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However, the partnership suffers from the multi-channel fallacy, the assumption that adding more channels increases sales. It does not, at least not meaningfully. Naively while a product can be copied to Amazon, eBay, Walmart, and elsewhere and thus should be discoverable by customers there, a mere act of adding products doesn’t create liquidity. E... See more

Over the past two decades, top internet distribution waves included SEO & SEM arbitrage, email “spam,” and the Facebook newsfeed, among others. With each new wave, savvy internet upstarts leverage these platforms, channels, and communities as strategic ways to grow explosively.

But influencer marketing is also broken. As I wrote in May’s Influencer Marketing 2.0, most influencer campaigns rely on hefty upfront lump-sum payments and use hacks like discount codes to track attribution. ROI is often poor, and measurement is even worse. The channel is difficult to scale efficiently.

As influencers try to monetize, they are bringing all the old off-line tools to make it happen. Selling everything from makeup and swag to exclusive "how-to" guides, the playbooks all rhyme. But is slapping your name on a t-shirt in your Shopify website, selling new age self-help courses, and slinging sponsored posts all we really got?