FinCon: The Right Mix of Fintech and Affiliate

Most people get uncomfortable when talking about finance, budgets, and retirement — but not at FinCon. There, attendees eat, sleep, and breathe personal finance. Each year, hundreds of self-proclaimed “finance nerds” make the pilgrimage to a new city for FinCon and meet with like-minded colleagues to learn, share, and grow their obsession. Attendees include podcasters, bloggers, app builders, financial consultants, TikTokers, authors, and YouTubers who are all looking for new ways to promote their personal finance vision and expand their reach to consumers who are looking for advice. 

This year, FinCon was hosted in New Orleans, which brought a whole new flavor to the event. The FinCon staff hosted dinner groups, networking events, and even brought in a live jazz band during the conference. Fitting, as the event was hosted right near the world-famous French Quarter. 

Top Trends at FinCon 2023 

Keynotes this year focused heavily on increasingly popular topics for financial publishers, such as the emergence of AI, work-life balance, and innovative ways to monetize content. Every keynote was packed with hundreds of passionate individuals who came ready to engage, learn, and take ideas home with their keynote takeaways. 

One of the major ways these content creators have been monetizing their digital footprint is by teaming up with financial services companies as sponsors. Brands attending FinCon are looking for unique influencers to join their affiliate programs, especially those who have a captive audience in the brand’s target market. Once they‘re teamed up, financial companies and their affiliates can work more closely on what promotional activities have the best chance of success and on how these individuals can be fairly compensated for their efforts. 

Each day, all of the brand booths were flooded with passionate financial content creators, who were busy pitching their product offering and figuring out how they could work together with a mutually beneficial affiliate relationship. Most brands attending FinCon have purpose-built affiliate management platforms in place to be able to efficiently onboard, track, report, and pay content creators, while other brands were busy loading spreadsheets with names and manually generating UTM strings plus promo codes to properly attribute their newly found affiliate partners. 

Why TUNE Attends FinCon 

We head to trade shows like FinCon every year to connect with financial publishers to include in the TUNE Network so we can facilitate introductions to our clients in the financial vertical. We also go to meet brands looking for more efficient tools to manage their growing affiliate programs and new ways to discover partnerships that will stand the test of time. 

FinCon continues to be an amazing yearly conference for personal finance nerds and fintech brands alike — and for companies like TUNE to meet new people and build out partnerships. Each year, FinCon selects a new city for the next conference. My first FinCon was in Austin, last year was in Orlando, and this year was New Orleans; next year, FinCon will be going to Atlanta. Time to block off October 23–26, 2024 to come see what all the hype is about at FinCon ‘24 in Atlanta!