Four Crashes Couldn't Kill This Business

Sometimes the best businesses start with solving your own problem. For Jesse Lakes, that problem was losing affiliate commissions from international traffic to his niche extreme sports soundtrack website.

That single frustration eventually turned into Geniuslink, a company that has survived four "revenue-cut-in-half-overnight" catastrophes and still emerged as the leading smart link platform for creators.

I sat down with Jesse and Shannon, two of Geniuslink's co-founders, to hear the full story of how they bootstrapped this business from the ground up and grew it to over $250k in annual revenue.

The Story of Geniuslink

Before Geniuslink

Jesse started his career at the University of Montana where he studied information systems. While there, he created a business plan for a website that would be the "bible for extreme sports" with a revenue model based on selling ads.

There's one crucial detail though: timing matters here.

Jesse's business plan was based on pre-.com era ad rates (pre-2000) which then crumbled after the .com boom. His plan essentially became dead in the water after the crash in ad rates, but hey, he still won 2nd place in the business plan competition at the University of Montana.

Even with his original business plan out the window, Jesse tried to salvage the idea by using affiliate marketing instead - getting a cut of sales when someone purchased something through ads on his website. The problem? He barely made any money from it.

Jesse ended up shutting down this website and experimenting with a dozen different ideas. One was a music blog monetized with Google Adsense, but again, no real money. He tried the iTunes affiliate program too, with similar disappointing results.

Eventually, between working as a raft guide in Costa Rica during winters and juggling side projects in Colorado & Montana during summers, Jesse finally landed on an idea with actual traction: a website showcasing soundtracks for extreme sports films. Yes, it's as niche as it sounds.

Jesse used affiliate marketing here as well but noticed something interesting. The traffic to his website was steadily increasing, but his revenue remained relatively flat.

The Problem and the Smart Link Solution

In theory, Jesse's revenue should have followed his traffic pretty closely.

The problem he discovered was that he was only making revenue from visitors in the United States, while his traffic was increasingly international.

If someone outside the United States purchased a song, Jesse wasn't getting his commission because it was processed through a different version of the iTunes store. The country of the visitor's credit card needed to match the country of the iTunes store for Jesse to earn his affiliate cut.

Jesse turned to one of his best friends, a software engineer, and asked, "Could you create a smart link that directs people to their country's store so I can get revenue from all countries, not just the US?" The answer was yes, and it proved to be an effective solution.

With this fix in place, Jesse's revenue finally started increasing alongside his traffic. Around this time, another friend suggested, "Since you know the iTunes affiliate program so well, you should write a book about it."

Jesse had always wanted to write a book, so he did just that. He self-published an eBook titled "Mastering the iTunes Affiliate Program," even investing in a professional editor and book cover designer.

Right before publishing, Jesse sent a copy to the iTunes affiliate team at Apple, assuming they'd appreciate his work. Instead, Jesse ended up in a 45-minute call with the head person for the program just screaming at him. Safe to say it wasn't their favorite book of all time.

Jesse asked for feedback and delayed his publishing date. To his credit, the Apple team only found three trivial mistakes in his entire book.

Here's where things took an unexpected turn: after reading the book, the Apple team realized that Jesse truly understood the iTunes affiliate program better than most. They asked if he was over 18, because they didn't just want his knowledge—they wanted to hire him to lead the affiliate program at Apple.

Jesse accepted the incredible offer and moved to California, where his future life and business partner, Shannon McGuire, eventually joined him and also landed a job at Apple.

From Apple to Entrepreneurship

Jesse ended up spending 2.5 years at Apple where he fixed a lot of issues within the affiliate program. Ironically, he was making one particular problem worse with the program's growth: geofragmentation.

This was the exact same issue Jesse had faced with his soundtrack website. The problem of credit cards needing to match a country's store for a referral to get a commission was actually growing worse as Apple expanded internationally.

As this geofragmentation problem expanded, Jesse saw that the opportunity for his smart links was growing. In 2012, he made a bold move: he quit Apple to start a business based on smart links.

Jesse launched his smart link company, originally calling it GeoRiot (which eventually became Geniuslink).

The Start of Geniuslink

He approached this venture much more seriously than his previous projects. After all, he'd just left a stable job at Apple, and he was determined to bring his key stakeholders on board too - Shannon and his best friend, Jesse Pasichnyk, who all became eventual co-founders.

Jesse's time at Apple had given him something extremely valuable: a much larger LinkedIn network and credibility in the industry. Plus, the timing for smart links was much better this time around.

Apple wasn't the only company growing its affiliate program internationally - Amazon was following the same growth trajectory.

Geniuslink eventually landed two major clients - mobile ad networks with massive traffic. These two clients alone propelled Geniuslink to over $100k/month in revenue.

But success wasn't a straight line. Almost overnight, Apple made changes to their affiliate program that eliminated the unique identifiers that made the smart links work.

That $100k/month in revenue quickly turned to $0k/month in revenue.

This is just one of the 4 major events that cut Geniuslink's revenue in at least half overnight. As Jesse put it in my conversation with him and Shannon, Geniuslink is like a "phoenix."

Many of these major disruptions were tied to Geniuslink's business model being dependent on major affiliate programs. If an affiliate program didn't approve of Geniuslink's approach, they could essentially cut them off.

This happened with the elimination of unique identifiers, and it happened again when Geniuslink moved to their second revenue model, Clickshare.

Clickshare was one of Geniuslink's favorite revenue models because it created perfect alignment: Geniuslink would take 15% of the clicks flowing through their smart links. If people sharing their smart links were doing well, Geniuslink was also doing well - a win-win for everyone.

The model allowed anyone to use Geniuslink for free. Users would get revenue from their base country, plus extra "bonus money" from international clicks they weren't able to capture before. Geniuslink would simply take 15% of those international clicks.

Over time though, an Amazon UK lawyer shut this model down, sending Geniuslink back to the drawing board.

Eventually, Geniuslink landed on the model they use today: a traditional SaaS company based on usage rates.

Geniuslink now starts at $6/month with an additional $2.50/month for every 1,000 clicks through your unique Geniuslink smart links.

Their feature set has improved over time too. Today, buyers can choose which store they want to buy from (like Amazon vs. Barnes & Noble for a book), and creators still get credit no matter where the purchase happens. You can essentially manage all your different affiliate programs in one place with Geniuslink.

This evolution has led to Geniuslink now doing "between $2 million and a billion dollars" according to Jesse and Shannon :)

Growth Strategies of Geniuslink

1. Relationships

After Jesse left Apple, he had a much more significant network and he used it immediately.

He knew who was having the problem with geofragmentation and reached out to them right after he left Apple essentially saying "hey, I have a solution for you". These connections quickly became Geniuslink's first customers.

Having led the affiliate program at Apple didn't hurt either. It gave him a lot of credibility, and writing the book on iTunes affiliate marketing helped too (even if he did make that book obsolete after being at Apple).

Jesse & Shannon didn't directly mention this to me when I talked to them, but it's also very clear that they almost always know who the key stakeholders are.

They seem to always know who to talk to at Amazon (even if they change a lot) and knew leaders within the Apple ecosystem. They also know many of the key stakeholders within the creator economy.

As someone who's gotten to know them over the last few years at Craft & Commerce, I get why people want to work with them - they're pretty wonderful people.

2. SEO

In talking about the first customers of Geniuslink, Jesse mentioned that there were 2 major mobile ad networks that drove Geniuslink to their initial $250k and eventually $100k months in revenue.

However, they didn't come from Jesse's or Shannon's network initially. As Jesse put it, they found Geniuslink through "just enough SEO."

The interesting part is that SEO is kind of built into Geniuslink because the product lends itself naturally to being a backlink. From 2012 to 2021ish, backlinks were gold for SEO. Backlinks probably still mean something today, but how much they matter, I don't know anymore.

I don't know all of the mechanics of backlinks, but it's clearly worked for the Geniuslink team.

When I looked up data on the number of backlinks for Georiot.com and Geniuslink.com, the amount of backlinks they both had was absurd.

Georiot.com has over 9.5 million backlinks and Geniuslink has over 150k backlinks according to Ubersuggest. Yes, I know the data on Ubersuggest isn't always super accurate, but it's a good ballpark number. It still suggests that Geniuslink has a TON of backlinks.

3. Social Media

Even just having 150,000 backlinks kind of means your links are all over the internet, right? Well, it also doesn't hurt that Geniuslink is on YouTube videos and articles with massive view counts.

Eventually, if you see a link enough, you have to naturally wonder what they are.

I don't think that's been the main driver for this social media growth channel though. The main driver from studying Geniuslink in this growth strategy is that Geniuslink's customer base mostly all have audiences, and when a product makes you more money without really any extra effort on your end, it's super easy for those customers to recommend said product (Geniuslink in this case).

As Shannon mentioned to me, they'll just be going about their day to day business, but then two big YouTubers will start talking about Geniuslink on social media about how they love Geniuslink and all of a sudden that adds a bunch of customers to Geniuslink.

This ends up creating a flywheel of growth for Geniuslink.

A creator starts with Geniuslink; that creator makes more money with Geniuslink; they end up recommending Geniuslink because if you're making money with affiliate marketing, you're in the recommendations business; and then more people sign up because of that recommendation.

It's an incredible way to grow a business and there's no extra effort by the Geniuslink team. They just need to make sure the smart links do their job.