Buzzcast
Buzzcast is a roundtable discussion about podcasting from the people at Buzzsprout. We'll cover current events and news, podcast strategy, tools we are using, and dip into the Customer Support mailbag to test our podcasting knowledge. If you want to stay up-to-date on what's working in podcasting, Buzzcast is the show for you.
Buzzcast
How PayPal's Honey Is Stealing Money From Creators
Is PayPal's Honey browser extension siphoning affiliate commissions? In Megalag's YouTube video, The Honey Trap: Exposing PayPal's Influencer Scam, we learn about the accusations of Honey overriding affiliate cookies, stealing income from influencers, and manipulating consumer savings—all under the guise of helping shoppers save money.
Before we cover that, we share updates about PodFest 2025, including Buzzsprout’s VIP party and unique swag!
Then, we reflect on 2024 and all our favorite new things Buzzsprout released in the last year!
View the discussion thread on Twitter/X
Sound-Off Question: What are you most proud of from podcasting in 2024?
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Thanks for listening & keep podcasting!
I hate this song now.
Kevin:Me too.
Jordan:Air drums. No one can hear that in an audio format.
Kevin:All right Jordan on the horn.
Jordan:I don't know, and all the way from the east coast of florida oh, I was gonna be me.
Jordan:Solo. Welcome back to Buzzcast, a podcast about all things podcasting from the people at Buzzsprout. All right, so today we're kicking off the episode with some info about PodFest 2025. She's coming up fast, it's coming. I thought we had a couple more weeks, but we don't. I'm not ready for the new year.
Alban:You know how, sometimes like it's February before you write. She's coming up fast, it's coming. I thought we had a couple more weeks, but we don't. I'm not ready for the new year, you know how sometimes it's February before you write the correct date. Yes, yeah. 2025 does not seem like a real year. That seems like a very distant year.
Jordan:Yeah, I don't know how we got here so fast. So this is going to be at Renaissance Orlando at SeaWorld this year, which I'm very excited about, and we will be there from Thursday the 16th through Saturday the 18th. It's going to be a good time.
Alban:Yeah, it'll be a lot of fun. There's hours in the expo hall, there's talks, there's going to be lots of parties and there's a Buzzsprout Podfest party. So if you are coming with Buzzsprout, if you're on Bus Brow, you're invited, your guests are invited and we'll have food, we'll have drinks I'm sure we'll have other stuff and you just meet and greet, hang out, have friends and if you're like Jordan, you can meet somebody and go to Harry Potter Land together the next day yeah.
Kevin:Where is the party? Is it on premise at the hotel, or is?
Alban:it off. Not only is it on premise, kevin, it's in the Podfest VIP room.
Jordan:Vip lounge which is fancier than a room.
Alban:I'm not sure what the VIP lounge entails. Does that mean like velvet walls? I think it means like we're in a hotel and there's a room where, if you're a VIP, you can go in and get snacks. During the day, yeah, but at night you can go in and get food and drinks with Buzzsprout at our exclusive VIP Buzzsprout Podfest party.
Jordan:Yeah, I don't think it's going to be like dimly lit with like booths and stuff like that. Yeah, that's what it should be like a speakeasy, it really should be, but I think it's going to look like all the other rooms, but be limited to who can go in there.
Kevin:When you walk in the door, will you be handed a flute of champagne?
Alban:We could make that happen.
Jordan:Alban going to be in a tux, just by the door.
Kevin:A little towel over your arm handing out flutes of champagne. I have a tux. Can you make that happen?
Alban:You want that to happen.
Kevin:If this is what you want out.
Alban:Of 2025, start the year off. Right me handing out champagne flutes and a tux. I can make that happen. I, uh, I have a tux. I'm ready to dress up. Well, there you go. All right, I'll wear out. What's the like band you have over your cummerbund? The thing over your like stomach area? That looks terrible. Those never look good. Why do people do this? I agree.
Jordan:Well, you're not wearing it, right.
Alban:Not wearing it right.
Jordan:Yeah.
Alban:It's just like an additional item that's involved. I don't understand. Why is it a thing? What is the point?
Kevin:I like how Jordan just immediately assumes if it looks dumb on you, Alban, you're wearing it wrong.
Alban:Because if you're wearing it right it would. You'd be killing it. I think that's a compliment actually, does your tux have tails? No, it doesn't, it's like a normal tux.
Kevin:It's not formal enough, then, for this event it's my wedding, tux no, a normal tux has tails yeah, normal tux. You have to kick your tails out before you sit down at the grand piano yeah, you might as well just be wearing a suit.
Alban:This is not I agree, you can tell it's a tux because you wear the patent leather shoes.
Jordan:Oh, are they like the covers? Do you have like the shoe covers that go?
Alban:You guys have been watching too many movies from like the 1930s, like jazz era or something.
Kevin:I like that. I want you to wear a Gatsby tux Same tux from the great Gatsby All right, podfest, okay tux.
Alban:Same tux from the great gatsby. All right, pod fest. Okay, it's gonna happen. It's gonna be good. You're gonna make friends. You're gonna go to harry potter land if you want. Yeah, and if this is really kevin's goal for 2025, I'll be wearing a great gatsby tux and Got. Shit Fake Blutes.
Jordan:So stupid. I love it.
Kevin:I don't want to give too much away, but we are also here in Jacksonville, Florida. The team here is working on the most unique swag that we've ever attempted to bring to a podcast conference.
Alban:To be clear, unique and good are not always the same. Exactly as we said, with our marketing tips, there's overlap sometimes.
Jordan:We've established that, like a few episodes ago.
Kevin:Anybody who's been a listener to this podcast understands that every episode is unique. Very rarely are they good.
Jordan:What other swag do we have? So okay, so we're we've got this like secret unique swag, and then what else do we have that we're bringing?
Alban:We're bringing a podcast achievement pins, so people who've hit new achievements will be getting those.
Jordan:Yeah.
Alban:We're going to have stickers. We're going to have t-shirts.
Kevin:In the VIP lounge, we'll bring our coasters out.
Alban:Bring out our coasters.
Kevin:Yeah, so standard Buzzsprout, how we normally roll.
Jordan:Yeah.
Kevin:Really cool t-shirts, tons of stickers. The achievement pins have been around for a year now, so come you know, get updated on your latest achievement pins, and this year we're trying something new. It might be a total flop, but we're going to give it a go. It might be awesome, but I think everyone should come by the booth and see what we're attempting. Alban and I have a lot of work to do over the next week or so.
Jordan:Yeah, well, and it's awesome because we actually got family from road adventures, of cycling, men, of leisure, and they asked if we were going to have the achievement pins. So they'll be very excited to hear that we will have them at the booth. So come by the Expo Hall I think it opens at like 3 pm on Thursday. Come get your pins, say hi, get pictures with us, it'll be great. As of this recording, it's the final day of 2024. And when I was putting this outline together, I was thinking back on like how awesome this year has been for Buzzsprout, and so I went to our new page where we post like the announcements and anything new to Buzzsprout. And, holy cow, this year was bananas for us. I actually like copied some of our new announcements over to the outline, and so I kind of want to like look back on this a little bit with you guys and see, you know, what was your favorite thing that we accomplished this year for Buzzsprout.
Alban:Mine, I think, is pretty easy.
Jordan:Okay.
Alban:I've got two. Okay, there you go. I broke it already. I mean, my favorite is that we released the iOS and Android apps. This is an idea that I know has been going around in Kevin's mind for like five years.
Jordan:Yeah.
Alban:Trying to make it work, trying to think of ways that it could work out. Kevin's like we got to do it and we found the right people and we built these things pretty quickly and they just keep getting better and better. We've had a bunch of new releases and I just really like them. I think I don't have like the metrics to prove that this is the greatest decision and the greatest idea of all time, except that I really like them. And we have a podcast and I now see my widget every day and I see all of our downloads and I see our progress and I see that cool microphone design and I just like it and I click in and I use it more, even when I'm at my desk with my computer. It's more accessible to get to certain things inside of Buzzsprout and so maybe I'm actually more of a user of this feature, but that's probably my favorite thing that we did this year.
Jordan:Yeah, I agree with you on that and I think that you know, having a native app really opened a lot of doors for us to have more features, more accessibility, more fun with the product. So, yeah, I can see that for sure.
Kevin:Yeah, I'm going to be boring because I have the same answer. Everything like 2024 for me is all the achievements we made in mobile. Yeah, one of the things I'm most proud of. And, jordan, this might be the wrong way because I know you don't love ratings and reviews, but the Buzzsprout app in the iOS app store has over a thousand ratings.
Jordan:The average is 4.9, which is insanely high Mind blowing to me, yeah.
Kevin:Yeah, it was something that we talked a lot about when we were building the app making sure that we came out strong.
Kevin:Like you hear about apps all the time and when you go search them up in the app store and you look at them like it's never a good feeling when you see that thing with a 2.5 star rating or a three star rating.
Kevin:I got some stuff for Christmas that required getting an app to make it work and I'm like, oh, I just looked the app up and I got to download this thing to make it work and it only has three stars. This is going to be garbage, terrible experience, and so we wanted to build something that was substantial enough, that was just a strong enough foot out the door to make sure that when people saw it in the app store, it gave them a good feeling of confidence that this is going to be good. It's going to be added to my experience. It's worth your time downloading, installing and learning how to use. You know a different experience and different UI, even though it's the same product. Here we are almost a full year later from the initial release and we're at 4.9 stars. I'm just really proud of that. Like that actually really does exceed my expectations for.
Jordan:All right, so I think my answer is actually a little bit different from yours. I am very aesthetically motivated person, like I like things to be pretty. What was so exciting about this year for Buzzsprout was not just that we have this really fun rebranding Now we have this like lightning bolt and all these like beautiful colors with it and it just looks gorgeous. But we also redesigned like the podcast websites and the dashboard, and it's just so fun for me because I just I like when things look really good and I enjoy using things so much more when they look just pretty.
Alban:I'd like to point out Jordan, great answer, but you picked three things. You know how to do that, but it's over the umbrella. I like that. Everything looks better. And then you picked every design.
Jordan:I was trying to like sneak that in, and I didn't even mention like how much I love that now you can display fan mail on your website, which is another thing. I'm just going to like connect everything together, so I get my one thing and it's actually four.
Kevin:I get it. So you're saying in 2024 was the year of Buzzsprout's glow up?
Jordan:Yes, yes.
Kevin:And you know, I think it aligns right with the life cycle of the product. So this year we also celebrated our 15 year anniversary.
Kevin:So if you think about the life cycle of a human anyway, like when we first launched Buzzsprout. It's kind of like this baby. All babies are cute, right? I mean they're a little pudgy, they got rolls, and some have hair and some don't, but they're cute and that lasts for a little while. You know through I don't know elementary school age. But then everyone enters their awkward stage, right Adolescence. You start to get, you know, you get some pimples. You don't know what to do with your hair.
Jordan:Trying to figure out your style, yeah.
Kevin:Yeah, you know you're awkward. You're. You know, somebody who was, might've been super athletic is now not as athletic because their body's growing faster and they're getting used to it and everything there. So they look awkward, they move awkwardly. Middle school was awkward, yeah, they move awkwardly. Mill school is awkward, yeah, and Buzzsprout had a little bit of that right. Yeah, but right around 15 years old they're kind of. You know, they're stepping into that puberty stage. They're starting to glow up a little bit. They're starting to, you know, tuck in their shirt. They're working on their hygiene, they're brushing their hair more regularly. Kevin, you have like boys at this age, I know right in step with where they are.
Alban:I'm going to have to send this over to them and be like this is how your dad feels about you. You're finally hitting your glow up stage. Yeah, they would agree.
Jordan:It's like Buzzsprout had its quinceañera and it came out with its gorgeous ball gown and, just like went down the stairs you know, like Scarlett O'Hara style. Yeah, that's what it was.
Kevin:The braces are off.
Jordan:Yeah.
Kevin:Yeah, and it's really starting to hit.
Jordan:Alban, how are we doing on the branding message?
Alban:We're off, oh man, but I think there's lots of little ones, and I recently got this email from Superhuman, which is like a email client that I use.
Alban:And they just kind of listed out everything they'd done over the year, and I really liked it because I went through it and there were certain ones that I remember. I saw the announcement and I thought that might be useful for me, but I never dug into it and it was nice to see it all in one place so that if there was something that was you know, I was like, oh, I should go back, I could. So could we kind of go through maybe kind of the top line level announcements through the year, even if they weren't our number one or one of Jordan's six favorites? Okay?
Jordan:Yeah, absolutely Okay, so I actually timeline this out for us. So February 20th we added YouTube and YouTube Music to the podcast directories, and then on March 3rd, we released Buzzsprout for iOS.
Kevin:Yes.
Jordan:April 26th. We made it so you can run ads on specific podcasts.
Alban:Run ads on specific podcasts. So made it so you can run ads on specific podcasts. Run ads on specific podcasts. So that's a Buzzsprout ads feature where if you want to target Buzzcast only and you wanted to run an ad with us, you could buy an ad through Buzzsprout and target only our show and if we pick it up then you get to run it only on Buzzcast and you don't get spread around to other shows. Right, yeah, what was the next one?
Jordan:Next was one of my favorites. We added fan mail on May 3rd and then on May 24th we added the ability to back up your podcast episodes. And then June 12th, chapter markers we're starting to work in Spotify.
Alban:This is one of the things I really loved these small little tweaks that we figured out a way after a while to make it all work in Spotify and make it so if you add dynamic content, then everything's still adjusted. Spotify had that show notes way of doing it, but the downside is those are static.
Jordan:Yeah.
Alban:And now they easily break. But this way, chapter markers are going to work in Spotify, no matter what.
Jordan:Yeah, basically, when we add a feature that removes a workaround for a podcaster, that's a good thing.
Alban:Yeah, that's a very good thing.
Jordan:And then June 24th we released Buzzsprout for Android and July 1st was the Buzzsprout rebrand and redesign, which is crazy, looking at that, like having the app come out and then, like basically a week later, we announced like a redesign.
Alban:That, honestly, to me feels like more than a year ago.
Jordan:I know, is that weird?
Alban:Doesn't it feel like that to you, Kevin?
Kevin:The rebrand launch, yeah it feels like a long time. Well, I mean, we did work on it for a very long time before we released it publicly.
Jordan:That's true.
Kevin:And I do remember, you know, the decision that we made about why it released almost what was it a week later?
Kevin:you said Jordan than the Android launch, and that was because we didn't want to have to reskin the app right after we launched it, and so we tried to keep them tight. I think we had two builds one with the old logo, one with the new and so we did publish it just to make sure we got approval in the app store, and then quickly released it with a new build that had all the newer logo, assets and everything, and then, since people are going to be downloading, that then we had to publicly do the rebrand announcement.
Jordan:It was a hectic summer scheduling all that stuff. Well, in looking at September. So September 9th we added lock screen widgets. September 11th we redesigned the podcast websites.
Alban:That one was big yeah.
Jordan:I know it was a big one.
Alban:That was a big project Every time I see them I'm like I feel so much better. Oh, it's so good Because we'd had the last version of the podcast websites. We'd made updates over the years but, like the core, piece of that was made I don't know, like 2016,. 2018 was when we rebuilt them and they got updates, but the core was from back then and the new ones are so much cleaner.
Jordan:And then September 19th we got our IAB version 2.2 certification, which was a beast. And then September 26th we updated the podcast website customizer, which was another really big, very cool project. So September was a big month for us.
Kevin:Yeah, so a couple of weeks between the launch of the new customizer and the new websites. They were two big projects right, and so we didn't want to hold back the new websites from everybody while we polished up the experience of customizing your website. So you're using the old UI to customize this you know very new, cool website and a few weeks later then you got a new, fresh UI to make updating that easier.
Jordan:Yeah, and then October 7th, we had the ability to create custom mid-roll placements, which was so exciting because that was a really big request from our podcasters.
Kevin:Some podcasters. Some podcasters, not all of them.
Alban:It was one of those features that we would hear about, and yet it was a small percentage, that it matters a lot too, and so it's nice to be able to build it for them.
Alban:And then the end of October we did the new home dashboard. So all the learnings we had from doing the mobile apps and having this kind of like landing page because for years we'd had the landing page and Buzzsprout was just the episodes page, which I kind of liked because it was always encouraging like time to upload a new episode but now we have the home dashboard which kind of sends you out to all the different things you need to do in Buzzsprout so you can kind of stay motivated, stay on top of your podcast, continually make progress. Some days that progress is uploading a new episode, but sometimes it's digging into stats or it's setting up your website or doing something else.
Jordan:Or learning more about how to be a great podcaster. I still get really excited when I go into my Buzzsprout dashboard and I see an update from, like the Buzzsprout blog or Alban, when you posted like a new video on YouTube. It's just so fun for me to see those things come up and, you know, just be refreshed in like real time, basically. So I just love that. And then, of course, we finished this year with adding the home screen widgets, which was a big deal because people on Android couldn't get the lock screen widgets, so this is a present for them.
Kevin:Yep, and, as we announced last week, just the shared Instagram stories, which is just a tease of some new ideas that we might be thinking about. It's a very cool feature, but it's also like testing some ideas that we have around sharing.
Jordan:Kevin, you're just being a big tease this episode. You're teasing like new swag that we're doing.
Kevin:Sorry, not meaning to, but yeah, ideas are ideas until they're real, and so happy to talk about some ideas that we have, but no commitments on any of this stuff, but I do. We really like the idea. It's not a secret, of course we're podcasters as well as builders of podcast software, so we like the idea of making it easy to share your stuff. You create stuff and then you have to promote it, and so all the time we're trying to think about what are tools that we can put in the hands of podcasters to make sharing and spreading the word about what you're doing and what you're creating easier.
Alban:Well, jordan, thanks for pulling all that together. I really love looking at the list. I mean, there's multiple things in here that, in my mind, feel like they were longer than a year ago. I recently did this past year review where I kind of looked back at a bunch of the things that I'd done personally over the last year, and it's kind of nice to do this for Buzzsprout and see all the work that we did on the product side, and there's so many more projects than I'd remembered and I'm excited to see what we do next year. We never plan more than six weeks in advance, so we are just now starting to come up with ideas for the beginning of January and February, but I'm sure at the end of next year, 2025, the year that feels fake we're going to be looking back at another list, just this big.
Jordan:Buckle up because I have a wild story about a PayPal influencer scam. Yes, this story is so good but so infuriating at the same time. So I saw this in a pod news, james Cridland. Linked to this, there's a YouTube video by Megalag where he investigates honey. Have you heard of honey?
Alban:Yeah, the Chrome extension.
Kevin:Yeah, yeah, honey, the Chrome extension. But first let me understand the source. What was the YouTuber's name?
Jordan:Megalag.
Kevin:Megalag. Is this like a popular YouTuber?
Alban:Growing Like. He was definitely less than a million subscribers before he did this and the video is now like 13 million views in like nine days. Okay.
Jordan:Yeah.
Alban:So James linked to it when it was a. The video had not taken off when I first watched it before our Snapcast or whatever our Quickcast last week, and then it just keeps blowing up since then.
Kevin:Okay, so are we going into the story with the assumption that this is true, like this is good journalistic findings, or I believe that this is good journalistic findings.
Jordan:He spent a lot of time. He was very thorough. The video is like 28 minutes, I think is long and it's dense. So he did a lot of interviews from some of the influencers that got scammed. He looked under the hood for how the scam is operating. It's pretty well done, so I highly recommend that you watch the video.
Alban:Honey is this browser extension that basically sits in Chrome and always is checking the pages you go to, and so anytime you hit a checkout page, whether it be Amazon or it's a Shopify page or it's anywhere else, it says hey, do you want us to find you some coupon codes? And you know those coupon sites. They have all the coupon codes and you can go through yourself and like, copy and paste them in hoping to get 15% off or something. Honey runs all of those coupon codes. This is what they say they do, and they figure out which one will save you the most money. So you pretty much do no extra work and at the end of the day you get like a nice coupon code that saves you money.
Jordan:Yeah.
Alban:And what's happening is pretty much no matter what, honey was giving themselves credit for your sale. And so this digs into the whole world of affiliate marketing, where somebody does a video or a podcaster talks about a product and we say, hey, you really might like Jocko Go. Kevin drinks Jocko Go, he loves it, and here's the link. And if you clicked on that link to go buy Jocko Go, because Kevin's talked about it 15 times, then Kevin might get an affiliate commission for it. You buy $10 of Jocko Go and he gets $1 himself, but then comes in this honey extension. So, jordan, tell us what this scam is.
Jordan:So basically what happens is you have honey and you put the Jocko Go from Kevin in your cart, you go to checkout and then Honey's extension pops up and it says, hey, we might have a coupon for you. And you go, oh great, I can get some like 10% off of this maybe. And so you click the extension, it runs it and it goes sorry, no coupons.
Jordan:But, and then what happens under the hood is that they then remove Kevin's affiliate cookie that gives him credit for the purchase and they put PayPal's affiliate cookie in there, and so, by doing nothing, they get the affiliate income for that purchase.
Alban:So Kevin told you about Jocko Go 15 times. Someone clicked the link and the person who got a dollar is the Honey browser extension by PayPal.
Jordan:Yeah, megalac actually had a really good example, like real life example, of how this would not work in real world. So if you go to a store and you have a sales rep that sells you like, let's say, an appliance, and he goes, here's my card. And then you take that card that gives him like credit for the sale, the commission. And when you go up to the counter they say, hey, who was your salesman? You hand them that card and it has his name on it. Honey is like the person that comes up and they go, hey, would you like a coupon for that appliance? And you go, oh great, sure. And then they like steal the person's commission card.
Alban:Right.
Jordan:And then they put their own in its place, and then they get the commission for that sale, not the actual salesman that's on the floor.
Alban:To be clear, that is something that happens in retail.
Jordan:Does it?
Alban:Yeah, my sister similar. My sister used to work at Banana Republic and she might be on the floor helping someone with clothing. You're cleaning up the dressing room, you're getting the sizes, so you work together for 20, 30 minutes. They go and buy a pair of jeans and then when you go up and you buy the pair of jeans, they say, hey, did anybody help you? Well, you might go, oh, sarah did, and they go great and they put down Sarah, so she gets like whatever percentage of those jeans, they go great.
Jordan:And they put down.
Alban:Sarah, so she gets like whatever percentage of those jeans Okay. But sometimes multiple people are working the floor and also running the registers and so you know, Jimmy may be out there and go hey, did anybody help you? And you say Sarah did. He goes, okay, and he types in Jimmy, and now Jimmy gets that sale. And so there's people who do steal commissions and then they get fired from retail for doing it and it's wild that the other people doing it is a browser that does tell you this is what we're doing, run by PayPal, that they bought for $4 billion Like this isn't a small company.
Alban:This is a massive, massive company doing a ton of work, doing a ton of work, and all it's doing is pretty much is millions and millions and millions of affiliate codes every day are getting overwritten by Honey's browser extension and essentially just stealing those commissions from any creator who is out there trying to do affiliate codes.
Jordan:And what's even worse is these are the creators that are promoting Honey. They're the ones spreading the word about Honey. They're the ones being paid by honey to get other people to install the honey extension, and then honey goes and steals their affiliate income from it. I mean it's just wild.
Alban:That's ironic. I think that's less bad.
Jordan:Well how is that less bad?
Alban:Okay, so Mr Beast is trying to sell you something, or MKBHD or Linus Tech Tips, let's look on those. So they're talking about a tech product and they say install the Honey browser and they'll help you out and go buy this hard drive. And then you go buy the hard drive and you installed Honey, which they told you to do. So they got paid by Honey to convince you to install it, and then it stole their affiliate code. Okay, at least they knew what they were telling you to install. The person I feel really bad for is Kevin on Buzzcast telling you about Jocko Go. Kevin says go buy Jocko Go. He never told you to buy Honey. He never got money from Honey. He had nothing to do with this stupid browser extension. And then it's sitting on your browser because you watched a Mr Beast video that said install Honey. And now it steals Kevin's affiliate code.
Jordan:Yeah.
Alban:Kevin is just the victim here. You got nothing. The only person who got anything was Mr Beast, who said, and Honey, who worked together to set up this arrangement.
Kevin:Yeah, I mean in defense of Honey, which I'm not going to make a strong case of defense for them. That's probably for the best, but the way the affiliate system itself sort of is at fault as well. So is Honey doing something bad? Yes, they probably are. They're taking advantage of a system that does have a flaw, and the flaw in most affiliate programs, the way they work, is it's sort of like the last in the last attribute Last click, last click, last attribute.
Alban:Last click.
Kevin:Last click attribution Last click gets the commission In real life. That rarely is how it works. Most people are kind enough or smart enough, like the retail example that Alban gave. If you're shopping with somebody for a couple hours and finding all these clothes, and then that person's like oh I actually I'm at the end of my shift and I got to run and pick up my kid there's somebody who's going to come in and be like I'll check them out for you and I'm going to give you the commission. And then that person might be like oh well, split it, like take 10% for yourself, or something Like people are nice.
Kevin:Generally In the online affiliate world, you don't have all those tools available to you. Usually there's, and so this can happen in other scenarios, like if somebody's watching. We don't do a lot of affiliate marketing for Buzzsprout, but let's just say we did. We could have invested hundreds of thousands of dollars over years building up a YouTube channel and then linking to all these different products that we're reviewing microphones and all that other kind of stuff and people could watch our whole library and then finally decide they're going to buy this one ATR 2100X but then they just happen to watch one more reviewer and it could be the first video they've ever watched from that person.
Jordan:Yeah.
Kevin:And then they say you know what? Buzzsprout told me this for the past five years to buy this mic. And now this one person also said it. Also, I'm going to just go ahead and do it, mostly because of Buzzsprout's recommendation, but they actually clicked the link from somebody else's video.
Kevin:It's just how it works, and so I'm not defending Honey here, but I think that's going to be their defense when they ultimately probably have a class action lawsuit or the Department of Justice or somebody brings some sort of case against them at some point. They're probably going to say this is how affiliate marketing works and so we're not necessarily doing anything wrong. Now, it could be highly objectionable, you could have moral problems with it, but is it illegal? I don't know. Again, the courts will decide that, but I'm not defending them. I'm not defending them, but I do say that's how the affiliate system works and for them to put themselves in a position to basically always get the last click, because by installing that thing, you know, honey's always going to prompt you and it's a very tempting offer of oh, you're about to check out, do you want us to check for coupons?
Jordan:Yeah.
Kevin:Yes, check for coupons. Okay, now we're the affiliate right.
Alban:This is how all those coupon sites work. Have you ever noticed? You search for coupons for Gap and you pull up and it's like here's all the coupon codes for Gap. And they always say, like click to apply coupon. It never shows you the name. The reason you click is because you click and then it runs you through their URL which applies the cookie to you. So it says, hey, we're the ones who recommended them and so it doesn't matter what the coupon code is. They try to claim credit. And this is also what happens with search arbitrage, where sometimes you search for something like Buzzsprout and then you get a Buzzsprout promo code ad and you're like, oh, I'll take that. And you click it and you're on some weird site. They're trying to get a cookie to get like a refer, a friend code for Buzzsprout or something, and so we have to track those people down and shut them down. But this happens all over the affiliate world. They're scams. Part of it is that what we're talking about now that it's just so effective that Honey has done it better than ever that they're using all of the biggest affiliate marketers in the world to get this out to the world, and so there were like 20 million people using the Honey extension, which is really high.
Alban:But then there's other things in here, kevin. They're even worse. Even if they don't find a coupon code, they change the affiliates themselves. They hide coupon codes because they actually partner with the merchants. So let's say I went to a I don't know, I'm buying from a clothing company. Let's go back to Gap. We're buying at Gap and there's actually a 10% coupon out there and they say we'll find the best coupons. Well, they can work with Gap and Gap just says tell people it's a 5% coupon max. And so they run it and they're like wow, we found the 5%. And they're like I guess that's the very best one and it applies. Even though Honey will know about bigger coupons, if they work with the merchant, they will actively limit it so that you don't get the largest sale.
Jordan:Yeah, well, and on top of that they also have this like Honey Gold slash, like PayPal rewards program sort of thing. So if the coupons aren't doing it for you, then they'll like pop up and say like hey, you can earn 300 PayPal or honey gold for this purchase and you go great, and so you click it to apply that so you can receive your 300 gold. And yeah, megalag, he ran a thing where he signed up for an affiliate link through NordVPN and then he tried to use his own affiliate code to purchase something from Nord and so he made the purchase and he was supposed to get like a $35 commission but he applied that like honey gold thing because that popped up and they took his $35 commission but him as a consumer received 89 cents in rewards for that purchase. It just like it doesn't. I don't know, it's pretty crazy.
Kevin:It's brutal, but I think this report could be very interesting. If the video is I don't want to use the term going viral, but I don't know what else to say it is going viral. Obviously, most people, who probably are big on YouTube, have heard about this by now or seen this video, and I wonder if the most effective recourse for this is that I imagine influencers are probably going to start creating their own anti-honey videos and campaigns against them which could be way more effective than a class action lawsuit or the DOJ coming in and saying they've harmed consumers on a mass level and so we're going to step in.
Kevin:That stuff usually results in everyone getting a check for $26, but the company can still operate under modified rules and all this other kind of stuff like that. If you have even the top thousand channels on YouTube creating anti-honey like, you need to get this off your computer. It's harming creators, it's harming everybody who creates this content that you love, and they're stealing all our commissions and all that kind of stuff. That would be brutal, like that would absolutely kill the product.
Jordan:Yeah, especially since they rely on lack of transparency for this business model.
Alban:Right. Yeah, I think the argument that what they're doing is illegal, that's going to be tougher. It may seem it may be slightly deceptive practices that they say we're getting the best commission but then they don't always do it. That might be deceptive. There may be something about them overriding the cookie that could get them in trouble. But this was the business model. Paypal paid $4 billion because it was well known in 2020 that they were trying to get last click attribution for affiliate sales and by having a very popular browser extension, they could make millions and millions or billions in affiliate commissions. It's definitely bad for creators. So if you are running this extension, I would consider turning it off, because you're not going to really save a ton of money. You might actually get less deals and you're definitely going to cost creators and other people who work off affiliate commission. You'll cost them money. There actually has been a class action lawsuit filed since the video came out.
Jordan:Oh really.
Alban:On behalf of the creators. So Wendover Productions versus PayPal. It's a class action. Now, with class actions, you often get a bunch of people who file them pretty quickly and then you'll figure out which one's actually going to be the representative and you'll certify the class. So there's a long way to go, but there was probably this one and there might be another, I'd imagine, on behalf of consumers who are harmed, because it's not just the creators. There's harm for the consumers. This is maybe the most damning for Honey overall is when this video came out, they had 20 million users on the Chrome extension web store. It's down to 17 million. So 3 million people have gone and removed the Honey extension from Chrome. At least, that's what it looks like from screenshots I saw on Twitter.
Kevin:Yeah, and there's a Firefox extension and there's a Safari extension and there might even be an Edge extension, but I think almost every major browser now has an extension store.
Alban:Yeah, and I mean that's something like 15% losing 15% of their user base in a very short amount of time and a very big hit to their brand reputation. I'm sure there'll be another lawsuit against Megalag, which you'll probably need to raise some money to defend. Even if it's all true, it's still extremely expensive to defend yourself in litigation like this. That's true.
Alban:But it's a great video. I highly recommend watching it. It's interesting. It's very interesting for me working with creators, working with affiliate work where we actually have paid affiliates in the past. It's interesting to see it from all the different angles. So great video and definitely go check it out.
Jordan:All right, so let's get into SoundOff. So, first off, we have a fan mail message from Kevin from when Life Gives you Lemons. This entire process from research to release has been a challenge. Get into sound off. So, first off, we have a fan mail message from Kevin from when life gives you lemons. This entire process from research to release has been a challenge, since it's just my wife and I. Our audience is disability centered and we are not really in this for the money, but do try to constantly grow. We basically learned everything about podcasting from buzzsprout, so thank everyone there for us, awesome. Thank you so much, kevin. I'm happy to hear that it is difficult to you know, bootstrap your podcast and just be a one or two person team for podcasting, but I'm really glad that we were able to make it a little bit better for you.
Kevin:Yeah, thanks so much for writing in. That's great, all right, barnabas from the Kids Code podcast wrote in and said I listened to one of my earlier episodes. Thank you, barnabas, he did his homework. I don't know if that's, is it easier to do as your kid? You're just in the habit of doing homework.
Kevin:That was great. He said he listened to one from about a year and a half ago and it was really interesting to hear A couple of things. That stood out was he sounded much younger, and so he noticed that he also used some different music back then and he is now switching voices. So I guess he's doing like a character podcast where he's switching between different voice characters and he's able to switch between them much faster than he used to be able to do that. So he said it still feels a bit awkward, but at the same time he's getting more knowledgeable and just improving his podcast overall. So that's great. Barnabas, Thank you so much for doing that homework. Also, he liked the marketing idea that I think Alban gave him to do. Was that Alban or Jordan's? To do the cipher cards?
Jordan:It was Alban, yeah, yeah to do the cipher cards.
Kevin:He's going to give that a try, so that's awesome, very cool. Good job, barnabas.
Jordan:All right, so what should our sound off question be for our next episode? We didn't have one last time, which is why the sound off is so short this time, but I don't know.
Alban:I think I'm thinking sometimes, when we ask people, what are you proud of, they think what will other people be proud of me for? And so what I really want to hear is like, what did you accomplish that you're proud of? Because sometimes I'm proud of myself for things that I wouldn't even share, because I'm like it's not a very big accomplishment, but I know for me personally, it's an area that I'm not very good at, and so I'm impressed with myself. I'm happy that I made a first step.
Jordan:Yeah. So it can be something that you're, you know, outwardly proud of or something that you're just like. This was a personal growth thing for me. Go ahead and tap the link in the show notes to send in a response, for what are you most proud of for accomplishing in your podcast in 2024. And we will be sure to read that in the next episode. So, as always, thanks for listening and keep podcasting. Guess what I'm gonna do tonight.
Kevin:Ooh, New Year's Eve, what are you doing?
Jordan:I'm going to watch football Probably the first time since I wanna say 2004.
Alban:Wait, who's playing tonight?
Jordan:It's going to be BSU versus Penn State for the Fiesta Bowl.
Kevin:Okay, Wait, wait, BSU Boise.
Alban:Boise State. This is your Boise State.
Jordan:This is my Boise.
Alban:State With the blue field.
Jordan:Smurf, turf, baby, yeah, so I'm going to get to watch some football tonight and I'm hoping I enjoy it.
Kevin:Good for you, I'm proud of you, thank you? Are you planning on like engaging the game or are you just going to a social event where the game will be on?
Jordan:It's going to be at my house. It's just going to be me and my husband watching it, but yeah, we're going to watch the game. It's not going to be social. Okay, we'll probably eat lots of chips and salsa, though.
Kevin:So yeah, you're really going to watch the football game.
Jordan:I'm going to do it. I'm going to watch it, because I watched the Fiesta Bowl back in I don't know, when I was in high school. It was like that game where it was a bunch of like trick plays and stuff and BSU won. So I mean, we love a good underdog story, so I get very excited about it.
Alban:I have actually been to a Boise state football game Jordan.
Jordan:Have you really?
Alban:I went to. I want to say it was the first game Boise State Georgia in 2011. And Georgia's play calling was so bad that the drunk guy sitting like a row ahead of us just kept yelling out what play we were going to do. We did it and Boise State also knew what it was. So he'd be like run up the middle and then we'd run it right in the middle and stuff he's like pass to the middle and then we'd run it right in the middle and stuff he's like pass to the flat. And then we did it. I was like okay, we need a new play calling.
Jordan:That's really bad.
Alban:But it's like the one memory from that game and I laugh every time I think of it. This guy who is, I wouldn't have trusted to drive, but he apparently was some kind of football savant.
Jordan:Wow, I drive, but he apparently was some kind of football savant. Wow. I don't know if this is true, but I heard that if we win this game, Boise State is going to be playing in Florida next.
Alban:It could be. The bowl games are confusing to me. So now we're down to what? Is it? Eight teams, and so there's a couple more rounds until the national championship. National championship, I think, is in Atlanta this year, but we've got at least one of the games is down in Miami. I think that's the Orange Bowl, maybe.
Jordan:I think that's right.
Alban:So, jordan, if Georgia wins tomorrow and Boise State wins today, we have to go to Miami.
Jordan:Yeah, we do, that'd be so fun.
Alban:I think it'll happen while you're down here right or right around it.
Jordan:I think so. So, yeah, maybe we'll have to like carve out some time and be like sorry, got to take PTO right before podcast.
Kevin:Have you ever been to a football game in person?
Jordan:No, I've never been to a football game in person. I think I tried to go to like a BSU game when I was in college there, but like it was just too many, it was too busy, it was like really crazy, so I just didn't go.
Alban:Every sporting event is better in person, I think, like it's, in my opinion, so much better. I don't ever watch hockey and I went to a hockey game this year and I was like this is so much fun in person.
Jordan:Hockey games are stupid fun.
Alban:I don't really like watching basketball and I went to like pro basketball games and I'm like this is a blast. The energy at sporting events is just so high and you're connected to all these people who are like riding all this wave of emotion with you. I love that experience. It's like a concert, but in sports it's a great thing to do.
Jordan:The only sporting events I've ever been to. So I went to one hockey game that was just so fun. And then I've been to two baseball games. We did the Nationals at Podcast Movement and then I went to a Mariners game when I was in Seattle one time and both of them I found very boring. So I don't know if baseball is just not for me, but I would love to go to a football game someday and see how fun that can be.
Alban:One of my favorite photos I've ever seen online about a baseball game. There's a guy sitting in amazing seats at a baseball game, like slouched, like looking just miserable, holding his phone, and this photo is taken behind him. And what he searched is how many innings are in a baseball game and in the background you can see it's the top of the second inning and there's nine innings minimum in a baseball game. And in the background you can see it's the top of the second inning and there's nine innings minimum in a baseball game. You're like, oh, this guy's got like three hours to go.
Jordan:Oh my gosh, my father-in-law. He came to visit us from Washington this one time and he was like, oh, I don't want to miss this Mariners game while I'm visiting. Can we watch it at your place? And we're like sure, whatever. And we like bought something to be able to stream it. And this stupid game was like 18 innings and the entire night. We're just sitting in the living room and I'm just sitting there like hating life and I was just like I really wish we didn't have to watch this stupid game.
Jordan:Yeah, I think. Maybe. Maybe I just don't like baseball, I don't know.
Alban:Baseball is just a different emotion than all other sports because it's so much more laid back and calm and there's much more like. There's calm moments, and I think a lot of it is. If you have played baseball and you have a bit more understanding of what's going on with, like the pitch count, then each pitch can have some weight. But as a casual fan you're just like no one's hitting the ball, no one's hitting the ball, they hit a ball, oh, it's over. And I could see it being boring, especially if you're a little bit more of a casual fan.
