In today’s interview with Nejc Skoberne – Lead Growth Hacker at HonestBrew we will be mainly talking about the importance of having affiliate marketing strategy and successfully  applying it within your business.

1. Why HonestBrew? What excites you in your day to day job role at HonestBrew?

Because of 2 things. The first one is an amazing team, that likes to work incredibly lean and fast and always learns from victories and defeats. The second one is being part of the core team of the business that is growing exponentially and is also the UK market leader when it comes to Craft Beer Clubs, besides who doesn’t want to work for a beer company?
I think the most exciting thing about working with HonestBrew is actually getting to know about the craft beer industry and how little the “average joe” like me actually knows. Before joining HonestBrew I actually thought of quite a few big breweries to be brewing good beer, now I know that it’s only optimised for scale and profit.

2. What is a good way to get started in affiliate marketing?

Very hard questions. Affiliate marketing is a trade that requires a good combination between tech, marketing and business development skills, that not everyone possess. If I would be starting my career again, I would probably try to land an internship with one of the affiliate networks and then try to move to a client’s side, as I think you will learn the tricks of the trade with an affiliate network, but you will not learn a lot about handling the affiliate product, for which you can only learn while working for a product/service company.

3. Is there a disadvantage in using Affiliate Marketing for start-ups?

Definitely! As a start-up very few people will trust your business and independent endorsements, recommendations and reviews from websites around the web will make people trust you more, as they know, that someone has already experienced the product or service. Just imagine, would you buy a product without knowing anything about it, except for what you see on the packaging? Probably not, now what would happen if your friend would recommend the same product to you?

4. What resources do you need to use to launch affiliate marketing for a brand?

Basically the only basic thing you need for affiliate marketing to kick off is an affiliate tracking system in place, so all the referrals are being tracked and can be seen for the affiliate and the marketer. That and the affiliates that will actually refer the users 🙂

5. How do you start affiliate marketing business?

By reading a ton about it online! Sadly, there’s no magic or secret book that reveals all the secrets of affiliate marketing or course and certification online that would help you. So what I would suggest like with everything in life is to start reading and running – once you’ll read about it, you should also start testing the same methods on real life examples and learn from your failures.

6. What are some of the critical mistakes a newbie affiliate marketer should avoid?

Working with only discount websites, as they mostly bring only low value customers that are not loyal to the brand.