2010 | Finch Sells

Building Long Term Assets In A Short Term Industry

Jan 12 2010

This is going to be the first in a series of posts about long term business development for affiliates. One of my biggest regrets of 2009 was that I spent 8 months working for myself and didn’t come close to developing the number of fixed assets that I should have done. Too much of my energy was spent playing with fire on campaigns that were raking in the money one minute and draining my wallet the next. This year is different. I’m not thinking “how can I make more money than I know how to spend?” I’m thinking long term stability.

Yeah, if you’re wondering, I’m wearing slippers and smoking a pipe while I write this. Next stop: feeble retirement. But it reflects how I feel about the business right now. I’m not interested in banking astronomical profits just so that I can go on WickedFire and be a dick posting about it (like the majority of members over there, sorry but you’re lame). Money isn’t my incentive this year. I worked my arse off through 2009, made a lot of cash, and you know what happened? I never got chance to enjoy any of it. I want to live in comfort, not chained to my dedicated server incase a small wind knocks it offline and motherfucks my media buy.

2010 is going to be all about working smart.

It’s interesting how when I broke in to affiliate marketing, the niche that set me on the road to riches was the Google bizopp. And yet one year on, the goalposts have shifted so far that I’ve returned to where I started in terms of how I value my work.

When I quit my day job, it was in disbelief that so much money could be made through such a simple process. Set up a landing page, plug in some keywords, and line your pockets with money. I’d lost interest in the kinda “small fish” web projects that I’d spent my previous career undertaking. Instead of developing long term assets that would stand the test of time, I was happy to tear through more .info domains than you could fit in your economy shared hosting plan.

One year on, I’ve grown tired of living on the volatile edge. I gave up rebills a long time ago. But even now, I’m still shifting my campaigns to more long term geared strategies.

You should know how it is. A part time affiliate marketer can afford to tap in to whatever’s hot or converting at the time. Those of us doing this shit as a full time career need to move forward with slightly broader mindsets. To live comfortably, we need to develop long term assets. Or face the hair receeding bitch that comes with the pressure of producing profitable CPA campaigns week on end. I’m not joking. If I had to live 2009 several times over, I’d be bald by the time of London Olympics. There’s times where I feel myself physically molting at my desk.

When I look at the affiliate marketing landscape in 2010, I see a lot of opportunity. But I also see a lot of challenges on the horizon. Especially for those who deal in short term crash and burn arbritage and nothing else. Not to say the ballers are going to fall by the wayside, because they won’t. But the time is now to build some long term assets. Something that an Adwords slap or an offer outage can’t touch.

What are your options? Well, that’s what I’m going to bring myself to type shit about over the next few posts. But to give a basic overview:

Developing an email list: You’ve heard it over and over again. But have you actually bothered to take action? Building an email list is one of the single most effective methods of adding value to the traffic that you’re purchasing. Instead of popping a lead once, why not keep the prospect and hit them with several offers over time? Most affiliates shy away from this route because it involves sacrificing some of the immediate ROI. I’m aware of this so I’m going to outline a method of building an email list and scaling it to thousands of opt-ins without spending a single penny. It’s surprisingly easy.

Building an authority site: If you spend forever digesting the clusterfuck of information on how to get your site ranked using SEO – well, good for you. I personally hate SEO with a passion. The only time I get any kind of thrill out of SEO is when my ninja optimization skills take me to the top of the SERP for terms such as:

Shag my wife
Kiss my balls

…and various finch birdspotting phrases.

This blog receives a lowly 3% of it’s traffic from the search engines. I don’t like spending any more time than I need to optimizing for Google when The Big G could flick a switch and erase me from the search engines completely. So, I take that attitude in to every affiliate site that I develop. Yes, it’s nice to reap free traffic. But the intention should always be to establish an authority, an identity.

Contrary to popular belief, it’s not impossible to blend in to a niche as an “expert talker” while pushing your own sordid commission driven agenda. Just look at John Chow. I believe a good brand is worth a lot more than a first page search ranking. But to migrate in to new niches and build long term assets, you’ve got to know your market and know your audience. It’s why I portray myself as such a cynical bastard on here.

Be first on the scene. I can’t remember where I heard it, but it’s definitely true. You don’t always have to be the best, or the funniest, or the cleverest with your marketing message. Sometimes, just being the first can be the only competitive advantage you need.

I guess I’ve learned from my year in affiliate marketing – having originally made money by recycling campaigns that were everywhere – the innovators will always find a way to get paid. If you can seize opportunity and be the first to jump on an offer or a new demand, you will make money. It’s as simple as that.

The main difference between my mindset now to how it was when I started is that I’m not looking for a fleeting campaign in today’s hottest niche. I’m looking for a long term investment in tomorrow’s new craze. I believe that’s what separates entrepreneurs on the web from those who are always chasing the seeds of what successful affiliates have already built.

Are You Dedicated Or Addicted To Your Job?

Jan 08 2010

I’ve been thinking. There’s a very fine line between productive dedication and pissing your hours away with a harmful addiction.

I was laying awake in bed the other night with my laptop open. It must’ve been about 4 in the morning and my mind was focused on calculating and forecasting various stats based on the day’s conversions. You can say what you want about being dedicated to the job – but in this case, it’s nothing to be proud of. And you know why? It’s a small time attitude.

It’s not dedication to lay awake with your stats open. It’s an addiction to staring at numbers that are out of your control. You can press F5 until you’re blue in the face but I’ve never known refreshing a page to optimize a campaign or increase sales.

I’m honest enough with myself to know when I’m wasting my own time. But some affiliates just don’t get it. They will suffer from this addiction, this tendency to measure every last milimeter of their success. But the reality is that if you’re aiming for the stars, you’ve gotta keep climbing and not dwell on the steps along the way.

One of the things I’ve taken a look at recently is the value of my productivity. It’s no secret that I work long hours, day and night, through most of the week. But it’s a very fine line between dedication and addiction. I wonder how many other affiliates have felt themselves slipping in and out of those very distinct states of mind.

Dedication is persevering with a campaign because you know it has potential, giving it time to succeed, and using what you’ve learnt to your advantage.

Addiction is making the same mistakes over and over again, refusing to learn from them. You might work a 16 hour day but if you’re doing a half arsed job of the tasks that matter and failing where you’ve always failed before – that’s not dedication. It’s an addiction. You’re not smart for spending your entire day working if you wake up and have less of an advantage than you did the day before.

I’ve spoken to some affiliates who work ludicrous hours and get nowhere. I believe it’s because there’s a great myth in this industry. The idea that you should “just keep trying stuff until you find something that works”.

That’s such bullshit. Tell it to a Heroin junkie and see how far it takes him. It encourages the small time affiliate mindset of “create a campaign, watch it bomb, create another campaign, watch it bomb harder”. You don’t get anywhere by throwing shit at the wall. And even if you do, the chances that you’ll have learnt anything to take forward are slim to none. Success requires meaningful research, sensible planning and execution that isn’t rushed with the burning need to get rid of your zero sales columns before 5pm.

Too many affiliates are addicted to the images in their heads of an offer converting like a wet dream and helping them to live happily ever after. In search of the one campaign that’ll make them millionaires, they’ll walk straight past many of the opportunities that the dedicated affiliates are seizing.

One of my favourite quotes can be applied directly and used as a towering warning sign to anybody thinking about getting in to affiliate marketing:

“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

If you’re sitting there now, tired from working too many hours and not seeing the progress that you want – you have to ask yourself, are you spending those hours wisely? Are you really dedicated to exploring the opportunities that are open to you? Or are you simply addicted to whittling away your hours on the same tried and tested campaigns? Sure, they pay your water bills but do they get you any closer to the stars?

You have to think big in affiliate marketing, because the industry is far too volatile to think anything less. I’ve realized that dedication isn’t always the hours you put in, but the quality of the time itself.

So you say that you’re working a 16 hour day – but how much of that day is dedicated to taking action? It’s all too easy to spend the morning setting up a campaign only to waste the afternoon tracking it hopelessly as the light fades outside. I’ve made that mistake too many times myself and I’m far from perfect, but you really do have to realize for your own good. Once you’ve activated your campaign, once you’ve submitted your ads – it’s time to walk away. They will succeed or fail whether you sit there shitting bricks at a negative margin or not.

Move on to the next project, make the most of your time, and never stop focusing your energies on practical changes and improvements that can actually make a difference to your success.

I found a good way to boost my productivity was by simply recording every task that I completed over the course of a week. Back when I worked for my old web agency last year, we would be given timesheets to mark down how our hours were being spent. At the time, I thought it was a pedantic distraction. The first time I analyzed my own hours, I was shocked at how little time was being dedicated to the campaigns and development that would actually take my business forward to greater success.

I put that down to small time attitude and an addiction to only ever doing what I needed to do. You can become addicted to watching your own success.

So go on. Take a look at your own working day. If your timesheet reads like a barren wasteland of hour long AIM conversations, fleeting skirmishes with Redtube and “social media research”, you can probably rest assured that you’re jerking yourself in circles. The same old circles that will take you absolutely nowhere in business, and nowhere in life.

If you spend an entire day doing this, you’ve got no right to call yourself dedicated to affiliate marketing. You’re just addicted to the Internet. There’s a difference. Especially for you “Social Media Experts” out there. I have about as much time for you as I do for my left hand.

There’s nothing expert about Twitter. It’s just Twitter, you prick.