All right, we're here at uploading and today we have Nick. So Nick, as you know and as everyone that's tuning in knows, brand deals can be an absolute pain in the butt. And for most creators, this is their number one source of income. And so at the same time, that is why it also can be a huge pain in the butt. The process of reaching out to brands, negotiating deals and then creating long term relationships with brands can be a task of itself. And so this is why today we're here with Nick Christensen, head of marketing at Appsumo, an eight figure company founded by Noah Kagan. And so Nick is an expert in influencer, affiliate paid marketing and really everything along those lines with community and everything else. So today we're going to be talking about how to get brand deals, how to make good money from them, the biggest mistakes creators make when negotiating with a brand and what brands look for.

So Nick, take it away, expand on that intro a little bit more. Did I nail it? What else are you up to on your daily and adaptsumo?

You nailed it man, you nailed it. Thank you guys so much for having me on. And yeah, I've been at Appsumo for almost seven years now. Started just like 6th or 7th employee and I have over a hundred now. But it's been an amazing ride. I've learned a lot, especially from Noah and the rest of the network in Austin where we're based. And it's been amazing to help and connect with people like you guys coming onto Appsumo, other SaaS, founders, freelancers, consultants. I have a couple of businesses on the side that I run, a consulting agency and also an in office teeth whitening clinic that I purchased and have been running for a couple of years and able to use what I know about marketing for small businesses.

So that's really my passion is helping people that may not have a huge team or a huge budget grow, find customers and do it in an efficient way. So really excited to chat more about the other side of the coin of creators. And we do a lot of this at Appsumo as well. We have an eight figure affiliate and influencer program that I started about five years ago. Started with really just referral marketing, expanded to affiliate, traditional affiliate marketing, and now kind of the final stage is what we call ambassador or influencer marketing. So recruiting people that have a little bit of a following, not huge followings, I would say in the 50 to 100k subs followers, depending on the channel. We're really focusing on YouTube creators, long form YouTube creators in the software space and this is something I'm really excited about because there are more creators than there ever have been, but I think the quality of the content can be there. But there's also a lot of low quality content out there.

So I think it's from the brand side, partnering with people that fit your content, niche, content, themes, but also from the creator side, which I'm excited to go into a little bit more. How do you find the brands? There seems to be a lot of competition of, of creators, a lot more creators than there are brands. So you're kind of competing against everybody else. So got some tips, maybe some ideas that could help some people on this front. But yeah, that's a little bit about what I'm doing personal.

And then at Appsumo, Nick, I'd love to go a little deeper there, specifically on creators. Like you mentioned, there's more creators than ever and connecting with brands is not the easiest thing. So I'd love to hear from your perspective.

Right.

You're at the brand level. How do you identify who's a good creator, who's someone you want to work with when there's so many people creating content?