Guillaume Robez’s Interview – Founder of Independant.io

Guillaume, I am delighted that you accepted this interview focusing on the monetization of content on the affiliate lever.

Actually, we’ve only known each other for a short time, but we met during one of my customer satisfaction calls regarding our services. A long and friendly exchange followed and I’m personally quite curious about how you progress quickly with independant.io. I wanted to know more with these few questions!

Guillaume, could you quickly tell us more about your business activity and how did you come up with this BtoB comparator idea?

We enable the self-employed (in the broadest sense: freelancers, liberal professions, VSE-SME managers…) to compare the products and services they need to manage their business.

This idea came to us when I started freelancing, and we had to find information about the right products according to our needs, status, preferences etc. My partner, Fabien, was also starting as a freelancer at the same time, and faced the same issues.

We have a somewhat original positioning since we want above all to allow our readers to find what they are looking for, without pushing our partners at all costs.

We are therefore able to suggest free tools and services, or even non-partner brands (unlike the vast majority of comparators). 

If we take the example of the category of online accountants, we will eventually have 3 or 4 major complementary partners, but we will probably integrate about 15 or even 20 players so that our readers can compare everything.

What is your real value with these brands? I mean, how do you fit into their marketing mix?

We made the decision early on to remain independent, and to choose precisely the products and services we recommend (among those we compare).

We decrypt and describe in a very detailed way the brands offer and when we can, we even test the software.

With this detailed but independent approach, we insert ourselves into the marketing mix as a trusted third-party, reliable in information and recommendations, allowing us to send qualified traffic to our partners (and even non-partners). 

Some of our partners even send their prospects to read our reviews.

What kind of content do you offer to highlight advertisers?

We offer 3 types of content:

• Reviews
• Comparators
• Guides

The presence on the site is free, affiliate partnership or not. On the other hand, for equivalent solutions, we put our partners more in the spotlight than non-partners. We also regularly discuss with our best partners to find out what content is most relevant to their audiences and adapt our content strategy to speak to those audiences specifically.

Why did you choose BtoB affiliation as your main source of monetisation?

Flexibility. Initially, we chose affiliate marketing for two reasons. 

On the one hand, we manage the site in parallel with our freelance activity, which allows us not to lose time (it is the most agile model). 

On the other hand, we have always hated as users ultra-long forms and comparators where you have to waste 15 minutes to access information. 

So naturally, we started on this model of providing reliable and free information, without registration, which goes well with affiliate marketing (whereas forms would have implied to manage and resell personal information).

What’s your number 1 criteria to decide whether or not you want to work with a brand? What’s your deal-breaker?

It’s pretty hard to pick just one, but I would say affinity with our audience. We have a fairly large audience, representing very different professions. So in the idea, we like to have a good partner by category and by type of audience…

In your experience, what’re the perks of working with a platform like Affilae?

We work with several affiliate software, we appreciate Affilae for the support quality and the ease of tracking performance. 

We also particularly appreciated your call a few weeks ago where you asked us what we liked and disliked about the platform and how we could improve it. 

It’s simple, Affilae is the only platform that has called us for feedback! 

If I put myself in the shoes of a brand (I’ve already recommended the platform to some of our partners), I think the 100% French side (including support) and the price are two undeniable advantages.

Many advertisers still go through “traditional” affiliate platforms, without realizing that the monthly cost of new players like Affilae (with no fixed fees or commission on sales) makes it possible to manage much more competitive affiliate programs.

Guillaume, I sincerely thank you for your transparent answers, it’s very clear, I wish you the best to come and that this interview will allow you to seduce more advertisers and users.

Of course if you think the added value of independant.io could be an asset for you, don’t hesitate to write directly to Guillaume, by sending him a message on his profile page. 📩 (accessible only to Affilae network advertisers)