From Pain to Profit: The Financial Evolution of Affiliate-Agency Partnerships

A Conversation with Jenny Gonzalez

The affiliate marketing industry is experiencing a period of dynamic evolution, driven by factors such as the growth of the creator economy, the complexities of managing global payouts, and the increasing demand for transparency and efficiency in brand-affiliate partnerships.

Today, I’m delighted to have the opportunity to speak with Jenny Gonzalez, a recognized leader in the affiliate marketing space, about her insights and perspectives on these transformative trends.

Jenny Gonzalez is a distinguished entrepreneur and a prominent figure in the affiliate marketing community. As the Co-Founder of three successful companies, Trackfinity, Rocahead, and Fuss Media Limited, she is dedicated to empowering advertisers and publishers to reach new heights through innovative technology and strategic partnerships. With extensive experience managing large-scale affiliate programs, Jenny brings invaluable insights into the affiliate landscape.

Jenny, thank you so much for joining me today!

Q1: To kick things off, I’d love to hear your perspective on the biggest challenges you’ve seen in affiliate-agency partnerships over the years. What are the pain points that both sides are struggling with, and how have these evolved as the industry has grown and become more complex?

A1: That’s a loaded question because I have seen A LOT! Personally, I have been very lucky to be on the advertiser, the affiliate, the network sides and now I get to understand the role that the tracking software provider plays by being on the Trackfinity side. 

There are simply so many challenges, from a human resources perspective, knowledge sharing, steep learning curve, financial risk, competition, fraud and everything in between. I guess for everyone involved, the biggest challenges will always be: transparency, trust and reliability.

On the advertiser side you never want to give away your secret sauce, your profit margin or your operational struggles so that you keep your knowhow behind guarded walls. Sadly, affiliate marketing is an industry that lives off appearances and sharing our struggles would only go against that big front all advertisers aim to have. 

On the affiliate side, you also do not want to share your secret sauce because it’s very likely that the advertiser will want to remove you from the equation and do the traffic generation themselves to save on your commissions.

Networks tend to have the know-how and make sure that everyone plays nice, but again both advertisers and affiliates always try to circumvent the network and underestimate the added value, which only comes to light when bridges are burnt. 

Q2: You’ve emphasized the importance of trust and transparency. Could you share an example of a situation where a lack of transparency or trust led to a problem? What were the consequences, and how might it have been avoided?

One of a million examples, but here it goes: 

We take being a network very seriously and monitoring the health of our system is just a part of what we do, as a consequence of that we tend to know when an advertiser’s system goes down even momentarily during the night and for those ones that we do big volume with we follow up in the morning to see what it was. There was a particular case where we caught an advertiser lying several times, making up excuses that didn’t add up and eventually claiming fraud on leads over 6 months after because they had made a mistake in the coding that they were not willing to own up to. 

Ultimately we stopped working with this advertiser (even though we were in their top 5 affiliate sources for years) and we made good money with them, the lack of trust and transparency was simply too much and at any given point we were risking this person waking up with another great scheme and deciding not to pay us. It was absolutely not worth it, so we decided to invest further into other relationships and help other operations with potential scale so that they could handle the volume.

Mistakes happen, technical issues happen, unforeseen situations will always come up, but how we decide to handle them and how we choose to deal with affiliates will say a lot more about character and the longevity of the deal than the actual mistakes themselves. Play silly games and you will win silly prizes.   

Q3: You’ve highlighted some of the core challenges in affiliate partnerships, especially around transparency and trust. How big a role do you think payout processes play in building (or breaking) those relationships? Have you seen situations where inefficient or unreliable payouts created problems for agencies or their affiliate partners?

A3: Well, payments are an intricate part of affiliate marketing and they can make or break a relationship in this industry. Depending on the type of affiliate and the business models at hand, payments will affect your cash flow and your ability to scale which makes reliable payments not a nice-to-have, but a MUST have.

Being paid by someone that is not on top of what they are doing or doesn’t work with the right providers could potentially mean losing your bank account or getting flagged by money institutions. Not being able to get paid on time can also mean not being able to scale some of your traffic sources and missing out on business deals.

Payments are an intrinsic part of affiliate marketing.

Q4: As we wrap up this session, you’ve shared some incredibly valuable insights into the challenges and opportunities within the affiliate marketing landscape—from building trust and transparency to optimizing payout processes. Looking ahead, what advice would you offer to brands and agencies striving to build more successful and sustainable affiliate partnerships? What strategies or tools do you consider essential for navigating this complex landscape and driving long-term growth?

A4:

1. Hire drive, hire passion, hire eagerness for self development; everything else you can teach but basic things like work ethic and soft skills need to be part of the starting setup. 
2. Use tech to allow humans to be human, it is incredible how many processes that are done manually could be automated and improved, not only is it a waste of time but also demoralizing for your employees.
3. Find the right tools for your affiliate program, it took us 10 years to develop Trackfinity and the biggest lesson that we can teach you is that you have internal customers (your employees and stakeholders) and external customers (your affiliates). It is important that the software you use to run your affiliate program properly services both internal and external needs.
4. Make sure that you are investing in emotionally engaging your employees, on top of making them happier, by having emotionally engaged employees you are likely to outperform your competitors by over 100% in price per share if their employees are not emotionally engaged.
5. The world of AI is fully changing every 3 months, the advances are so rapid that you can’t make a prediction 6 months forward and yes I know it’s the buzzword of the last two years but whether you want to jump on this AI wagon or not, make sure you understand that the best use you can give AI is to optimize as many tasks as possible to give people in your organization more time to be creative and to emotionally engage with the company. Ultimately people buy from people and creating that human connection will always give you the best edge.

Jenny, as we wrap up this enlightening conversation, it’s clear that your expertise and insights are invaluable. Your thoughts on trust, transparency, and efficient payouts highlight the key ingredients for building strong, sustainable partnerships.

Your advice—from leveraging technology to fostering emotional engagement among employees and embracing AI for optimization—offers a practical and inspiring roadmap for brands and agencies striving for growth.

Thank you for sharing your passion, expertise, and commitment to advancing the industry. It’s been an absolute pleasure speaking with you, and I’m sure your insights will resonate deeply with everyone who reads this interview.