My last night in Austin at SXSW we found ourselves at Pete’s Dueling Piano Bar. Cheezy? You bet, but we were winding down our night and our group of friends wanted to spend our last bit of time together having a beer and singing along to 80’s music. As the duo on stage played songs, they would offer to take requests for money. At one point they were asked to play Bohemian Rhapsody. They declined, saying it was too difficult to sing for the money offered. They also offered to extend their set or make up funny songs if people continued to come to the stage and fill their tip jars.

At one point I looked over at Christopher Smith and said “THIS is affiliate marketing.” It was a perfect example of performance-based pricing. You deliver the goods, you get paid. Think of the piano players as the affiliate. The songs they performed are the acquired lead and the audience as the advertiser. As I looked around at the friends I was with, it became really easy to explain to them, using this example, how performance marketing worked. They all started to nod and get it. 

The reality is that we see elements of performance-based marketing everyday. Even in the most unlikely of places – a sweaty bar in Austin Texas – affiliate marketing was alive and well.

For the record, the duo was only offered $4 to play Bohemian Rhapsody. They passed, deciding it wasn’t nearly enough payout to deliver that particular lead.