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.

See while maybe most people would think making a public ass of themselves all the time isn’t professional or conductive to real business, I would say overall that it’s helped me. By constantly throwing my ideas out there impulsively as I think them, I get an incredible amount of negative feedback. And while it may also seem uncommon, negative feedback is what I thrive on. How can you make yourself as close to perfect as possible without first knowing your flaws?

Believe it or not this wasn’t just me venting impulsively (okay, mmmmaybe partially), this can have practical application in your life and work. Couple points :

a) Don’t be afraid to pursue any idea that comes to your mind. Even if you get all the negative feedback in the world, you’ll still never really know until you try it.

b) Throw every idea out to as many people as you can (while being confidential if need-be). So maybe you have a killer product idea and you don’t want to reveal it, but you want some type of feedback from fellow marketers. Give away as much information as you can, talk about general strategies you’re thinking of employing, and get advice! Practical example :

Determining a rebill price for my product was one of the toughest things to figure out. I wanted to have a legitimate value for the product being sold, so I came up with a pretty low price. Shot that idea out to a bunch of my biz friends, and pretty much got all feedback that said “Not going to work dude.” They were right. The numbers just didn’t work out. Eventually I got the idea that instead of charging $100 for a bottle of 16oz Pepsi, I could add perceived value by shipping them 2 bottles of 10oz Pepsi, at the price of $50 per bottle. It increases the cost to me a bit since I have to ship 2 bottles, but the end value to the consumer will (hopefully) feel like they are getting a much better value at $50 per bottle instead of $100. Obviously all of these numbers are highly embellished, but you get the picture. Ran that idea by the same friends, they thought it was a much more practical idea then what I originally had planned.

If I hadn’t asked my friends with experience and looked like a newb (which is what I felt like), I probably wouldn’t have come to the eventual conclusion that I did.

c) Keep putting yourself out there. Just because you ran into a tree and fell down doesn’t mean you can’t get back up and run right back into it. Things will fall off the tree every time you hit it, and that’s how you learn.

Not really a post about much here, but if you have all these ideas bottled up and just don’t want to look stupid…look stupid. Who cares?

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.

Just a couple days ago profits on my campaigns hit $10,000/day. The offers I run are not seasonal, they actually do a lot worse around the holidays. It’s consistent as well, not 10k today and 500 tomorrow.

This didn’t happen over-night, it took some time, but in 1 month I increased my profit by 166566%! I’ll do my best to share as many of the reasons why I was able to do this :

Hard work. I had to just buckle down and choose not to be lazy and do some work. The next challenge is staying hard at work, as the more money you make, the easier it is to become lazy.

Play the hand I was dealt. Last month one of the big reasons I tanked was the breakup with my girlfriend. Was I able to overcome that, forget about it, and not think about it all month? Nope, I wasn’t. Trying to do something like that is completely impossible, something like that will take months. What I did realize is that all you can do is play the hand you were dealt. If you’re dealt what seems like a crappy hand, don’t cry about it. Man up, take what’s good from it, and play it out to the best of your ability. I had lost the relationship portion to my life which definitely sucks more than anything, but I realized what I had left, and what I had left was business. Instead of crying about what I lost, I learned to make the best of what I had.

Focused on 1 offer. Yep, I don’t have 10 campaigns making $1,000/day. I have 1 campaign making $10,000/day. I focused all my power and concentration on 1 thing, and it paid off. I’m still going to work on scaling what I have and getting that to $15-20k/day and ride that out as long as possible.

Focused on traffic that works. My last post was about some smaller traffic sources that simply weren’t converting. I got ripped on by a few people about it, but hey rip away. I have 2 huge sources of traffic. One is Google, and the other I’m not going to tell you :). Rather than try and fight to get the 10 other sources to all work, I just scaled and raped the two big ones that were working.

Focused on volume over conversion. I tested a few pages and some variations to find the best converting page and ads, but most of the work has just come from working on more volume. Right now the revenue is around $19,000 for $10,000 profit, so I’m happy enough with that. But with volume potential as high as it is, it’s more worth it to work on that. So every day is used making new ads, new campaigns, different pages, etc.

Those are the main reasons I can kind of give out without revealing too much.

I just want to prove to everybody out there that it’s completely possible to go from the bottom to the top, and FAST.

From a business perspective, last month was the worst month ever. This month was the best month ever. Affiliate marketing is all about roller coasters, I just have to make sure to stay at this peak as long as possible. Where do I go from here? I’m not changing a thing, I’m just going to scale scale scale. The first week of December I was happy when it was doing $700 profit/day. In a week or so it was up to $3k, then jumped in another week to $5k, then in about 3 days up to $10k. I’m just going to keep on churning out the traffic and hoping I don’t get slapped lol.

Oh and my employee did nothing to help me make the money, I did it all myself he did nothing. I’m probably going to just fire him.

Happy New Year!

• Trust nobody but yourself. No matter what you think, there’s a little bit of devil in everyone. The bigger the issue, the less you should rely on other people to trust.

 

• In regards to business, think a long time about big decisions. Whether it be ethics, investments, cash flow, time, etc. Just sit down and think about it for a few days. Acting on impulse can lose you a lot of money.

 

• There’s always an excuse. Another trust issue I guess (can you tell I’m having them? lol). No matter how much somebody promises you something, there will always be an excuse out of it. When you go into something (business or life) be prepared for all excuses, no matter how lame they may be (because sometimes they can be very, very lame).

 

• Always take risks. 9 out of 10 times you’ll fall on your ass and it’ll hurt, but the 1 time you succeed you’ll forget about the other 9 times. Even if you fail, over time you’ll end up at the same place you would if you hadn’t taken the risk at all.

 

• Friends are important (as well as family), so make sure to have either. They can be the one to pull you out of a rut, stop you from losing money with a poor business decision, or just help you pick yourself back up.

 

• No matter how horrible you feel about having something bad out there happen to you, it happens to other people too. And they pick themselves back up and get back to life, so why shouldn’t you?

 

• Listen to music (actual music, not rap).

 

• Surround yourself with happy people, it really does rub off on you. Likewise, stay away from depressing and mopy people.

 

• If you think you know you’re at the bottom, know that the only way to go from here is up. Life and business have the same cycles I think. The cycle can be controlled though, and you alone determine how long you stay at the peak, and how long you stay in a recession.

 

• Don’t be afraid to be alone. Whether it’s quitting your dayjob or moving out by yourself, you’ll end up amazing yourself at what you alone can accomplish. It’ll always be a struggle in the beginning (ie quitting your job), but unless you truly think you’re horribly weak, you’ll notice that things will just start clicking. You’ll find a way.

 

• Understand that nobody will ever understand Google Adwords.

 

• There’s a 95% chance Facebook will disapprove your ad.

 

• I didn’t really lose 44lbs in 3 months with acai.

 

• Be crazy. Most successful people are.

 

• Never feel like you’re “settling”. We only get 1 life here, you should be taking advantage of every second you have.

 

• Never give up on something you truly believe in. Giving up is settling, and we don’t settle.

This post isn’t over yet. If you have a blog out there, MAKE A POST LIKE THIS. Share your experiences with everybody so they can learn from them. I’m only 20 so I still have a lot of life to get through and have plenty more to learn, so make a post and let me know what you’ve learned. Don’t have a blog? Wordpress.org.

Don’t be a pussy either, it’s the internet nobody cares about you on here anyway. I’ll even blog about it and throw you a link if you do, so get your blog some traffic and make a post already.