How Mike Allen’s Affilinomics is Transforming Affiliate Program Management and Driving Performance Marketing Success
As the holiday season approaches and 2025 looms, optimizing an affiliate marketing program is becoming essential for merchants looking to stay competitive. With consumers increasingly shopping online, a robust affiliate strategy can significantly boost a brand’s reach and drive substantial revenue. The ability to implement and scale performance marketing efforts allows merchants to tap into new customer segments without the upfront costs typically associated with traditional advertising.
The urgency to refine these programs is underscored by recent industry data, which shows that Affiliate marketing now drives up to 30% of eCommerce growth.1 The performance marketing industry’s meteoric growth is particularly relevant as the holiday season drives a surge in consumer spending and the shift to digital channels continues to accelerate. By capitalizing on affiliate marketing, merchants can enhance their visibility, attract high-intent buyers and maximize their holiday and year-round sales performance.
To navigate this landscape effectively, partnering with an affiliate marketing agency can be a game-changer. These agencies bring expertise in optimizing affiliate strategies, managing relationships and tracking performance metrics, ensuring that your program operates at peak efficiency. Their insights and industry connections can help tailor your approach to align with market trends and achieve your sales goals, setting you on the path to success in a competitive market.
As part of LinkConnector’s ongoing series spotlighting our favorite agency partners, we’re excited to feature our friend Mike Allen, the founder of Businesswright Consulting and its subsidiaries. With over 25 years of experience in affiliate marketing, Mike has helped drive millions in sales for major brands like Symantec, JCPenney, Perdue Farms, InfiniteAloe and Weight Watchers to name just a few. His affiliate marketing agency, Affilinomics (formerly AffGeek), specializes in creating tailored affiliate program management solutions, offering everything from new program setups to revitalizing underperforming campaigns—all with a focus on delivering measurable, performance-driven results.
Mike’s professional journey has taken him from a successful affiliate publisher to a trusted affiliate program manager who’s seen it all. Affilinomics applies a hands-on, quality-over-quantity approach, working only with clients whose values and goals align with their expertise. From navigating complex eCommerce platforms to monitoring affiliate accounts for low-quality content, Mike and his team consistently manage to stay ahead of the curve and excel in our ever-evolving performance marketing landscape.
This conversation offers a look into the strategies and insights that have made Affilinomics the go-to agency partner for countless brands. Whether you’re looking to launch a new affiliate program or recalibrate an existing one, Mike’s expertise and passion for performance marketing provide valuable takeaways for businesses at any stage of their affiliate journey.
LC: Until recently, Affilinomics went by the name AffGeek. What was behind the name change?
MA: When I started doing affiliate program management more than a decade ago, it was just me and I needed some kind of business name. I had previously established Businesswright for my consulting endeavors, so I continued to operate under that name. Businesswright, as an entity, worked fine for billing clients, but it sounded very generic, especially at affiliate marketing conferences. The real problem was it didn’t say anything about affiliate marketing, and I wanted affiliate to be obvious.
That’s where AffGeek came into being. It was short, memorable, and performed well on social media, so I adopted the name for about five years. By 2023, however, I felt it sounded more like a “handle” for an individual and less like a successful agency identity. So, back to the drawing board I went, this time with the challenges of rebranding.
To summarize this process, I liked the idea of combining the word affiliate with something related to performance or money. What about economics, I thought? How about merging the two into affili- and -nomics? That idea worked. It provided room for agency growth and was available as a domain name. In early 2024 I rebranded AffGeek into Affilinomics. I think PI LIVE USA was our first debut with the new name.
“Our services primarily cater to small and medium-sized businesses looking for an industry veteran with a personal touch. We aim to provide hands-on care that fits their needs. We don’t force cookie-cutter, template-driven approaches since one size does not fit all.”
– Mike Allen, Affilinomics Founder
LC: Tell us about the services that Affilinomics offers. What sets Affilinomics apart from other agencies?
MA: Affilinomics aims to be a boutique affiliate marketing and management agency centered on my 25-years of affiliate marketing experience as a publisher and an affiliate manager. Our services primarily cater to small and medium-sized businesses looking for an industry veteran with a personal touch. We aim to provide hands-on care that fits their needs. We don’t force cookie-cutter, template-driven approaches since one size does not fit all.
Mike Allen and LinkConnector’s
Tara McCommons
When I got started with affiliate management, I noticed that many smaller affiliate programs (under $5M annually), often operate on Shopify or WooCommerce platforms. These solutions serve them well and enable a small team to go live and even thrive. While these visionary founders and their team usually don’t have all the analytics and customer targeting options available to larger eCommerce providers, what they lack in size and scale, they often make up for in product passion and expertise, matched with knowledgeable customer service. They’re busy all the time doing this work. They simply don’t have the bandwidth to learn and launch every recommended marketing option available. They are, however, innovators and leaders in their space, a space that is ideal for affiliate marketing.
That’s where Affilinomics comes into play. We work with their team to do as much or as little as they want. We help them fill in the gaps in their marketing plan. Since affiliate marketers are paid only on a performance basis, including for advanced services like search engine marketing and cart abandonment recovery, we provide a significant boost to their current efforts (and bottom line). Costs associated with this new revenue stream are paid for out of the new sales generated.
As for our work with these clients, it may involve launching their affiliate program or managing an existing one they don’t have sufficient resources to do internally. Sometimes we’re tasked with reviving an old program that had been on “auto-pilot” for years and become stagnate. Our aim is to serve our clients as an extension of their marketing team. Again, the choice is up to them. We may end up running everything affiliate or just overseeing certain aspects of their program.
LC: Can you explain how you work with affiliate networks like LinkConnector and what benefits they provide?
MA: Every affiliate network should flawlessly perform the basics: tracking, reporting and paying. That’s a given and, frankly, the minimum standard. Furthermore, each affiliate network has certain strengths relative to others. These strengths may be certain technologies offered, their support team, their curated affiliate community, or something else.
In any case, an affiliate management agency should be mindful of these things in recommending an affiliate network to his clients. I personally don’t think the same network is the best choice for every affiliate program. I also think there are times it makes sense to open an affiliate program on more than one network so affiliates can have a choice of tools to work with. LinkConnector makes it easy to set up a single program. LinkConnector also makes it easy to offer network choice to affiliates since LinkConnector plays well with other networks.
In addition, LinkConnector offers some unique advantages to our industry. These include their integration with Publisher Discovery for affiliate recruitment insights and resources. LinkConnector also has a very responsive and capable support team, one that is arguably the best in the industry.
LC: What are some common challenges merchants face when launching affiliate programs and what advice would you give to businesses just starting with affiliate marketing?
MA: Technical integration with some affiliate networks is easier than on others; however, this task can be daunting, especially for small businesses without a dedicated tech support team. Given how many shops start this integration process but fail to launch their affiliate program makes it obvious that “getting started” is a challenge, especially for those trying to do “self-serve” affiliate marketing accounts. Having a trusted agency partner to walk through these hurdles is a major benefit for them.
Launching, however, is just one of the hurdles. After launch, the real work begins. This includes evaluation of affiliate applications, syncing marketing calendars with other channels, preparing assets for affiliates to deploy, reporting on affiliate program performance with corporate decision-makers, and so forth. In addition to these things, one must learn new marketing terms and outreach strategies and make new partnerships (and monitor them). Finally, all this administration must be done though an unfamiliar interface in such a way that produces positive results.
I recommend, at a minimum, that an inexperienced sales team seeking to expand into affiliate marketing bring on some expert help, especially if they don’t have a dedicated person assigned solely to this task. Such help could come in the form of an agency launch package or customized training for the internal team (both of which we offer at Affilinomics). Such assistance can be short-term; however, I recommend retaining such expertise for at least a 6-months for those just getting started. Many find, though, that it pays to retain such expertise for the long run.
“For Black Friday/Cyber Monday, I recommend adopting a strategy that minimizes erosion of your critical profit margin. In short, try to creatively stretch the Average Order Value (AOV) instead of shrinking it with discounts during these highly promotional days.”
-Mike Allen, Affilinomics Founder
LC: What strategies do you use to boost affiliate performance during key Q4 events (Black Friday, Cyber Monday, etc.) , and what common mistakes do merchants make in Q4 affiliate marketing?
MA: For many brands, and therefore their affiliate program, the best time of the year is Q4. Leading up to Christmas are the two must-get-right days of Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BF/CM) right after Thanksgiving (which also happens to be a powerful day for eCommerce).
For BF/CM, I recommend adopting a strategy that minimizes the erosion of your critical profit margin. In short, try to creatively stretch the Average Order Value (AOV) instead of shrinking it with discounts during these highly promotional days. Don’t be afraid to give a great discount — but make sure the customer only gets that by spending above the AOV you’re used to seeing. Drivers of such encouragement may be to match a generous discount with a minimum order value or to tier several discounts into a “spend more, get more off” offer. These “stretch goals” can lead to larger AOVs that improve profit margins despite seasonal BF/CM discounting.
In addition, these discounts are likely to improve your sales conversion rate (CR) and, if you also sell on Amazon, may shift orders directly to your brand (typically bringing an instant profit margin boost). Furthermore, because you’ve encouraged larger orders, the increased revenue due to higher AOVs will likely end up lowering your customer acquisition cost ratio. Finally, the percentage of these higher order values that must be spent on shipping could end up being lower than before (remember, “free shipping” is expected on these days).
A common mistake during this timeframe is to not get the latest marketing offers out to your affiliates in time for them to move the needle for you. Also, be sure to leverage LinkConnector’s coupon code tracking technology to reward your best affiliates with private codes. With code tracking, your affiliates can share your offers in their videos, podcasts, social media posts and more without having to worry about affiliate links. They still get paid for the sales they drove (which are tracked through the code) and so are greatly incentivized to share the word. As a bonus idea, you may consider rewarding them with a seasonal commission increase at the same time! This commission boost idea works great for cash back and other loyalty sites also; it similarly incentivizes them to promote your brand to their large group of members.
Get In Touch With Affilinomics: Are you gearing up to launch a new affiliate program, or seeking support for an existing one? Reach out to discover if Affilinomics is the right partner for your brand. Mike and his team would love to apply their decades of indusry expertise and experience to help you achieve your performance marketing goals!
About Mike Allen
With decades of industry experience under his belt, Businesswright Consulting and Affilinomics Founder Mike Allen is an experienced entrepreneur and affiliate program manager, known for delivering creative business solutions with a touch of Southern hospitality. With a diverse background spanning academia, the public and private sectors, Mike excels in affiliate program management, online marketing and business consulting. He specializes in managing Shopify and WordPress websites, optimizing mobile-friendly platforms, and guiding businesses through beta-testing and creative brainstorming sessions. Passionate about blending time-tested strategies with innovative technology, Mike’s mission is to help businesses grow and succeed through tailored, results-driven solutions.
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