partner impacted the quality of this for you?
[00:08:08] Sandy: When you think about the end result for that. What you really want to make sure is that you’re not just referring people for referral sake. So if you think about what affiliate programs really are at their base, and you boil it all down, it’s a referral program. It is. Hey, it’s either. I believe in this product, or I stand behind this product or service, or I recommend this product or service, And so with that, having knowing that products audience to be able to create your program around that.
[00:08:45] Sandy: Right? So, for us, we’re doing, we just launched Bluehost cloud, and we know that’s going to service an agency better than Bluehost shared hosting. and so that allowed me to really look at that specific product. And say, how do I build a program around that product?
[00:09:05] Sandy: And so you can have multiple programs within your offering if you have different products, and they should be specific to the audience of that singular product.
[00:09:20] Sandy: Having a broad one’s great. We do too. We have the broader one the broader affiliate program that truly is an affiliate program. But There’s not that drill down into reaching a specific target market with a specific goal in mind. And so that really does. Allow for less broad. It also allows for a lot more hands on approach when you’re working.
[00:09:51] Sandy: 1 of the things we have is an advisory council at the top tier. And so that also allows those in that program to feel like they’re part of something bigger than themselves. That’s helping others. And they are because that advisory council. Meets quarterly, and we really do listen to the needs of that council to say, okay, well, we were going to prioritize this feature, but the council says that feature doesn’t mean anything to them and they want these other two features instead.
[00:10:26] Sandy: So let’s swap the order in which we’re going to build these features. And so you can actually utilize an affiliate program as an information source. For your company.
[00:10:40] Alex: Mm hmm.
[00:10:41] Sandy: And that’s a whole nother angle
[00:10:43] Alex: Yeah, for
[00:10:44] Sandy: your affiliate program so much more than just an affiliate program.
[00:10:49] Alex: Yeah, it’s like a VIP program. That’s it’s not just oh, you’re spending a lot of money with me. It’s like, hey, we’re gonna work on this together, right? We’re in this. That’s awesome. I love that.
[00:10:59] Sandy: Yeah.
[00:11:00] Alex: So another thing that I think about whenever I think about, Agencies and, this specific selection of a market, aside from the fact that, honestly, like a generic affiliate program is, it’s generic and anybody can use it.
[00:11:13] Alex: But most of the people that are doing it really well right now, at least are either bloggers or influencers. 1 could argue that you’re still making a program that’s specifically for a different audience. But, what I love about this is it targets specifically. A different type of audience than that person.
[00:11:29] Alex: And I have a feeling that it probably has an impact on your, outreach campaigns and the ways that you actually find these people. Can you share a little bit on how you approach locating and reaching out to potential agency partners?
[00:11:41] Sandy: I will tell you that it is a lot less of going out and buying ads and doing the digital side of the marketing that we all know and love
[00:11:55] Sandy: because it’s so tailored. I travel a lot for work. I’m at a new agency focused event every other week,
[00:12:02] Alex: Wow, really? That’s cool.
[00:12:03] Sandy: we have a booth and I’m there and I’m listening. I’m doing a lot of listening.
[00:12:09] Sandy: The great thing is that it really depends on that audience. So for me, that niche audience is agencies. And so I really focus on where agency is going to learn. About how to better their agency and how can I be in that space? So there’s a lot of joining Facebook groups. There’s a lot of answering questions.
[00:12:34] Sandy: There’s a lot of Twitter use and following certain hashtags on Twitter. So yeah, it’s a really mixed bag, but it’s also a slow process Growing snowball, as the snowball grows, you know, cause agency owners talk to other agency owners and it doesn’t matter what niche you’re in. If you’re, if your niche is plumbers, they talk to other plumbers.
[00:12:59] Sandy: So word of mouth is still going to be your biggest thing. But. It’s a very slow thing to get going when you’re so niche, when you’re broad and you’re just casting a wide net, you’re catching whatever’s there. If you’re thinking about, if we use a fishing analogy, you cast the wide net and you get crab and sharks and whales and fish and everything in the net and you have to throw some back.
[00:13:27] Sandy: And so whether that be affiliates that just aren’t the right fit, if you think about having an affiliate that only puts, or an affiliate that tries to put everything on their site when they’re a fashion blog, like that, just Not necessarily the right fit. Right.
[00:13:47] Alex: Or somebody who’s like doing bad things like competing for your ad names that you’re not allowed to compete for. There’s definitely some problems there. If you cast too wide of a net, you’re going to get, you’re going to get the things that you probably don’t want.
[00:13:58] Sandy: Exactly. Exactly. And kind of baking in some controls. Anytime you give away more than 100 percent as a fee as a finder’s fee, then you kind of open up the door for some fraud to come in, depending on what it is. But when you niche down and you’re fishing for small fish in a small pond.
[00:14:21] Alex: Mm
[00:14:22] Sandy: And you cast the net, you’re going to get small fish in the small pond in your net.
[00:14:27] Sandy: And so, I think the first step for anyone going through these exercises is to really understand their product’s target market
[00:14:39] Alex: Mm hmm.
[00:14:39] Sandy: who sells to that target market. Because
[00:14:43] Alex: for sure.
[00:14:44] Sandy: you can. Throw an ad for something on a mommy blog and it be the right fit for your product. If your product is being sold to moms, so like the mommy blog itself may not be your target market, but if the mommy blog is selling to moms and you have a product for moms, then that makes sense.
[00:15:08] Alex: Go talk to the moms. Yeah, exactly. That giant carabiner that they, that, they see on the strollers, stuff like that. Who knows? That’s great. So on the subject of so in regard to how you’re reaching out to these people, it sounds like a lot of your process is around, outreach, like direct outreach and just connecting with people and being in the and just kind of being present kind of just advocating for your program and talking about it.
[00:15:32] Alex: Whenever the opportunity presents itself. I think that’s awesome. And honestly, I think that most programs. Start like that. It seems like the ones that are the best ones are like that. Like, for example, right now with siren, I’m doing a I’m doing a lot of work with other plugin companies, right? So I’m doing integrations and then I’m creating partnerships with them.
[00:15:51] Alex: And then I’m working with them from there. It’s kind of in that same way where it’s like, I’m using my network. I’m using the people I work with. And I’m aligning that with the product I’m trying to sell and figuring out which people can actually work with me. And then if I’m starting to see patterns, as I start to see patterns and what those people are doing, I can then tailor a program around their specific needs.
[00:16:12] Alex: And it really sounds like Bluehost and you have kind of done that with agencies.
[00:16:20] Sandy: Yeah. We launched this in, or camp Europe of this year. And so it is still very much what I would call an infancy phase,
[00:16:29] Sandy: which means I’m still doing a lot of listening. So I’m really looking forward. WordCamp US is coming up and I’m really looking forward to sitting down with everyone and talking to agencies one on one and going over, the benefits of the program, what they think of it, because.
[00:16:48] Sandy: If people don’t want to join the program’s useless. So at the end of the day, there’s a lot of listening going on. The other thing in all the outreach that we’re doing and being present is with these other events that we’re doing. Every time we’re in a city, we do a dinner. And so I will invite a bunch of agency owners or technical, , directors to dinner and we’ll sit down and we’ll chat.
[00:17:21] Sandy: And so there is a lot of eating going on, too, which I think is very important to keep everyone’s. Bed and happy, right?
[00:17:30] Alex: For sure. Oh, yeah, absolutely. I’m here for that. That’s my kind of program.
[00:17:34] Sandy: But that’s the thing, right? It’s about knowing, knowing where I can get their time. They’re so busy during the day. So for me to say, Hey, I want to take the time to sit down and really understand what you’re looking for and what your needs are. Let me buy you dinner in the process.
[00:17:55] Sandy: And so then it takes. It takes a lot of the no’s out, right?
[00:18:00] Sandy: So, yeah, you’ve got some people who have their reasons to still not be able to make it. But, for the most part, we have a really decent turnout, and there’s enough of the blue hosters there to sit down and say, You Tell me more. And we bring a wide variety of folks. So you’ll have some technical people from the team and you’ll have me and then you’ll have some other folks that can really understand the different needs and do it over a good meal.
[00:18:33] Alex: Yeah, for sure. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah, I imagine. Like you, you kind of alluded to it earlier. You go to a lot of conferences. It sounds like so I’m sure I know where camp us is coming up soon. And I’m sure that, you’re going to be there. You’re probably gonna be very busy, right?
[00:18:45] Alex: Talking to a lot of agency owners there. And things like that. That makes a lot of sense. And also the fact that you can find these people at a conference is another thing. , I often think about that whenever I think about, like, how can I tailor my program? Is there a conference that revolves around those people?
[00:19:00] Alex: Because if there is, you can probably build an affiliate program around it just by the simple fact that you can go to them and talk to them in the same exact context that you’re talking about. I think that’s a great barometer. Figuring out if you’ve got an audience that not only can you sell to, but you could also partner with there’s plenty of options there.
[00:19:17] Alex: That’s great. So can you tell me a little bit about like, what are some of the strategies that you are using to maintain and strengthen the relationships with your agency partners over time? So we’ve talked a lot about, about, how you’re finding people and how you’re getting them to sign up.
[00:19:32] Alex: What are you doing? After they’ve signed up, how are you ensuring that they remain engaged and they’re loyal to your product and then also succeeding in their own needs at the same time?
[00:19:43] Sandy: Yeah, so there’s kind of a 3 prong approach that we’re taking, with this specific program. So you’ve got the affiliate portion. And so with that, they sign into a tool to accept their contract and everything. And so that’s 1 side and that . That side of it has newsletters that go out that are like, Hey, we’ve got, you know, this going on or that going on.
[00:20:07] Sandy: And so that kind of stays like a bug in their ear. And then the other 2 pieces is we’re giving them a free year of cloud hosting. To play with, think of it like a playground. So what we really want, and that’s on the more of like the, the product side, right, trying to connect all the dots for everyone across the organization.
[00:20:31] Sandy: So you’ve got the affiliate and commission side, you’ve got the product side. And so that we have a team of account managers that will reach out and say, Hey, we saw you got your cloud hosting, you signed up, you’re good. We just want to find out how is it going?
[00:20:47] Alex: Yeah.
[00:20:48] Sandy: Does it fit the needs? What do you think of it?
[00:20:50] Sandy: And that’s kind of a feature listening session to figure out if we’re on the right track. Right. And then the other part is we have our LinkedIn community. And so when you sign up for the program itself, basically get an email that’s like, hey, sign up for these 3 things. So that way we can make sure that you’re fully engaged and the linkedin community is a place for agencies to come together and find solutions, find people network.
[00:21:22] Sandy: I put prompts in there every week or 2 to keep things moving and have. Thoughtful things that come up do you know today’s national margarita day? How’s everybody celebrating? Like it’s important.
[00:21:33] Sandy: And so it’s fun and it’s not just business. It’s a little bit of everything and it has a life of its own and that’s how community should be
[00:21:41] Alex: Yeah, totally. Absolutely.
[00:21:42] Sandy: But I think it’s really important for that community aspect because. We could build a program around our product all day long. And if our product isn’t what people need in that moment, it’s not going to matter. And we could build an affiliate program all day long, but if our products aren’t what people want to refer, it’s not going to matter.
[00:22:03] Sandy: But when you add that community aspect of saying, Hey, we’re here for you. We’re here to answer questions. There’s someone in here from the Bluehost team that it. If you have the worst day and you just need someone to vent to, you’ve got a community of folks that are like minded, that are in the same walk of life as you, that are having the same things, client problems, contract, like the number of times someone comes in and is like, Hey, , had this issue with a client.
[00:22:35] Sandy: and I don’t really know how to respond via email to them. And someone’s have you tried doing this, this and this and then putting into chat GPT and see what pops up to make it nicer? Like,
[00:22:47] Alex: funny.
[00:22:48] Sandy: but sometimes, sometimes you need that sounding board and a lot of agencies right now. There’s over 56, 000 agencies in the U.
[00:22:57] Sandy: S. alone. That’s a lot of agencies. So when you talk about that number, a lot of them are one or two man shops. And so you don’t have that sounding board that you have when you have 15, 16, 20 employees with a few leaders at the top to really talk to. And so it’s really important for people to have their tribe.
[00:23:23] Sandy: And so my focus is how do we ensure that we’re their tribe? Absolutely.
[00:23:31] Alex: Yeah, that’s great. That makes a lot of sense. And in regards to that, like expanding on that a little bit, it sounds like, The big thing for you is the community aspect of it. It’s obviously you can create, the program and the incentive structure and all these things, but those are kind of, those are the, they’re important, but the real keeper here is the community and probably that advisor board that you were talking about.
[00:23:51] Alex: So if you can get to a point where you’re on that board you can actually do that. That’s great. So whenever it comes to Agencies, obviously they are very interested in generating sales, generating leads. The ones that do really well are really good at that. And the ones that don’t usually end up fizzing out at some point in time.
[00:24:10] Alex: And that’s really true for any industry and pretty much any product ever. But, one of the things that I think a really good affiliate program can do is it can help, especially in this case, since it’s a partnership, there’s ways that you could help them generate sales in some way. And I’d be interested to hear, like, what are the, some of the things, that, you’ve implemented to help your affiliates stay engaged and, motivated to sell more, to their customers?
[00:24:36] Alex: Because obviously, You would win in that case and they’re going to win in that case. So I’ve got to believe you have some kind of strategy or some kind of approach that you’re doing to help them.
[00:24:45] Sandy: So we’ve got a couple of things. One is a webinar series that kicks off in the next couple of weeks. And so that webinar series is all about building your agency business. So we’ve got revenue talks, we’ve got management talks, time management talks, project management, like the webinars are going to be.
[00:25:06] Sandy: So important for agencies that need that, especially if they’re new, or if they’ve hit a slump, or if they’re just, I remember a lot of agencies going through the coven times kind of hit a bump in the road. And so we’re covering a vast variety of very specific topics that are going to be crucial for a lot of agency owners.
[00:25:32] Sandy: And the great thing is they’re all recorded and they’re all going to live. On, YouTube, and they’re going to be accessible to people who aren’t able to watch them live. So, they can come, they can watch them live, participate in chat, network, have fun, or they can consume the content after the fact, which I think is a hugely important thing.
[00:25:54] Sandy: Piece of that is to have that, you know, database of content. on top of that, we also have, the directory. And so while the page is not live yet, we are working on building it out. Like I said, this is in the MNC. So everything is kind of rolling out slowly. But the directory will be a front page.
[00:26:14] Sandy: Facing page where people can find what they’re looking for. So as long as they’re in that top tier and they’re doing a lot of business with us, and it doesn’t have to be direct business, which is great. You can refer or own the hosting and it still gets credited to your agency to work towards that target number.
[00:26:31] Sandy: And so with that, the directory page will allow. You tag your company the way that, you know, if you’re SEO, if you’re PPC, if you’re just web development, and so then, you know, small, we have a lot of small businesses that use blue host. So they, if they outgrow their current. Solution or they’re doing it themselves.
[00:26:53] Sandy: We’re going to have that directory page. And so hopefully the idea here is that it will connect our small business clients to agencies and kind of fill that gap in. So, like I said, we’re trying to really. Be the partner that agencies deserve and all
[00:27:14] Sandy: of this. And so to me, that directory piece is a big part of that because I can teach you all day how to increase your revenue, but if you don’t have leads coming in.
[00:27:25] Alex: Right, exactly. Yeah, that makes, it, makes me kind of think, it reminds me so a lot of, I’ve been spending a lot of time talking about Udemy courses and things like that and programs related to that. And the reason why a lot of course, creators will go to Udemy or some kind of platform like that instead of doing their own thing is the reach.
[00:27:41] Alex: So having that extended reach and you know, kind of just having somebody in your corner who’s. Helping you generate leads a little bit can definitely make a difference. If you’re able to do that, I think that is a really big, arguably, one of the biggest benefits I would see personally, for a program like that, like just a, You know, that’s a real win win if you’re able to generate opportunities for them in some kind of way, even if it’s organic or inorganic , or however it works, maybe you have support tickets or something, and you’re referring people to the agency partners or something like that.
[00:28:13] Alex: There’s plenty of opportunities there. Actually, it makes me think for a while, when I was freelancing, a lot of the money when I was like really scrappy, just getting started, I actually worked with one of the, well, one of the well known plugin companies. And I had actually managed to work out a deal with them where they, instead of forwarding it to forwarding stuff to Codable or some kind of like development service like that, they literally would send the tickets to me.
[00:28:37] Alex: And I would, like I was getting, it was like strapping onto a fire hose, don’t get me wrong, but it was a lot of work and a lot of stuff, but I was able to get a lot of really good leads from that. And it was really, really helpful. It was a lot of work for me, but it was a lot of, it gave me a lot of opportunities.
[00:28:52] Alex: And honestly, that was kind of like the big thing for me that got my career started. It’s what got my foot in the door and got me, , to the point to where I was able to do that, to be able to actually get more portfolio pieces and like show it off to other people and start being able to do it on my own.
[00:29:07] Alex: That’s a really big example of that. Anyway, a lot of the things that we’ve been talking about here have been pretty big, scale, right? So obviously Bluehost has a lot of resources and they have a lot of things that they can put into this. A lot of the people that are going to be listening to this, myself included, don’t have as many resources as, a company like Bluehost may have.
[00:29:27] Alex: So I’d be interested to hear About some of these strategies and maybe that you’ve employed that you’ve talked about in this and how you might scale them down to the essential pieces that, a solopreneur could potentially do or a company that, only has somebody not maintaining this full time, could probably, fold into their, their day to day.
[00:29:46] Sandy: Yeah. The biggest one’s being present online. That one’s free. Joining the Facebook groups, joining the LinkedIn groups, joining the following things on Twitter. The hashtags, if you will, that apply to your business model and your products and services. It’s a lot of social listening and it does take time and.
[00:30:06] Sandy: I will say that it’s one of those things where I always asked myself the question, can I afford not to, so making sure that you’re utilizing the built in ability to be notified of certain things. So kind of prioritizing your hashtags and setting up notifications for certain ones. That way, you’re not having to sit on
[00:30:31] Sandy: social media. Right? That’s it. Instead, you’re able to be notified about it. I do know there’s some social media management tools that are less expensive than others as well. And being able to have everything like in a feed is also very helpful for just keeping track of things. Honestly, there’s like a gazillion of these social media management things now.
[00:30:55] Sandy: So I wouldn’t even want to like name names. Because honestly, what I used for the decade of running my business versus what I use now, they’d be totally different anyway, even on like a smaller scale, but find, look at the features, find one that works for you, find one in your budget. They’re in every price point and set it up.
[00:31:18] Sandy: And just let it come to you. Don’t sit there and feel like you have to be on Facebook for hours upon hours every day.
[00:31:27] Alex: and scanning,
[00:31:27] Sandy: yeah. if you’re big enough that you’ve got someone who that can be their sole job, sure. But let’s be real. That’s not practical.
[00:31:36] Sandy: So, So, find that tool. the other thing is creating.
[00:31:40] Sandy: A list that you check, and I say that, I know that sounds very vague, but when it comes down to your daily work, block your time. So like, set your checklist. These are the four things I want to check in on today. I want to check in on that Facebook group that’s all about WordPress hosting, just to make sure and do a search for Bluehost and just make sure there’s no fires I can help put out, right?
[00:32:05] Sandy: Like, that’s an easy one, right? The list changes for me every day because I want to appear like I’m everywhere.
[00:32:13] Alex: yeah, I get that, I do,
[00:32:14] Sandy: So you don’t have to be all things to all people, all days, every hour. You need to appear everywhere throughout the month. Because then people remember who you are, you’re able to be helpful, you’re able to be supportive, and you’re able to do it in a cyclical manner and having those notifications on means that if your company were to get tagged in something, you get notified and you can handle it.
[00:32:39] Sandy: But if you’re just trying to be that supportive arm that lives in that community, you can do that on a cycle and you don’t have to be there. Every single day.
[00:32:49] Alex: gotcha, yeah, that makes sense, so you can get notified if it’s an emergency. And be there immediately if you need to be using, the notification setup, like you were talking about, but then you can also just kind of check in for, less, potentially less vital things that, you know, you’re just kind of poking in on every once in a while to see how it’s going.
[00:33:05] Sandy: And I set time aside. So I set 30 minutes to an hour aside every day to just touch base with my communities that I’m in and make sure that there’s, and I’ve lived in the WordPress space for a really long time. So for me, if I can just answer a basic WordPress question, it has nothing to do with Bluehost.
[00:33:25] Sandy: It has nothing to do with my role or my job, but it keeps, you know, Sandy on people’s minds. And so then when they, and they know Sandy works at Bluehost. So when they do hit that bump, then they’re like, Oh, I bet. I bet if I ping Sandy,
[00:33:41] Alex: She could fix it. She can help with this.
[00:33:44] Sandy: she can at least get me to the right place.
[00:33:47] Alex: Absolutely.
[00:33:48] Sandy: And so, for me, it’s about that and being there and being present and being on people’s minds but also being mindful of my, how much space within a space I take up, right? No one wants you to come into a community and just, You
[00:34:08] Alex: Yeah.
[00:34:08] Sandy: don’t wanna do that.
[00:34:09] Sandy: So it allows having that list and that schedule allows me to be present, but not too present.
[00:34:19] Alex: That makes sense. There’s a balance there. That’s cool. Okay. So that kind of covers a little bit on like the social aspects on it. And it sounds like for you, a lot of what you do is, revolves around that the social. kind of discovery and finding these people. Another thing that you talked a lot about is some of the community aspects and, as a benefit, right?
[00:34:36] Alex: So you’re offering a community as a benefit. And, what do you think it would look like for somebody else to do that if they were creating their own community along those lines? Like, that seems like it would be a lot of work. Is that something? Does, are you just kind of folding that in along with the rest of your social groups and communities and things like that?
[00:34:51] Alex: Or like, what does that look like?
[00:34:53] Sandy: I do a lot of considering it, folding it in. The thing about it is when you start a community, It’s kind of a steep uphill battle, right? You invite the people you trust right out of the gate and explain to them what you’re doing and what you’re trying to get out of it.
[00:35:09] Sandy: And then as you start to grow it and get members, Then you’re able to find the ones that you can trust to be community managers. And so it’s not about you owning everything. It’s about you controlling the message of what that community is meant to be. The vision, the mission. And then as you grow, once you hit 40, 50 people, then.
[00:35:37] Sandy: You can say, okay, Alex, you’ve been a great member of my community for the last, , month and a half. And I think community would really like to hear more from you. You’re really active. Would you want to help manage some? Of the community. And so then you make them, you promote them to be a community manager and it also makes you look good because it’s not just you and people know it’s not just you.
[00:36:04] Sandy: And then it also makes the community feel like it’s self owned. Which is huge and so then it takes on a life of its own, because now you have multiple people managing and so you’ve got your code of conduct and those managers can remove messages or monitor things based on that vision, that mission and that code of conduct.
[00:36:27] Sandy: And it’s not on you to own it full time, because the community kind of self lives
[00:36:33] Sandy: in its own bubble and you’re just there to kind of be the arbitrator.
[00:36:38] Alex: Yeah. Yeah, just to make sure, those standards and that code of contact is actually being upheld.
[00:36:44] Sandy: Exactly. Everywhere!
[00:36:45] Alex: That’s great. That’s cool. Well, I think that’s all the questions I had. This was really helpful. Lots of really great context here. I just really love how, this program that you’ve created isn’t Just a traditional affiliate program, and I love how you’re creating a partnership with other people and motivating them to work with you in a way that isn’t just.
[00:37:06] Alex: Selling more of a product or anything like that. Like you’ve created some depth here and you’re creating something that’s different than any, than other places, other programs. So that’s really great. And I just think that’s awesome. So where can people find you online or what where can they find out more about this program as well?
[00:37:23] Alex: I have a feeling that the answer to that is going to be just yes, but let’s, let’s see what we can do. Yeah.
[00:37:29] Sandy: Absolutely. So, for me personally, you can find me online on Twitter, is where I tend to most easily found. I’m Sun Sand Design. I’m from Florida, so Sunshine Sandy, so Sun Sand Design. And, and then for the program, the easiest place to go is bluehost. com slash partner program. All one word. We tried to
[00:37:54] Alex: Cool. And I’ll share those in the share notes below too.
[00:37:56] Sandy: but other than that, you can also find me at WordCamp US coming up and at a digital summit near you, because that is the series that I am going to all the time.
[00:38:08] Alex: That’s awesome. That’s fun. Okay, cool. Well, I’ll see you at WordCamp.
[00:38:12] Sandy: Awesome. Sounds great. Can’t wait to be there.
[00:38:15] Alex: Yeah. So thank you so much, Sandy. Have a great day.
[00:38:17] Sandy: You too.
[00:38:20] Alex: Thank you for joining us in this episode of Partnership, where your network is the wind in your sails. I hope you found today’s discussion insightful and inspiring. Remember, the strength of your business lies in the partnerships you build and nurture. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and leave a review.
[00:38:38] Alex: For more tips and insights, visit our website at partnership. fm. This is Alex Standiford, sailing out.