2014 | Finch Sells

How Much Could I Pay You to Quit Affiliate Marketing?

Oct 31 2014

There was an interesting poll up on the STM Forum this week:

What guaranteed monthly salary would you accept to quit affiliate marketing for a job in the corporate world?

Just under 50% of the affiliates who replied said you’d have to pay them at least $500K per year to quit affiliate marketing.

That’s pretty remarkable.

Anybody who works in affiliate marketing knows that there’s no such thing as a fixed income.

To turn down a guaranteed bounty of $500K per year — plus a lifetime free of the aeons of stress-fuelled hair shredding — says a lot about the passion of those who turn to our industry.

Admittedly, yes, the figures are likely inflated by a sense of bravado and outward ‘who-can-grind-the-hardest’.

There’s a funny line that if you ask a man how many women he’s slept with, and then divide his response by three, you’ll be somewhat closer to the real answer.

Perhaps we can say the same for the price on an affiliate marketer’s head.

Regardless…

This poll, if even remotely close to the truth, reveals two stark realities:

1. Your competition is ruthlessly committed.
2. Affiliate marketing is more than just a business. It’s a lifestyle choice.

The Ruthless Competition

If somebody is willing to turn down a guaranteed income of $500K per year, what does that tell you about their affiliate business?

It says, either, “Hi, I’m insanely rich and 500K means nothing to me.”

Or, “I’m completely committed to making this work, to the point where not even half a million dollars is going to sway me.”

Whatever the case, this is your competition.

And that should be a call to arms.

These are the people, the pooled ruthless mindset, that you have to compete with.

Is it any wonder that the industry is so tough for a newcomer to crack?

A Lifestyle Choice

One of the things that struck me while reading the responses to the STM poll was just how many users had already given up six-figure corporate jobs in favour of affiliate marketing.

When you see a poll like this, your first thought is cynical:

“Somebody who already earns his millions in a glass-laden corner office probably isn’t going to be exchanging the view for affiliate marketing anytime soon.”

Except, that wasn’t the case.

I regularly speak to successful pros from all walks; from the finance arena, to the weary battle-hardened in law (the irony), and to unsatisfied executives.

It’s widely accepted that beyond a certain point, your salary ceases to add enjoyment to your life.

Once the basics are covered, and luxuries enjoyed, an extra 100K or 500K is pretty much irrelevant.

Time and burnout become the chief nemesis of happiness. Along with the political games that are so entwined with the corporate world.

And that’s why, for many people, affiliate marketing is not just a career. It’s a symbolic lifestyle choice.

Once you have enough money, you start looking inward at the value of your time.

Want to know the reason why so many affiliates put such high prices on their head?

Because they have something that people stuck in high-paying corporate jobs so desperately want:

The freedom of time
Self-determination

Once you have it, you don’t want to give it up.

This stubborn defiance to conform, even under the carrot of a fixed 500K salary, is what drives affiliates to be the best damn marketers in the business.

It’s the reason why corporations have to pay extreme money to attract us.

And if you want to carve your own career in affiliate marketing, this needs to be considered.

There simply isn’t room for the half-arsed.

The Price on My Head

Would I accept a fixed salary to quit affiliate marketing?

Are you shitting me?

Yes, of course I bloody would.

In a strange paradox, it’s exactly what I strive to achieve every single day.

But there’s a very big difference between working for any corporation, and working for one built in your own image through your own blood, sweat and beers.

For all the successful affiliates I’ve met, I can count on one hand those who wanted to stay middlemen in this same industry forever.

(And even then, I’m pretty sure half of them were rat-arse plastered at the time.)

We all have escape plans.

Affiliate marketing, the career choice, is 100% expendable in my eyes.

And yet the lifestyle and opportunity it represents comes at a huge price.

Is a 500K salary enough to fund that exchange?

To say there’s a yes or no answer would be to undersell the very Machiavellian nature of our industry.

To illustrate, I put this question to a friend of mine (who happens to be a newbie affiliate) and here’s what he said:

Guess I’d take the job. Hustle for a year. Demand a pay raise. I’d keep tabs on any useful data they had, any interesting connections. Try take on a few juniors to get some solo work done on the side. After 3 years, I’d leave with two Mil in the bank and blow up my own dick boost pills, or whatever’s flying at the time. Maybe Ebola. Fuck, when can I start?

And that, my dear scumbags, is why affiliates are not grown.

We are born rancid.

Melting in Dubai at Adsimilis Meetup 2014

Oct 10 2014

September was a busy month.

I’ve just got back from the Adsimilis Dubai Meetup, which was bookended by two weeks in monsoon-lashed Krabi and Phuket.

A bunch of social commitments (or as I only half-jokingly refer to them: “going outside”) meant that by the time I reached Dubai, my campaigns weren’t so much suffering from banner blindness, but paralysed from the neck down by weeks of neglect.

The churn in this industry is absolutely insane.

Alas, I’m back in the trenches. Energised and motivated. Ready to tap in to brand new traffic sources.

I have to admit, meeting other affiliates is a great cure for a lost mojo.

It works in two ways.

First, we’re an industrious bunch. It is both enlightening and inspiring (and sometimes terrifying) to hear what other affiliates are working on.

Second, it’s nice to not be the biggest scumbag in the room.

Seriously.

If your guilty conscious ever needs a pick-me-up, find the nearest circle of affiliates, plaster them with alcohol and then ask: “So, what’s the shadiest shit you’ve ever run?”

I met one affiliate in Barcelona who had been engaged in marketing practices that can only be described as the ‘wrong side of borderline’. Those practices lead to his house being raided in the early hours by a SWAT team.

A fucking SWAT team!

More memorable than the confession itself was the sheer acceptance among the rest of us in the circle that, oh well, shit happens.

Followed by the inevitable, “So… are you still running the offer?”

(I’m glad to say he wasn’t.)

Besides the tales of insanity, it’s reassuring to get an idea of where the industry is heading.

Large scale meetups provide a nice general consensus of what works today, what is likely to work tomorrow, and more ‘what stopped working yesterday’ than you could ever hope to digest. A bit like a trip to the Warrior Forum.

The Adsimilis Dubai meetup was a great mix of affiliates: some just starting their journeys, others who have creamed several million in cold profit already.

There’s one concept that I think nearly everybody walked away agreeing:

Affiliate Marketing… is Dirrrrrty

Five years ago, ask an affiliate what he did for a living and he’d give you a blank stare.

“Well, um, I don’t actually like know, but it’s called affiliate marketing and it’s pretty sweet. Gotta run though bro, hookers waiting.”

Next year, ask the same question, and you’re likely to receive this canny slice of positioning:

“I’m a director at a performance marketing agency.”

There is a clear shift.

Nearly every affiliate I spoke to in Dubai was wrestling with the same dilemma:

How can we take this ugly twisted cousin of advertising — affiliate marketing — and rebrand it in to something that gives us greater opportunities moving forward?

Those megalomania days where affiliates took pride in loathing the status quo — the corporate desk monkeys — are no more. We’d rather pass through the wider advertising community undetected as mere ‘parts’ of respectable, 9-5 agencies. You know, guys who just might be up to something a little more honourable than lead scalping.

This can only be a good thing.

After all, if you want to build relationships with advertisers, you have to play the advertiser’s game.

And that means creating a perception that you are an agency built to last. Not just a lone wolf chancing his luck in his underpants.

Some takeaways from Dubai:

1. If you’re going to waste time on any social network, make it LinkedIn; network mercilessly.

Set up a company profile and fill it with recommendations from anybody who has ever worked for you.

Want to distort outside perspectives? Set up fake employee profiles.

There’s no doubt that scale matters at the negotiation table. The appearance of a full agency will get your foot in the door of the Advertiser’s World.

2. Refer to yourself as a “Director of Marketing” instead of CEO, President, etc.

Better to be a relevant department head than Top Dog with his fingers in too many pies.

3. Go one step better:

Actually build an agency.

Thoughts on Dubai

This was my first time in Dubai.

I’m still not sure what to make of the place.

As a committed Englishman, the concept of not being able to drink outside of hotels and restaurants — or indeed to be seen drunk in public — is, dare I say it, a trifle fucking troubling.

I struggle to see how a city can ‘meet in the middle’ with Western tourism ideals and still enforce the many punishable social offences that it does.

The reality is that if you are suitably rich, you can jump on a yacht, float a few meters off the coastline and commit just about any debauchery under the sun, all while remaining completely untouched by the law.

That, I find a little too pick and choosey for my liking.

But that’s not to take away from the immense standards of service, and general all-round friendliness.

Dubai is painfully hot in September, as I discovered on my first day:

Thankfully Adsimilis laid on a coach to get us around the city.

I had an early flight so I didn’t descend on any Dubai nightclubs, but the restaurants and happy hours were great fun.

And more importantly, the people first class.

NUI: Networking Under The Influence

Read too many forums and you could be forgiven for tarring the affiliate community as a cold bunch.

Yet in person, there’s a sense of camaraderie and mutual respect that rarely translates online.

I guess networking is just a million times easier face-to-face.

That’s not to say you can’t make a prat out of yourself.

On the first night, whilst sipping Carlsberg in the merciless desert heat, the discussion turned to Voluum and ZeroPark.

I turned to a guy I hadn’t spoken to before and asked, “So, Voluum… you use it at all?”

(Note to single affiliates: A cracking chat-up line. Yours free of charge to abuse over the weekend.)

Said chap smiled in confusion, and pulled out his business card:

“Bartlomiej Dawidow
CTO and Founder of Voluum.”

Cue howls of laughter as I stood there, copping the flak, thinking “Well there goes my bloody discount.”

I also met Robert Gryn, CEO of CodeWise who took great enjoyment in asking repeatedly why I was crying over dinner. I wasn’t. I was sweating.

Fucking Dubai.

For the first three years of my affiliate career, I never took meetups seriously. And that was a big mistake.

While the speeches at this event were a good rallying call to action; inspirational even; it’s the one-on-one conversation with fellow pros that pays for your plane ticket.

When the booze kicks in, so does sincerity in the shit that falls out of our mouths.

The truth is that you can learn more from a drunk affiliate than you’ll ever learn from a lifetime of readings blogs like this*.

*Unless the writer is drunk, careless or stupid.

Thanks Adsimilis

(Photo jacked from Ian Fernando’s blog where you can read his write-up of the trip. There’s also a post by KJ Rocker)

It’s always a pleasure to catch up with the Adsimilis crew.

Cheers for keeping us all fed, watered and safely insulated from the wrath of Shariah Law.

Special thanks to Sean for smuggling a mini-bottle of Champers in to my ‘party bag’, which I promptly and rather indiscreetly popped against the hotel fucking ceiling, no less. And to Eleah for tranquillising me with Scotch before my panel.

London Adtech is just around the corner.

If you haven’t been before, I suggest you keep it that way.

Unless, of course, you enjoy the sterile wasteland of middle management blabber and beaming rent-a-pitches; most of whom think ‘performance marketing’ stands for who can shove the most coke in their face whilst still talking coherently about whatever marketing buzzword has captured the press pen and/or Twitter.

What’s that you say?

It’s all about ‘earned media’ now, is it?

Earn my balls, you gobshite.

Now that’s not to knock AdTech itself.

I’ve heard great things about the NYC show. But if you want to get value for your time in London, skip the show, avoid the snootiness, and head straight for dinner.

If anybody is in town and wants to meet up for a pint before or after, hit me up.

Otherwise, see you in Vegas at Affiliate Summit West!

“Deeply Insolvent” Banners Broker to Surrender Assets

Sep 06 2014

It looks like justice is finally catching up with Chris Smith, Rajiv Dixit and the men behind Banners Broker.

Two years ago, I wrote a series of posts exposing Banners Broker, a so-called ‘online advertising broker’, as a sordid ponzi scheme.

I received all kinds of threats, smears and public verbal bashings.

You can read the 2000+ comments from these posts to see just how personal it got:

This week, liquidators obtained a court order to seize all assets owned by Banners Broker International (BBIL), and to force its owners to reveal the whereabouts of money taken from affiliates.

Court papers labelled BBIL “deeply insolvent”, but that hasn’t stopped many affiliates clinging to hope of payment on the company’s official Facebook page.

The Banners Broker website remains ‘temporarily closed’.

BBIL has been granted continued use of telephone numbers, facsimile numbers, Internet addresses and domain names providing all payments are made at the normal price. The website will stay physically online for now (despite being closed), but a host of other BB services including: all computer software, communication services, banking services, reservation systems, credit card processors, payroll services, and armoured car services (lol) are now restrained by the court order.

Remaining BB disciples are being coaxed in to accessing the TalkingBB forum for the ‘full story’ of what’s happening.

Yes, the TalkingBB forum.

Or as I prefer to call it: Animal Farm.

An Orwellian hideout if ever there were such a thing.

To gain access, you must register, post once in a vetted forum, wait for approval, and then swear on your dog’s life not to emit the slightest whiff of negativity or face an instant lifetime ban.

I’ve seen some ‘ignorance is bliss’ circle jerks in my time, but this one takes the biscuit.

Anyway, if you want the real story on why Banners Broker is finished, look no further than the recent court orders.

You can view them here: Banners Broker in Liquidation

They are crystal clear and devoid of ‘trolling’, as court papers tend to be.

Highlights from the Court Orders

Seeing how there are still believers who refuse to accept that Banners Broker’s demise is anything less than Chris Smith ‘making a few changes to the website’…

…I thought I’d post some of The Best Bits from these latest orders.

Remember B-Believers: The court is not a troll.

If Banners Broker was to do something shady, like, I don’t know, completely lie about its sources of revenue or the nature of its clients… then this spells trouble.

Shiver me timbers. Accounting records? Contracts?

I guess we’re going to find out the truth about where all those affiliate payouts came from.

WANTED: Video recording.

If only to answer that burning question: is the real Chris Smith black or white?

And here is why the Banners Broker website is offline.

It’s the last remaining artefact of a company that has, for all intensive purposes, ceased to exist.

Disclaimers

I hate to have to include this, but there is an ongoing rumour that I have somehow profited from writing negatively about Banners Broker.

Some have even claimed I’m linked to a ‘troll list’ of former BB members now trying to claim back money by dragging the company’s name through the dirt.

Let me be clear on this:

1. I have not pocketed a single penny from Banners Broker.

I have never been a Banners Broker member, affiliate, or investor.

My first exposure to Banners Broker came through a family member investing her money in it. I was immediately suspicious over whether her earnings could be sustained, or legally explained.

So I investigated the company — the online advertising sector is how I make my living, after all. I can see bullshit for bullshit — but what I found was worse than bullshit:

A shining turd of a ponzi scheme.

A scheme so far detached from how it said it made money that I simply had to blog about it.

2. Neither do I make money by blogging about Banners Broker.

I lose money.

Yes, it’s a waste of my time to be sitting here trumpeting about a bunch of fraudsters who will soon meet their comeuppance. But I do it anyway because I’ve had my name and character slandered by them.

Call it a pastime, if you will.

The second attack against me is that in an interview two years ago, I referred to myself as an Internet scumbag, and therefore cannot be trusted.

Seriously, I shit you not.

This quote has been immortalised in the BB Handbook of Responding to Criticism.

Q: “Hi Finch, tell us a little bit about yourself, where are you from, where do you live now?”
A: “Well, I’m a 24-year-old affiliate marketer, which I guess is interchangeable with Internet Scumbag.”

Banners Broker latched on to this quote and used it as their single line of defence against my 30,000+ words of arguments dissecting their dysfunctional, fraudulent business model.

When was the last time you heard a senior director of a respectable company rebuke public criticism by insisting “it’s okay, guys, don’t listen to Finch, he called himself an Internet Scumbag in 2012.”

Well, of course I did.

I’m British.

Self-deprecation is what we do best.

What these MLM guys don’t understand, and I’m talking to the ‘Oh here I am driving nowhere in my rented Mercedes whilst recording a YouTube video about my latest whack-job investment that you should definitely sign up to under my link’ is this: the joke is on them.

I may be a self-professed Internet scumbag, but at least I’m not in the throngs of a mid-life crisis, willingly selling my friends and family down the shitter for a 20% commission.

Now that’s a scumbag.

What’s Left?

Beyond the lunacy, there is genuine tragedy to the unravelling of Banners Broker.

And that tragedy is the many real lives that it has affected, and still affects to this day.

Just last week, a post emerged on Facebook of a former affiliate who couldn’t handle the guilt of involving his family in Banners Broker.

He had encouraged them to set up accounts, with good intentions no doubt. But what are good intentions to a bunch of fraudsters riding high on those deposits? Those lifetime savings, plunged in to a program that is rigged to fail from the very beginning?

This man’s family lost all of their money, and he couldn’t live with the guilt.

Wracked with depression, he hung himself.

This is a terrible story, but a familiar ending to anybody who has witnessed the fallout of other pyramid schemes.

The lies they spread, the false hope they bring, the relentless incentives to involve your friends and family… it’s sickening. And of course, exquisitely executed. A perfect fraud.

Scams like Banners Broker ruin lives.

Even those ardently defending Banners Broker to this day… you know it. Deep down you know that as a ‘get rich quick’ scheme, it’s over.

If you have been affected by Banners Broker, I hope you do three things:

1. Check out this post on Tara Talks. A comprehensive guide to getting your money back. It’s not guaranteed to work given the “deeply insolvent” nature of what’s left of BBIL — but it’s better than nothing.

2. Learn for the future: if somebody promises you life-changing money for doing relatively little — it’s too good to be true.

3. Stop blaming others. The reason Banners Broker has failed you is because it was rigged to fail you from the very start. All ponzi schemes are. They feed the men at the top, the Chris Smiths and Raj Dixits of the world, whilst taking from the poor at the bottom.

Following the story of Banners Broker has been a real eye opener for me.

A descent in to some truly fucked-up minds, not least the havoc they can wreak on those who buy in to pipe dreams too easily.

I hope justice is served, and I’ll be following the Canadian court proceedings with interest.