[Top Agency Series] Scaling Revenue Through Innovative Affiliates With Rick Gardiner

Rick Gardiner is the Founder and CEO of iAffiliate Management, a boutique performance marketing agency helping DTC e-commerce brands grow revenue through high-impact affiliate and partner programs. With over 20 years of experience, Rick has helped brands — from fast-growing startups to established names like Groupon and Home Chef — turn affiliate marketing into a scalable revenue engine. A former Division I athlete turned entrepreneur, he brings a disciplined, team-first approach and a passion for building aligned, high-value partnerships in an ever-evolving affiliate landscape.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• [4:03] Rick Gardiner explains how affiliate marketing became a core growth channel
• [6:38] The entrepreneurial lessons Rick learned growing up in a business-minded family
• [9:16] What drives success in affiliate partnerships and content strategy
• [12:07] How to effectively align paid search and affiliate marketing efforts
• [16:58] Different types of affiliate partnerships beyond coupons and deals
• [19:28] Why brand collaborations unlock shared audiences and lower acquisition costs
• [23:36] How card-linked offers and retail media are reshaping affiliate partnerships
• [31:47] Rick’s framework for benchmarking and structuring affiliate commission rates
• [41:24] Ideal company size and readiness for affiliate program success

In this episode…

Growing a brand isn’t just about products — it’s about partnerships that expand reach, influence, and revenue. Many companies struggle to use affiliate marketing and strategic collaborations effectively, leaving money and opportunities on the table. How can brands leverage these channels to grow smarter and faster?

According to Rick Gardiner, a seasoned performance marketing expert, the key is to focus on strategic, high-quality partnerships rather than quantity. He emphasizes the importance of aligning affiliate programs with content creators, influencers, and PR efforts while avoiding pitfalls such as paid search conflicts and compliance issues. By taking a relationship-driven approach, brands can drive measurable growth, stand out in crowded markets, and turn niche products into national successes. Real-world examples — from helping saturated brands gain market share to elevating smaller brands through mass media placements — show the power of thoughtful, well-executed collaborations.

In this episode of the Inspired Insider Podcast, Dr. Jeremy Weisz sits down with Rick Gardiner, Founder and CEO of iAffiliate Management, to discuss scaling growth through affiliate and strategic partnerships. They explore building quality partnerships, navigating compliance and tech tools, and leveraging cross-brand collaborations. Rick also shares tips for integrating affiliates into broader revenue strategies.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Rick Gardiner on LinkedIn
• iAffiliate Management
• Groupon
• Hydro Flask
• Savory Spice
• Ulta
• Sephora
• Woodchuck USA
• Home Chef

Related episodes:

• “EO Chicago | How To Start a Beauty Brand From Scratch With Anthony Standifer, Co-Founder of mSEED Group” on Inspired Insider Podcast
• “How To Build Predictable Income and Reduce Taxes With Noah Rosenfarb of Wealthrive” on Inspired Insider Podcast

Quotable moments:

• “Learning to sell and build relationships is a foundational pillar of any business.”
• “There’s no bad partners, only bad partnerships — it’s about structuring the relationship.”
• “Affiliate Marketing is a performance-based payment method, trackable and tied to revenue.”
• “The right partners are a competitive differentiation or moat — hard to replicate.”
• “Personal connection matters most — business is great, but lasting relationships bring true value.”

Action steps:

1. Build strategic partnerships: Collaborate with brands and affiliates that share your target audience to drive revenue and differentiate yourself.
2. Prioritize quality over quantity: Vet affiliates carefully to ensure alignment and long-term results.
3. Leverage tech and compliance tools: Use platforms and disclosures to protect your brand and maximize performance.
4. Collaborate across teams: Align with PR, growth, and e-commerce departments to unlock opportunities and synergy.
5. Test, measure, and optimize: Use data-driven insights to refine strategies, improve ROI, and stay competitive.

Episode Transcript

Intro: 00:15

You are listening to Inspired Insider with your host, Dr. Jeremy Weisz.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 00:22

Dr. Jeremy Weisz here, Founder of InspiredInsider.com, where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders. Today is no different. I’ve Rick Gardiner, you can check them out at iaffiliatemanagement.com. Rick, before I formally introduce you, I always like to point out other episodes of the podcast that people should check out. Now, Rick’s going to go deep into relationships, strategic relationships, and affiliates, and how you can have someone else. In my opinion, Rick, it’s a shortcut for brands, right? Because someone has an inborn audience. They already know, likes and trust them. So they’re promoting a brand. Makes perfect sense. So I’m not sure why everyone doesn’t do it. Maybe you’ll explain why, but a couple of things.

Because we met through EO. There are some really interesting interviews with other EO members. Anthony Standifer, you check it out. He’s the co-founder of mSEED Group. They’re a contract manufacturer specializing in health, beauty, and personal care. Right. And so I’m like, Rick and Anthony should know each other. I’m sure there are ways to collaborate. Also, Noah Rosenfarb of Wealthrive. He talks about reducing taxes and building a predictable income, and the inner workings of a high-growth agency with Wes Matthews. And he grew a really large agency, sold it, and it was an interesting conversation. Check out that and more on InspiredInsider.com.

This episode is brought to you by Rise25. At Rise 25, we help businesses connect to their dream relationships and partnerships. We do that by one we’re an easy button for a company to launch and run a podcast. We do the strategy, accountability, and full execution and production. And number two, we’re an easy button for a company’s gifting. So we make gifting stay top of mind for clients, partners, prospects, and even staff from a culture perspective, simple, easy, and affordable. You just give us the addresses, we do everything else, and it’s not like a one-off gift.

Rick. It’s like, think three gifts a year for 4 to 5 years. And so we kind of call ourselves the magic elves that run in the background and make it stress-free for companies to build amazing relationships. You know, for me, the number one thing in my life is relationships, and I always look at ways that I can give to those relationships. And I found no better way over the past 17 years to profile the people I admire and share with the world what they’re working on on my podcast, and to send them sweet treats in the mail. So go to rise25.com or email [email protected]

I am really excited. Rick Gardner is the Founder and CEO of iAffiliate Management. They’re a leading affiliate marketing and partner marketing agency, and they help direct-to-consumer e-commerce brands scale revenue. They do that by cultivating best-in-class affiliate partnerships with some top content review sites, mass media publications, and other really high-value affiliate partners. Rick was a former Division I swimmer. Much respect there.

I mean, you have to have a super amount of discipline. I remember, Rick, I did not want to swim growing up, which was a mistake because there were people who were waking up at four in the morning to like, get in a cold pool. That did not seem pleasurable at all to me. Now I swim six days a week, so I should have gotten into it sooner. But he’s been in iAffiliate, you know, and partner marketing world for over 20 years. And he really helps marketing leaders and brands rethink how iAffiliate can fit into their marketing mix and add value. So Rick, thanks for joining me.

Rick Gardiner: 03:55

Thanks for having me, Jeremy.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 03:56

So let’s start off. I’m going to pull up your site here. Just talk about it for a second, I affiliate management, and what you do.

Rick Gardiner: 04:03

Yeah. So our agency, we’ve been around for 16 plus years, kind of started out in working primarily with digital goods, software, SaaS, SaaS and have expanded into some other categories from apparel to food and beverage. But, you know, our core focus has always been affiliate marketing. I say it with love that we’ve been doing affiliate marketing before. Affiliate marketing is cool, but it’s definitely evolved, and I think getting a bigger seat at the table, and I think the impact and outcomes that it can influence are also expanded. So, you know, primarily working with B2C e-commerce brands, we also help brands drive and scale more revenue through their marketplace, you know, Amazon, Walmart Marketplace stores. Tiktok shop. And yeah, but at the end of the day, it’s really about building valuable, trusted, strategic brand partnerships and helping brands grow and scale.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 05:08

We’ll talk about how companies can use these partnerships, but I do it’s interesting to me, how did you even get into this? Right. Because I know, obviously, you were a swimmer. You studied speech communication. I’m not sure if you were growing up. I want to be an agency owner when I grow up or something like that. But what? How’d you get into this line of work?

Rick Gardiner: 05:33

Yeah, so I came up, grew up in a very entrepreneurial family. So my, my dad started and exited a publicly traded company. And my mom also was.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 05:46

Was it what it did?

Rick Gardiner: 05:47

It was you can think of it as like Amazon’s recommendation technology. So they, you know, started around the same time Amazon had the whole ecosystem, but they were kind of a plug in that would cross-sell, make product recommendations to increase basket.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 06:04

If you got this, you’d also like this type of.

Rick Gardiner: 06:06

Other shoppers have also bought this. Exactly. So that was kind of their core technology. Yeah. So just kind of always knew I wanted to, you know, be an entrepreneur, own my own business, went through school, went to the corporate America route, learned a ton, and kind of.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 06:25

Did your dad give you any advice growing up? Like what? What was he telling you to do? Obviously, he was an entrepreneur was he’s like, go get a job at corporate. Maybe you should start your own right off the bat. What was his advice?

Rick Gardiner: 06:38

I think the advice has always been, you know, given my personality and everything that goes with that, you know, something in the realm of sales and marketing would always be good. Didn’t really have kind of a path, but I think, you know, regardless, you know, learning how to sell and build relationships with people is really kind of a foundational pillar of building a business, regardless of, you know, what you’re doing. So that’s, you know, kind of growing up, and also, as I was in my career in the corporate America side, it’s always been in the sales and marketing side. Where I got introduced to affiliate marketing was when I was working with Digital River, which is an e-commerce platform or technology company that sadly just shuttered its doors last year. But, you know, I was brought on to help build out and grow their, their flagship affiliate network.

So I got to kind of see behind the curtain, understand the publisher partnership side from the affiliates, working with them and understanding how their different business models worked, but also from the advertiser and merchant side. And also from a network and technology side. How do we, you know, track report attributes and pay partners for the sales that they’re driving? So it was really, really educational. It was probably a little bit intimidating. I knew nothing about affiliate marketing. And my wife, I would tell her I, you know, I took that job 30 days at a time, like I knew nothing about it. But I still have a job for 30 days in four years later, you know, five years later was at the company and really just grew to love the industry and kind of what it meant and how it was having a positive impact for a lot of people, both, you know, from the big company and merchants side, but also at the time, a lot of just kind of bootstrapped entrepreneur affiliates that were, you know, doing content. They had, you know, email lists or other promotional methods that they were using to make a living. And I found that really inspirational. And, you know, at one point I decided I wanted to venture out on my own and start an agency. And here we are today.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 08:59

And you, I’m sure you built a lot of relationships through that. I’m curious. At that time, you cut your teeth at Digital River. What worked at that time, that you found and what did not work at that time? Maybe that surprised you.

Rick Gardiner: 09:16

What worked? I think content has always been a big piece, and it’s taken all shapes and forms. I think, you know, looking at the top ten review type sites out there and kind of getting products and brands included in those write ups and roundups has always been a, you know, what, what brands are a lot really interested in is always worked well, you know, organic, SEO driven traffic’s always been a big driver of of sales and, you know, revenue. And I think back in the early days, it was also very much the Wild West. We didn’t have as much visibility into attribution and clickstream and how different channels were interacting throughout that consumer journey.

So, you know, you’d have an affiliate that, you know, you would talk to maybe or maybe not. And all of a sudden, they’re coming out of the gates driving ten, $20,000 a month. And, you know, you want to understand how they’re generating that traffic in those sales. But on the flip side of that, some people are also, you know, at least at the time, were a little bit afraid to look under the hood and really understand it because it could be, you know, not as good as they had thought. So it was a good learning experience. I think, you know, when it comes to the compliance aspect of the industry, understanding, you know.

How the traffic, how the sales are being originated, making sure that they’re, you know, truly incremental and not just kind of robbing Peter to pay Paul situation was really interesting. And I think, you know, one thing I did learn that definitely worked, but also was detrimental in some cases, was paid search, and that, you know, having affiliates that were running paid search for brands, and you know, one done well and strategically it can really be a powerful partnership. But again early days wild West not as much visibility. There’s a lot of cannibalization and paid search affiliates that were basically kind of overriding the brand ads, which was creating conflicts and issues, and almost a turf war in the marketing department.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 11:33

I mean, the brands, like they’re doing paid search themselves, and then the other people are showing above them, they’re basically competing against themselves, and then paying out the commission.

Rick Gardiner: 11:42

Exactly. Which is not ideal. So again.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 11:46

How do you navigate that? You want to encourage people. I mean, they’re going to spend their hard-earned money and drive traffic to it. How do you navigate that, if I’m sure some brands maybe don’t do as much paid search? So it doesn’t really matter. But the ones that are, how do you navigate and encourage people to still run their own campaigns unpaid, or do you tell them not to?

Rick Gardiner: 12:07

Well, I think I have a mantra. There are no bad partnerships or partners; there’s just bad partnerships. So it’s really how you structure and kind of architect the partnership, and make sure that you’re creating that alignment. And using the paid search example, there are different kinds of safeguards that you can put in place, such as bid caps, where you won’t let the affiliate know the part, the affiliate won’t be able to bid over a certain, you know, price point per click. We’ve broken that down by geography. So, letting affiliates do specific markets, GEOs, locales, or even by search engine. So they can be in Google, but they can’t be on MSN, Bing, or some of the other platform search engines. So there are a lot of different ways to do it.

And I think what we found to be most successful is to do a very orchestrated and coordinated strategy where, you know, you’re plugging the gaps or letting the affiliates play in the spaces where maybe the brand is struggling, and, you know, affiliates are only making money when they’re converting. And so they tend to be very innovative and creative. And so they tend to adapt and evolve to make it work. And if not, you know, they’re not going to keep pouring money into it. So there’s definitely a balance. But I’ve seen some really successful partnerships come out of it. And you know, again, there are a lot more tools as well available today to just help manage and have better insight into where these affiliate partners are doing paid search to make sure there’s no overlap or cannibalization.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 13:47

I do want to talk about what you mentioned because in my mind, I always wanted to ask you about compliance and regulation. So I do want to get into that. And what makes these creators happy as well. But you mentioned some software tools. What are some things that are out there that you think people should look at as far as the tech side goes?

Rick Gardiner: 14:10

You know, there’s on the paid search side, there’s tools like Brand Verity, the search monitor that do a great job at, you know, just giving brands and marketers insights into who’s bidding on their terms. So those are great tools to use on that front. You know, there are other FTC regulations that, you know, disclosures that need to have, you know, affiliates need to have in place that they’re promoting a brand either as a sponsored content piece or that they’re earning commission. You’ve probably seen those disclosures at the top of articles and reviews saying that, hey, when you click through our link, you know, we earn commission, learn more.

So, you know, there are tools out there that help manage that. We’ve also leveraged or built some of our own proprietary tools that we use to manage that internally. But that’s been, you know, the technology and the the tech side of the industry is, you know, come a long way. And there’s a lot more tools available for brands and agencies to, you know, truly justify and make sure that the partnerships that they’re working with, you know, are aligned with the overall outcomes and goals that they’re looking to achieve together.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 15:25

Yeah. I’m curious on your side when you’re working with someone, and maybe, maybe we’ll take Tommy John as an example. Maybe not. You’ll tell me. But like when you go in, obviously, there has to be tracking in place. There have to be payments in place. Are you installing all these things, like for the brand, or typically they come to you, and they already have these things in place with the tracking and the payment systems and things like that?

Rick Gardiner: 15:49

Yeah, sometimes they’re already working with an affiliate network or tracking platform. So that’s really us just coming in, making sure things are set up correctly and that we’re we have the tightest integration, best integration according to best practices and how we do things. In some cases, we are helping them kind of stand up a new program.

So, you know, we’re fortunate enough to have really great relationships with a number of affiliate networks and platforms out there. Where we can streamline that process for the brand very easily and kind of play the project manager role of just making sure things are moving forward, and things are getting set up correctly. So it’s kind of two buckets.

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