Appreneur Podcast Episode 3: Jesse Lakes

Welcome to the 3rd episode of our Appreneur Podcasts.

In this series of podcasts, we’ll be bringing you some of the biggest names in the industry and the brightest app developers on the planet to discuss app marketing, monetization and development strategies with you every week.

In this episode, we sit down with Jesse Lakes, CEO of Georiot.com and extract (that sounds painful doesn’t it?) some great tactics and strategies that he’s using right now today. You’ll learn:

• Why ALL App Developers and Appreneurs should be integrating Affiliate Marketing into their monetization mix
• How to leverage the iTunes / App Store Affiliate Program
• Why measuring, testing, optimizing, and knowing your analytics is so critical
• Where the App Affiliate Marketing landscape is heading.

Check out the video and leave your comments and feedback below…

TRANSCRIPTS:

Len: Welcome to the third edition of the Appreneur AppCast. I’m Len Wright, CEO and cofounder of AppClover.com. I’ve got my partner here with me, Matthew Lutz, as well, who is the cofounder and COO of AppClover.com. We also have Jeff Williams here with us, as always — senior assistant of pop-ups.

Jeff: That’s right.

Len: Grand Poobah and CEO of Weblance. As well we have a special guest with us today. That special guest is Jesse Lakes of GeoRiot. We’re going to have a great time, and we’re going to jam pack this whole podcast with a lot of great affiliate information. You’re going to want to take notes, and you’re going to want to listen really intently. We’re going to have some great information here. Let’s just dive right in; Jesse, maybe tell us a little bit about what you and GeoRiot are up to, and give us a little bit of a background about you and your book as well.

Jesse: Absolutely. Right now, GeoRiot and myself, we are 110% focused on the iTunes and app store affiliate program; that program that every app developer should be using to bring in a little bit of extra commission, and for some extra tracking on everything they already do, such as linking to the app store.

We’ve been really focused on making things happen with the affiliate program, helping app developers, and music labels, and other people to use the Apple ecosystem earn more money and earn more money from an international audience, and do that efficiently. Just kind of smooth out a lot of the creases and wrinkles of doing that efficiently, that’s what we are up to and yes, we’ve been having a lot of fun with it over the last couple of years.

Len: Right on. Your site, I do want to mention too, if somebody wants to go and check out the book, which I suggest they do, is MasteringiTunes.com, right?

Jesse: That’s exactly right, yes. Just a little disclaimer there, I wrote that book back in 2009. Then shortly after I wrote and published that book, I ended up with a job where I could no longer update it. I actually went and worked for Apple for the last couple years managing their affiliate program. Yes, the book is a little bit outdated, but the core concepts and principles are important, they are there, so I definitely encourage people to check it out.

Hopefully someday things will give me a moment to go back and write a second edition. I guess that’s kind of a mix — if things slow down with GeoRiot and I have time to write a second edition, that means something is going on.

Len: That’s very true.

Matt: It might mean that you’re just running it very efficiently, and you’ve got a lot of people doing all your work for you, so that could be a good thing.

Jesse: Right now there’s not an extra four or five hours in the day, right? Were no longer at a 28 or 29 hour day?

Len: Exactly. Congrats, because GeoRiot definitely fits a crucial part for the affiliate game within that. As you know, AppClover owns 20 review sites. We are earning in the US, Mexico and Canada in the iTunes store right now via Apple’s affiliate program and LinkShare. We will be implementing GeoRiot in the near future across all those 20 network as well. That said, during our conversation we had one day, you flat-out showed me what we were missing, and how many markets we were missing out on monetizing. We don’t like leaving money on the table that way. It’s easy when someone shows you like that, but what made you aware of this huge gap in the market, and the huge opportunity to significantly increase the efforts in any affiliate marketing?

Jesse: Long story short, back in 2006 I was working on these different websites that took soundtracks from extreme sports films, and listed them out. ITunes had become our prominent revenue source. The soundtrack sites were really taking off, we had one for skiing and snowboarding and surfing. We were a niche that hadn’t been explored and people were pretty excited about it. We saw great traffic coming through, but our commissions weren’t really matching that as far as growing as well. That went on for a couple of years, we kind of scratched our heads. We were just like, “More traffic, and we will make more money.”

One day we kind of just realized that, “Wow, we’re only earning money off of the US program.” All of this international traffic from all over Europe and Asia and so forth was wasted, basically. It was a big realization. I remember walking down the street, stopping and thinking about it. I had to sit down, because it was just this big thing that there was more to it than that. That kind of started this whole process of investigating it, investigating it led to starting GeoRiot and writing the book and so forth.

It was definitely a head scratcher once we kind of figured that was going on. We started digging a little bit deeper and realized that wow, okay, a lot of these affiliate programs for these international brands are really just not a single affiliate program, it’s really a combination of affiliate programs. A second ago you guys were monetizing in the US, Canada and Mexico. That’s awesome; you got three of forty-five. The iTunes affiliate program now exists in 45 different countries around the world. You’ve got three of the bigger ones, which is great, but you also have all of Europe that you’re missing out on, Latin America, Australia, New Zealand, Japan – you’ve got all these other major markets where people are just as excited about apps. They are most likely visiting your site and clicking on links, and you’re not earning any of the commissions. We just saw that, as you said earlier, it’s leaving money on the table. That sucks when you could be having the same amount of traffic and making twice as much money off of them, that’s a lot. Again, the whole efficiency thing that Matt just talked about a minute ago, trying to jam an extra for five hours in your day. Why not just double your commissions with the same amount of traffic? That sounds more efficient to me, and that’s really what we’ve been focusing on.

Len: It’s all about optimizing. Sorry, Matt, but it’s all about optimizing what you have.

Matt: I was literally going to say the same thing. It’s funny, because it’s one of those things where we’ve just kind of been taking it, like, “Okay, we’re part of the affiliate program, we’re using LinkShare and all that stuff on our 20 review sites.” We didn’t even think, “How can we tap into other markets?” It’s one of those things, like as soon as the first person does it everyone else is like, “Oh, of course!” Obviously it’s a little more complex than that, because the system you guys have built is a pretty robust system behind the scenes. The user interface is easy for a lot of people, but I know you guys have put a ton of effort and time into building that beast of a platform.

Len: A lot of our traffic, Jesse, comes from a lot of the places that you said there. You are listing places off and I was going, “Yeah, actually a lot of our traffic comes from those areas.” How much we’re leaving on the table I don’t know, but anything is no good. That’s all about going back and making sure the you have all the ducks in a row, and all the little holes fixed before you forge ahead really strong. That’s what you were saying before. If you forge ahead really strong first, the effort has to be doubled or tripled later because you have to go back and do the same things over and over again.

For AppClover, before we even turned on any real traffic at all, we were doing tests and so forth to make sure that our opt-in rate was up to a certain level, our net was so strong before we released. You want to be able to optimize your effort as much as possible.

Jesse: Exactly. To be fair, too, you asked about other affiliate programs as well. I think iTunes with their iTunes app store, iBookstore and Mac app store affiliate program, as it’s officially called, is pretty wide. The same problem has happened with Amazon. Amazon has nine different storefronts worldwide, nine different affiliate programs. It’s definitely a problem. Not only do we see in this iTunes app store ecosystem, but it’s a problem in the bigger scheme of things. It really is all about optimization to make sure you’re earning money off of it as much as you possibly can so that you can have the momentum and the resources to forge ahead at full speed.

Len: Here’s a quick question, too, for the newbie with that. Why is it segmented? You just touched on why to a certain extent, but it’s segmented in all these countries. Why don’t they just have a basic all the way around? Is it mostly legal depending on the country? Don’t know?

Jesse: I think there are a lot of different things that tie into that. I’m sure everyone has different reasons. Yes, a lot of it, I’m assuming, has to do with tax, legal, digital rights. You get artists like Adele; Adele has four different record labels, so she has four different people distributing her music they need to protect digital rights on and make sure that sales only happen in the countries where they can, or where the rights allow for it. There’s definitely a pretty messy world behind that, and the simplest answer was just to create geographic-specific stores and run with it. Again, I’m not an accountant or a tax person. I’m sure there are many different reasons, but from the third-person perspective that’s what I’m assuming.

Matt: Can we go back a second? I just want to get the official name of Apple’s affiliate program.

Jesse: Are you ready for it?

Matt: I am.

Jesse: iTunes app store, iBookstore and Mac app store affiliate program. I’m going to put a little asterisk here. Even though it is a ridiculous name and it’s way too many characters, the brilliance of that is that it works across all four of those stores. The really cool thing about the affiliate program is as soon as you click on an affiliate link, that person, even though they may have clicked on an affiliate link to go download an app, if they go and buy an album or TV show or a movie or a book, or anything else inside any of those digital download stores supplied by Apple, you are earning commissions off of that. That’s a really cool thing; I think that makes up for that long name. Go ahead, Matt.

Matt: That’s a 72-hour window, right? Isn’t that what their cookie system is for?

Jesse: Exactly. You click on a link, you get a cookie set, 72 hours for that user to browse through any of those stores. Download any of that content and you earn 5% commission in most countries, and 4% commission throughout Europe and Japan.

Matt: Real quick before I say this. You would think Apple, with as much as they are into simplicity and elegance and all that stuff, you think they would just call it like iAffiliate Program or something like that. That’s beside the point. What’s interesting about Apple is, for most people don’t know about affiliate marketing and stuff, traditionally affiliate marketing started on – well, it didn’t start online, but when it moved to online the cookie system is based off your IP address or whatever. Now in Apple, correct me if I’m wrong, but that’s based off of your actual account, right? Your iTunes account, or how does that work?

Jesse: It’s device-specific. When you visit a link on your iPhone or your iPad, it’s everything you purchase over those 72 hours on that device; it’s not tied to your account.

Matt: Okay, gotcha.

Len: To dive in a little bit more, we’ve gone a little bit over the why’s and got some meat there. Can you take a few minutes and talk a little bit more about how? Can you give our community some ways that they can and should leverage the iTunes app store, and the affiliate program? Everything from in-app to out-app tactics.

Jesse: Absolutely. To boil it down as simply as possible, any time you link to iTunes or the app store, you should be using an affiliate link. We talked about this really briefly, but just to jump in again, one because you earn a commission, two because you can also do some pretty easy tracking with that, which allows you to get some metrics between the marketing channels. Going into marketing channels – inside of app, outside of app – there are probably five different ways that we regularly encourage people to use the affiliate program.

First, for app developers it’s really that cross-promotion. You have two apps, or five apps or ten apps in the store, on your “more” page or between levels or whatever it may be, you want to cross-promote your apps. You want more people using your apps specifically. Of course, you’re going to put a link into the iTunes store or app store. Use the affiliate program there; earn commissions off of that. They may go and buy your app, they may unfortunately go and buy your competitor’s app, but you’re still going to earn commissions off of that. That’s probably the very first one that we recommend people to do is to figure out that inside the app world. Again, we talked just a second ago, but the affiliate program works brilliantly inside of iOS and the mobile devices.

The second thing that we recommend partners to do is to really make sure that their splash pages or any of their web presence is decked out with affiliate links. Again, through your website, I’m sure you’re recommending your site, your app or any music you have in the game, or whatever it may be. Again, use affiliate links there. You want to code each of these affiliate links so that you can compare marketing channels, again, so you can see the website was responsible for driving X number of clicks and Y number of sales, and so forth. That’s number two.

Number three, a lot of games have really great social components where they tie into social aspects. Anytime someone is going to post on their Twitter feed or Facebook on behalf of your app, there is no reason you shouldn’t have a shortened affiliate link right there as while, so that when their friends or whoever sees that tweet clicks on a link, they get sent back into your app. Again, you’re opening that affiliate window. You’re going to earn commissions on anything that happens within the next 72 hours.

Four is a lot of paid media. If you’re going to go and have some sort of advertising campaign for AdWords or whoever it may be, Facebook ads or LinkedIn or whoever it might be, there is no reason that you shouldn’t be using affiliate links. Not only will it help defer some of the cost of the advertising campaign, but again, you can kind of do some metrics around the marketing channels, so you can see how effective your Facebook campaign is, versus your AdWords campaign, versus the cross-promotion side of your app. Again, it’s kind of leveraging those different pieces.

The fifth one we really recommend to people — and again, these are five just off the top of my head – creativity. Get creative with it; make sure you don’t violate the terms and conditions Apple lays out, but a little bit of creativity will go a long way to figure out how to maximize things. The fifth one is creating your own ads. If you’ve got a lot of remnant ad inventory inside of your game, inside of your app, wherever it may be, there’s no reason you shouldn’t be again cross-promoting, or even promoting top apps with affiliate links. You’re not going to get paid right from the developer, but again you open that affiliate window. You get 4% to 5% from all the sales that happen over the next 72 hours. It’s a great way for monetizing that inventory.

Matt: It’s amazing how quick that — when you say that 4%-5%. You look at the average app is $1, but those nickels — it sounds funny saying this, but when you multiply that times thousands and thousands of clicks and downloads and stuff, it adds up pretty quick. Especially if you have a whole network of apps, not just talking one single app — obviously you should do it from the start, but if you’ve got a whole network of 20, 30, 40 or 50 apps, do that math. It just exponentially grows. Again, you have a pile of nickels every month waiting for you.

Len: Even if you don’t have your own network, on a triune network you can actually join with other smaller networks. It all comes back to the alliance and the JV stuff, but you can actually form relationships with other smaller networks as well. You may not have a big network, but you can actually maybe join five or ten smaller networks and make personal deals back and forth with the developers of those. All of a sudden, you’ve got a big network. Go ahead, Jesse.

Jesse: I’m sure I had some great important point, but I think yours trumped mine, so I forgot it.

Len: Sorry about that, man. Let’s take this over to circle back all the way around back to GeoRiot. One of the most powerful things we go over with our community when it comes to marketing is measuring, testing and optimizing. We were just talking about measuring, and we were just talking a while ago about optimizing. Knowing your analytics is so important, because then you know what you’re doing right, what you are not doing right, and it gives you that roadmap. GeoRiot has a pretty robust analytics component to it. Could you give us an idea, or talk about some of your thoughts as to why this is such an important feature in GeoRiot, and how people can use it?

Jesse: Absolutely. I’ll just reemphasize what you said just a moment ago, which was metrics are key. You need to be able to measure your performance, you need to know where your money is coming from. Affiliate marketing in general has really revolved around that. The affiliate networks that exist — your LinkShare, your Trade Doubler, Commission Junction — they have great reporting, and that’s important.

We kind of take that a step further for two reasons. First of all is if someone is going to sign over their affiliate links to some third party, that transparency, that trust is absolutely important. It’s huge. Our dashboard where you manage your affiliate links and you manage your account and so forth is just chock-full of different reporting. That’s been really important to us just to build that trust with our clients, and allow them to see on a macro scale what is happening, where the traffic is coming from, what’s actually working and what’s not.

For a long time, our metrics were all along click trends and geographic trends. We’ve been working on this for a while, but we’re really excited to be pushing the beta in the very near future, the second side of that story. We’re able to pull in sales and commissions information from different affiliate networks – LinkShare, Trade Doubler, BGM — so we can kind of tell what clicks are really resulting in sales, and pulling in the monetary piece as well. Currently, our clients have to go to the three or four different affiliate networks and run reports, and those reports will be for different time zones or for different currencies. The metrics are just different, so it’s been a real pain. We’re really excited to bring all of those pieces back into one central dashboard; everything you needed is in front of you, you get the bigger picture, a trust is built, you can move forward, the world is a better place.

Matt: Can I ask a question? Just because I don’t know if this is a feature you have or something you’ve thought about. One of the biggest things we talk about — and this is more app development stuff, or actually just marketing in general — is market research. There are a lot of analytics tools out there that allow you to spy on the competitors and see what they’re doing. For instance, you’re looking at trends and stuff like that. You know, “Okay, cool, this is a great app to promote.” Or, “This is a great song that aligns with my app.” Or whatever to promote and earn commissions on. Is there anything built in your system that kind of helps people get a snapshot of trends and such? If not, is there a suggestion for people to figure out what to promote?

Jesse: You hit a really interesting spot. You’re absolutely right, spying on other people is great. We’re a big fan of keeping our information very quiet; maybe it’s the time I spent with Apple that helped reinforce that. Some of our competitors actually allow you to just put a + at the end of the link and you can see everything that exists with that link. We firmly believe that’s not the right answer. In regards to being able to cheat and see what your competitors are doing on our system, absolutely not.

On the bigger scheme of things, though, I think you hit another nail right on the head. A lot of affiliate marketers are kind of in the dark. They know what their conversion rates are, they know what their earnings per click are; that’s great, they can compare themselves in time, but they really don’t get a sense of the bigger industry. What is a good earnings per click for the affiliate for free apps, or paid apps, or for music, or albums or whatever that might be? That’s an area that we’re about two steps away from really diving into. We love to create benchmark groups, and then kind of help. If you’re willing to share your information, you should be able to see the information that others have, of course in a very aggregated and anonymous way, but knowing what you can be doing better, knowing if you’re leading the pack. It’s a huge piece of knowledge; something that’s very important.

Matt: Cool. It’s funny, too, because that’s one of the biggest things right now. It’s always a question, for instance, if an app developer is coming up with a new app. They want to create a new app, their question is, “How much can I make off of this app?” They are obviously thinking that, or they wouldn’t even start making it. We were talking to someone recently, and they said literally how they find out. Taylor Pierce was saying this is how he finds out if he’s got an idea for an app, and he has been tracking competitors and they’re in the top 25, say, in the reference category or something. He will go into the forums, and literally ask, “Hey, everyone that is in the reference category top 25. What do you do a day in sales?” He says he writes them all down, he keeps track and that’s how he tries to project, “Okay, if I do at least as good as them, I can presumably make the same amount of money.” It’s funny that it’s a manual effort. If there’s anything you guys build into your system that helps people figure out, and kind of project what they might be able to do and make it automated, that is a huge selling point.

Jesse: Absolutely. We get a lot of requests to help forecast what they can earn from the affiliate program. It’s such a challenge for us right now; all of our commissions are kind of bucketed together. We have a hard time pointing out sales that came from an app link, versus a music link versus a TV link. You are absolutely right. We have got the power to do it, it’s just engineering resources to be able to sidle all those apart, break all those apart and put some numbers there. I completely agree, knowing what it’s going to be worth to allow you, “Is this worth 100 hours of engineering time, or 1000 hours of engineering time, or not worth it all?” That’s huge, and that’s something we completely agree should be made available for our clients.

Matt: We look forward to seeing it.

Len: It’s a good point too, to be able to move on to our last question. We’re talking about the landscape and the future of what’s coming. How has the landscape changed, Jesse, since you first entered into it? Where do you see it heading in the next six months?

Jesse: That’s a great question. Apple has been on what seems like a pretty good roll; they’re rolling out more and more programs all the time. In the last year, they have doubled the size of the affiliate program. There seems to be this trend of when they add music stores and movie stores to the already-existing app stores, an affiliate program is typically not too far behind. With that in mind, again, this is totally speculative, but I would assume they are going to be more affiliate programs coming out all the time. That 45 number is going to continue to grow; as it continues to grow, our clients are able to make more and more money.

I also think Amazon is going to continue on the same route. I think in the last year they’ve added two more stores, which is pretty good percentage for them as well. It’s going to continue to grow. I would like to think that Google having such a good fundamental knowledge of the advertising industry, and even owning an affiliate network themselves, will be rolling out an affiliate network for Android and the Play Store.

I really only see this becoming a more fragmented area, and more opportunity for app developers to really earn commissions on something they’re already doing using the affiliate program to link to the app store where they sell their own content.

Len: And also more opportunity for GeoRiot as well to be able to go through that.

Jesse: Whenever our clients can benefit, we like to think that we can maybe help ourselves just a little bit as well. We’re always there to help our clients move forward fastest.

Matt: It’s going to make our little sandbox get even bigger; it’s going to turn into a beach to play on pretty soon.

Len: Just to further that a little bit. The crystal ball question we like to be able to ask, because it’s important. People are thinking about that, and we’re talking all about a wave and a big trend here. What do you see, if you have this crystal ball thing going on, is the next big thing on the horizon that we should really be watching for? Can you see anything that sticks out?

Jesse: The next big thing — I think it’s all incremental. It’s going to continue to grow. I think looking forward a day at a time it’s nothing crazy, but if we look forward a year or two, thinking that possibly affiliate programs for all 155 countries the app store exists. I think that’s a pretty big plan, but I think it’s definitely possible. That’s my crystal ball speculation; I don’t know how crazy that is in everyone’s book.

Len: That’s the crystal ball thing, right? We see all areas of the mobile space growing. I definitely would agree with you, and more opportunity that just presents to the developers out there as well that can learn.

Jesse: Absolutely.

Len: Right on, Jesse. Again, we really loved having you with us. People, keep up with AppClover as well, because Jesse is a regular contributor, and he’ll be coming out with some great information there as well. We’re just going to segment into the next section of our podcast, called In the News with Jeff Williams from Weblance. Jeff, do you want to take that away for us?

Jeff: Sure. I guess it’s big news this week, and I was just curious. I can’t really call this news, because everybody already knows, but Samsung did lose their lawsuit. I was wondering whether you guys think this is a good thing or a bad thing.

Matt: For the people that don’t know, say what that lawsuit is, just because there are probably a couple of people watching that haven’t been following it.

Jeff: It’s primarily a design issue. There was a countersuit from Samsung to Apple, but really, the news here is that Samsung is going to have to pay Apple about $1 billion because they had copied the iPhone. This has been contested, I think the US is probably the eighth and ninth country that they’ve contested it in. Incidentally, they did also try this in Korea and lost there too, so even the Koreans agree that there was some stealing of their design. However, I think the lawsuit in Korea was $35,000.

Len: It’s quite a difference.

Jeff: $1 billion is a big deal, and that’s a slap on the wrist. There’s not going to be a whole lot of, “If somebody has a good idea, let’s put on our phone” thing. I don’t know, do you think that’s good? I can see it being bad, because then we have less innovation, higher prices and that kind of thing, so less competition. I don’t know, I’ve got mixed feelings about it, but I am glad that the American company won.

Matt: USA!

Jeff: Exactly, rooting for the home team. I’m a Samsung user.

Matt: I think for me it’s more — and I assume Jesse is an Apple fan as well. I’m okay with them. I don’t think they need the extra money. Obviously it wasn’t about the money, it was more about the patent and everything to that effect. At the end of the day, there are enough creative people out there that can come up with new designs and new technologies and everything else. There is no real reason to copy anything. I’m saying that, of course, and then you look at the app world and it’s an easy way to make a buck. I guess it’s just a matter of taking it to the next level, right? You copy apps that are already out there doing successful, and you put a little change on it, you can make a lot of money doing that pretty quickly too. I guess that’s just a phone company taking the same model and taking it to the next level.

Len: It’s a fine line, too, because everything starts by the idea that was generated by the last idea. It’s not like it was a fresh thing completely, there are always things that move over and transfer over. I think more than anything with Apple, it was really just a show. They are doing so much creation out there, there are so many people copying and so forth, it really just is a good show too to say, “Hey, look, don’t cross the line and copy too much” type of idea.

Matt: But copying is the highest form of flattery.

Len: Exactly, it is. Jeff, you were saying it’s a fine line, because there’s some good points, but also it gets really sticky when you’re a product creator out there too.

Jeff: I’m a Samsung user, but I tell you, I took a full — right now in our economy, Apple is the darling. They are a big reason about why we’re sort of on this slow recovery. I was getting really patriotic about it; it was like the World Cup for me. I wanted us to win, this is an American company. You come into our company and you copy our phones and then you sell us. I was like, “Forget it.” I was all torn up inside as a Samsung user.

Okay, this next one, I got something that’s really quite cool. It’s a little bit unusual. Check this out; can you guys see that image there? Does anybody know what that is?

Len: It’s inside the Rubik’s cube.

Matt: Just because I know this happened this week where Will.i.am went out from the Mars rover and played their song out there. I’m sure this has nothing to do with that. That’s all I know that happened this week out in space.

Jeff: This actually is quite cool; this is an Android, they are calling it a cube set. It runs on the Android platform. They send these little doodads up into space, so you can see there’s an empty one. You just basically have a motherboard, and then you put a little payload in there, whether it be a camera or whatever. For about $8000, you can set up your own satellite. It’s really quite cool. Here is the Disney version of their trashcan, their amusement parks; that just looks like a floating trashcan in space to me.

Matt: So for $8000 you can have your own satellite?

Jeff: It’s great. Okay, so that’s quite cool. Listen, I don’t know, but I have done a lot of research and apparently this is the new iPhone 5. Does anybody have any other information? I’ve been looking around, and I think that this is the actual thing. The reason that we got this is they’re selling the spare parts before they sell the phone, so the people that fix iPhones are putting them together and posting the pictures of the iPhone on the Internet. There is nothing inside of it.

Len: You know, behind the scenes of all of this, I love the fact that Apple has been able to create such a fan base that they have actual people trying to put their products together to see what they look like before they’re even there. From a marketing perspective, really see the genius that they have been able to create, and the following behind them.

Matt: I always thought, every time a phone leaks. It leaks every time, right? No other company leaks this much. It’s got to be all calculated. Not that I’m at conspiracy guy or anything like that, but I mean, it’s just a great marketing play every time. Everyone is so excited, and then it leaks out. I don’t know.

Jeff: You’re right. I have found that Apple has done that quite a lot in the war for developers. They were releasing all of these stories in these small blogs, and I managed to figure out that a lot of these press releases that were showing up on these little blogs were coming from Apple. They do do stuff like that; all companies do, actually their PR companies do.

Matt: I love how Jesse is just keeping completely quiet during the program. “I don’t know.”

Len: From a marketing perspective, I really admire and respect that, because it takes a lot of ingenuity to be able to come up with campaigns that create that much buzz, and to continue the buzz. You’ve had a big buzz and everything else, how do you keep creating it for the next product, and for the next product? Hats off to them. I definitely love looking at other companies that are able to do that kind of ingenuity in their marketing. Well done.

Jeff: Okay, so you guys know that I lean toward being an activist when it comes to net neutrality, and don’t regulate the Internet and that kind of stuff. I think that it is a big deal, and there is a new story this week. This one I love. About nine months ago, Time Warner and AT&T got slapped for conspiring to actually control the Internet, and some of the apps that can be used over the Internet. They wanted to shut down voice over IP and stuff like that, so they can sell you telephone packages for your house, for instance. They got in trouble for that, and I think the problem there was that they were actually conspiring together to corner a market.

AT&T went off and did its own thing. What they are doing now in the cell phone market is they’re trying to block the voice over IP, face time, all that kind of stuff. The problem with that is that it does violate net neutrality. Here is the thing that really shocked me: The FCC are the ones that are coming to the rescue of the consumer. They’re telling them that they can’t do it, which just blew me away. As you know, AT&T is the primary provider now for iPhone. What do you think Apple’s position is on this issue? Do you think that they are for controlling what apps can be used over the Internet, or against it?

Matt: My reaction is Jesse should answer this.

Jesse: That’s a good question.

Matt: I think, at the end of the day, Apple is out for Apple, right? The more functionality their apps have and can provide to people, the more money they are going to make. There are other phone providers out there besides AT&T.

Jeff: Exactly, but that’s not it. They are 100% supporting AT&T and blocking these apps, which just blows my mind. I couldn’t believe it. In any case, go to SaveTheInternet.com and you can read about it. If you want to sign a petition and make your voice heard, you can do that. I’ve got to tell you, this is the one time I’ve heard that the FCC is actually coming to the aid and they are doing the right thing, which is the real story.

Len: Right on, awesome. Well, we are trying to keep the podcast to a little bit of a shorter time span, we’re doing our best. Is there anything else, Matt, that we need to cover before we sign off? Any other points?

Matt: I think we solved all of the app affiliate questions and all of the problems and the world there, unless there is anything, Jesse, you want to add that maybe we didn’t talk about? Or if there is anything else you can think of, or if you want to give us an update on GeoRiot in general, or if you want to tell me when I can expect my GeoRiot T-shirt like you’re wearing right now.

Jesse: Oh yeah, it’s in the mail. The shirts are for all of our happy clients, we’ll see about getting you one as long as the international shipping is not too ridiculous.

Matt: I can always take it to him, I go to Vancouver a lot.

Len: Exactly. Awesome. Jesse, do you have any final parting words?

Jesse: If you haven’t explored it yet, definitely dive into the affiliate program. You’ll be surprised at what it will do. Is that a good car salesman pitch before I wrap it all up?

Len: That’s fantastic, awesome.

Jeff: If you care at all about making more money, maybe check us out, I don’t know.

Len: If you like leaving money on the table, then don’t bother. But…

Jesse: Perfect, I think you guys got it for me.

Len: Sounds good. On that note, let’s close it off today. It’s been a great podcast, and Jeff, I want to thank you as well. I want to tell everybody else that Jeff is continuing the special offer for the AppClover community. If you go to his site, Weblance.com and sign up for his beta, you’re going to get a premium membership free, roughly a $240 savings. Like that every day. Jesse Lakes – people, go visit his website, and go look up GeoRiot as well. Also, although the book is, like you said, 2009, Mastering iTunes.com, go check it out. GeoRiot.com, go check it out. Also, he is a regular contributor on Appreneur Magazine and on AppClover, so definitely keep following us. From Matthew Lutz and myself, Len Wright, from AppClover, check us out and make sure you check out the next issue, which is coming out in the next week or so of Appreneur Magazine. It rocks. With that being said, thank you all for tuning in. We really appreciate it and we hope you enjoyed it. Have a great day.