All posts in Philosophy

I’m a fan of good movies, so naturally I’m a fan of Fight Club. If you haven’t seen it…see it. One of my favorite all-time quotes comes from Tyler Durden and can be directly applied to affiliate marketing. Then I started thinking, “Hm, I bet there’s a few quotes from him that can be applied to this industry.” Sit back, relax, and take some life advice from a fictional movie character…

It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything.

This is one of my favorite quotes. If you’ve read my blog for the past few years, you’ve heard me say many times that Fear is probably the #1 obstacle to get over when starting a business. What if I lose all my money? What if I fail and look like a big loser? What if I let myself down? These are all questions you can’t be afraid of if you want to make it big, simple as that. That’s where this quote comes in and gives a delightful perspective on fear. Only when you lose everything are you absolutely free to do anything. Big deal if you risked all of your money on a business that bombed out. You gained experience, and now you’re free to restart and choose any path you want. Losing everything doesn’t have to be the end of the world, it can just as easily be the beginning.

Keep in mind all of this is said within reason, I’m not saying gamble away your life savings, but you have to take risks you might not want to take.

You’re not your job. You’re not how much money you have in the bank. You’re not the car you drive. You’re not the contents of your wallet. You’re not your fucking khakis. You’re the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world.

The things you own end up owning you.

I’ve seen a lot of internet marketers fall victim to the belief that Durden points out with this quote. They think they are the car they drive, they think they are the money they have in the bank, the penthouse they live in, the expensive clothes they wear. The more successful you become, the easier it is to lose your identity and create a new one based on all the material things you’ve gained. The more material your identity becomes, the less personal, ethical, and moral you become. I’m certainly someone who has taken a walk on the shady side of things more than once and I can relate to this quote. The one thing I constantly try to do now is keep my identity in tact, and remain the person I was before I became successful. There’s much deeper satisfaction in life when you can fulfill something that’s not just material.

Without pain, without sacrifice, we would have nothing. Like the first monkey shot into space.

Internet marketing (and business in general) is certainly a rollercoaster of highs and lows. The higher the highs get, the further there is to fall. It’s important to remember that without the lows, there wouldn’t be a high. There’s been many times where I have campaigns that completely tank and go from hero to zero in a day. I sit back, tell myself “Alright, just do some work on it and you’ll revive this”. After a week of work, it’s not getting better. After 2 weeks there’s still nothing; it’s enough to just call it quits on that offer and move on. 2 weeks after that and I still haven’t found an offer I can profit on. The longer I go without seeing anything positive, the more bleek my reality becomes. Once I let that happen to myself, my motivation drops, I work less, and generally just become extremely counter-productive. The trick is trying to stay high even when things are low. This quote is a good reminder that pain and sacrifice are all part of the process, and becoming depressed and counter-productive about it won’t do anybody any good.

Hitting bottom isn’t a weekend retreat. It’s not a goddamn seminar. Stop trying to control everything and just let go! LET GO!

Sometimes campaigns just won’t work for you, no matter how much you try to make it work. At a certain point you have to be bold enough to just accept that you lost X amount of money, and move on. The more you try to control the situation, the deeper into shit you’ll become. Letting go is something any good marketer knows how to do. The skill of it is learning exactly when the best time to let go is.

You wanna make an omelet, you gotta break some eggs.

You can’t expect to magically turn $10 into $100 on your first try. You’re going to lose money, you might partially “break” your bank account, but that’s the only way you’re going to learn how to really make money.

That concludes philosophy hour for today. I’ll try to post something more tangible soon.

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This isn’t meant to be a long and planned out post with my 2010 predictions, just getting some thoughts out.

Here’s what’s been happening with me and my product launch. My plan has been to set up a continuity offer with a product but have it be legitimate at the same time. Believe it or not I think there are ways to attract customers without offering them a Free* Trial. I’ve now been rejected by 2 or 3 merchants and am awaiting the reply on another. Because of all the scamming that went down in 2009, Visa/Mastercard are tightening their grip on things…especially domestically. And since I don’t have any real processing history, domestic is the route I have to go. So even though my offer is completely legitimate and actually charges them up-front for a sale, the banks are saying no just because there is continuity involved (I don’t want to get into the specifics, but my charges monthly would be under $20, not $110.33). This sucks pretty bad because now I may be forced to abandon that business model and try and make this work by just straight selling it. I’ve put too much time into it to scrap, but now I have to make huge changes. I have to now build a full website and come out with a mini product line so I can offer combo packages and things like that to incent customers.

That’s how 2009 impacted me, where will the affiliate industry be in 2010? While working on all of this product mumbo jumbo, I kind of “left” the affiliate industry for a while. Didn’t talk to my AMs much, didn’t browse offers, didn’t keep up too much on the news. Now that I’ve been looking to get some campaigns and other projects running again (with the product delay I have to make money somehow), things seem to be changing. Rebill offers that made up a lot of business for affiliate networks are dropping. There are still ones that exist and offers running well so it’s not like they’re completely dying, but things will change.

I think many affiliates will realize that before rebills came along everybody was still making money. Not millions every month, but there was plenty of money to be made and there still is.

I’ll keep you guys posted on what happens with my projects and how everything is influencing them.

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This post is for anyone pre-college, in college, thinking about college, and thinking about what they’re going to do. This is just my unique chain of events, but everything did happen and you might be the exact same way. I think we often hear much too much barraging from the “other side” on the importance of college, most of the time it’s from people with jobs they got from their college degree. So this is just a story from someone who has a successful job but no degree. I had my glory Year and One Month at college, and I retired in my prime.

It seemed like my entire childhood education was built upon finally going out to college, learning a trade, and getting a job with the degree I would earn. At least in high school that’s all I heard from teachers…”You think this is hard, just wait until college.”…”We’re doing this to better prepare you for college,”, etc. Throughout our high school years is when our parents encourage us to save up for college, and even set up college funds for us with their money.

So what did I put in? Two years, roughly $15,000 (including all tuitions, books, room/board, etc), and a lot of my time. What did I end up with? College certainly didn’t pay me for my time, so that’s -$15,000. Looking back, I really didn’t learn anything useful other than the fact that if you really really want to find a way to get around the system…you can. I did have some great times with great people, but this post is only talking about the education/degree factor. So I ended up with nothing but the lesson that college just isn’t necessary for some people. If I put more into it, would I have learned something and gotten a degree? Yeah, not denying that one bit. But college simply isn’t for me, and might not be for you either.

I’ll talk briefly about my college experience now for those that are interested and may be going through similar things.

Pre-college : In high school I was the kid who did nothing and got by. I hated homework, maybe just for the fact that I didn’t like the idea of having to do something I didn’t want to do. I took the test and did the big projects, but I usually avoided most small homeworks – because they could be avoided. If you really really want to find a way around the system…you can. And you don’t have to be a genius to figure it out, just take a step back and look at where you’re really going. If you know you want to go to a community college out of high school, do you really need an A? If you like working hard at things just for the sake of working hard, more power to you. But if not (like me), don’t feel like a failure because you just don’t see the point in it.

During College : I didn’t really know what direction I wanted to go in, I just figured I’d be good at business or law. But I certainly wasn’t going through all the work and hell to get through law school – life really is too short to waste 7-8 years of my life wanting to kill myself. So I chose business, and took on the easy schedule. I learned about online marketing while just starting my freshman year at school. By the start of the second semester, I knew I would be dropping out after that year. I saw the potential in the industry and had already made a few thousand bucks, it was worth it. You can always go back to college if you really need to. I started working on my business and stopped doing school work. College did indeed prove to be a bit harder than high school. Here homework usually wasn’t required, it all came down to the tests. Unfortunately those required hours of reading, so I usually read the cliff notes, or read the test of the girl in the row in front of me (she got a C on the economics exam). Once more now, if you really really want to find a way around the system…you can.

Transition Time : I resigned from college that year to work on affiliate marketing full time. I was learning 10x as much by getting out there and testing things for myself. I could either pay $20,000-100,000 (depending on what school you go to) to get a degree that will teach me how to manage my business assets. Or I could spend $1,000 testing Google Adwords to find the customers that want to buy what I have to sell. My first years in affiliate marketing, even now, have taught me an incredible amount…and I didn’t have to sacrifice a dime for it. But while I was building my business, I started to feel like I missed out on the college years of my life. So I went back…

Back to School : Last month I started school at SUNY Geneseo. It’s actually a very selective school now and they rejected my application at first. My grades weren’t even close to being good enough to get in (perhaps like trying to get a job interview with a low GPA?). So I drove down to the school, talked to the admissions officer, and told him why he should let me attend their school. All together now: if you really really want to find a way around the system, you can. After a month of taking classes that I just took out of interest (computer science, physics, and geology), working on this new product simply took up all my time. I didn’t have nearly enough time to study, and it was the best business move to just cut my losses and move back home.

Was the point of that whole story to either a) bore you, or b) lead you to believe I’m an egomaniac? No, this is for kids my age who may feel the same way about school. If you really feel that college isn’t for you, and if you really feel like you don’t need college to earn a good living, you have no reason to waste your money even trying. Why spend thousands of dollars on college, and THEN go out and try something that wouldn’t make use of your paper degree? If you’re in college now or any type of school, start working on something in your free time. Brainstorm ways to make money and put them to action. Don’t listen to anybody that tells you that you need college to be successful in “this day in age”.

Some points I want to make :

1) I am certainly not trying to encourage anybody to completely avoid college. If you want to be a doctor or nutritionist, college is completely necessary and will absolutely be helpful. I’m just making the point that many times something like college can be an individual case. Not everybody needs to be a part of the “system” in order to find their way. This is for those people, those cases…not everyone. I’m not talking about the fools with no college degree that peddle drugs, con people, or just sit and collect unemployment/welfare. Please don’t come at me with stats on college dropouts, because this article is not about that.

2) I go back to the “if you really really want to find a way around the system…you can.” quite a few times, and wanted to clarify that as it may raise some flags. Getting around the “system” is one of the things that my college experience showed me. It’s helped me to realize that if I really want to get somewhere or do something but have no direction, I know it’s possible that I’ll find a way to get where I want. Just knowing I can get there helps me stay motivated and fixated on whatever goal I have. BUT, you have to think of this in relative terms. I’m not saying beating the system means doing anything harmful, illegal, or highly unethical. In this article’s example I mention not doing homework, cheating on a college exam, and persuading the admissions director to accept me. Using an example of cheating on a test is probably inappropriate and slightly unethical…but it didn’t harm anybody and it helps to prove my point. Proving my point is more important than my personal reputation, the goal here is to be honest with others going through the same things as I am in regards to school. Hopefully it helps or at least reassures a few people out there.

Think about this :

You want to be a marketing manager when you grow up. Now you’ve looked at job descriptions and even called ahead to employers and asked them what a marketing manager does. You learn that once you’ve been hired, you’ll be trained on everything the company does. You’ll receive information to digest, and then receive your first task. Now it’s time for college. I’d say for that job position, easily more than half of your classes will serve you little to no purpose. Will learning the war heroes of the American Revolution help you sell toothbrushes? How about doing an advanced integral in calculus? The school system thinks you need these classes for your development/work ethic/blah blah. That’s why they make them required for any degree…for a lot of people that’s just simply wrong. It’s wasting their time and money to teach them something that will have little to no effect on their end-game (a career). I couldn’t help the fact that I simply couldn’t pay attention in classes I had no interest in. I know people that have paid to have somebody go and sit through all their classes and take their exams so they could work on their business instead…I say bravo. Beat that system boii.

3) Something to keep in mind : I’m writing this post as I’ve said for college kids in the same position. Same position meaning school just isn’t right for some people, and with some smart thinking and work you can make things work just fine on your own. Smart thinking, and work. If your idea for selling diet pills is to give out samples to marathon runners, you should strongly consider going to college or learning a trade. Being smart about things is 100% necessary for anything I’m talking about right now.

4) I sound like a slacker with my “do as little as possible to get by” philosophy. Most people resent that way of living…I embrace it. Why should I have to do homework that don’t have to do? If I’m doing well enough on the tests I obviously know the material, so I see no point unless I enjoy it. Should you go to lecture if you can learn all the material from the reading? Hell no, you should go play basketball with your friends instead. Instead of looking at it like a “do as little as possible to get by” approach, I look at is as : “accomplish your goals while enjoying as much of it as you possibly can.”

5) I am in no way saying to drop what you’re currently doing now. If you’re in college – stay in college. If you have a full time job – stay in that job. If you’re planning on going to college next year – go to college next year. But there is time in the “meantime” that you can start to explore career options that don’t require a degree. I know firsthand how much work college can be, especially if you actually plan on doing the work/studying. I have physics major friends who stay up all night many nights every week doing homework and studying. But they also have time to play a lot of Xbox and party on the weekends. Which if you’re going to school like that you need those breaks, but not if you want more. You have to want it badly enough. I started getting into internet marketing while I was going to school. I still did all my projects and went to my part-time job, but whenever I had free time I was reading about affiliate marketing. Once I started to see results from that (and only once I saw results), I started to cut back on school.

Anyway, bit of an off-topic post. But seeing as I’m just coming off of my second college run, the thoughts are flowing freshly. Keep in mind I like to stir the pot just for the sake of stirring, so don’t take any of this too offensively.

Always remember…be smart about it.

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