Affiliate BizDev | Finch Sells

Growing A Business vs. Living Your Dream

Feb 11 2011

It’s hot and it’s sweaty. Everybody else is at work and the swimming pool is empty. Three months ago, before I moved to Thailand, I didn’t have to deal with this predicament. The only empty swimming pool was nextdoor’s Argos inflatable, and even that was ice-ravaged by winter. These days, it’s the question I have to answer every morning.

“Do I dedicate today to my business? Or do I just enjoy this crazy life?”

I was whinging at my girlfriend a few nights ago, frustrated over how wasteful I thought we’d been with money. I managed to spend close to Â£10,000 in January (That’s about $15,000 for you Yankiepops) which is quite a feat considering Thailand has this misguided reputation as the place for living on a shoestring budget. I’m sure it is, by the way. But if you don’t learn Thai – or at least date one – you’re going to find yourself existing in a different economy to the natives.

My ambition has always been to live a nomad lifestyle. To roam between countries, plant a laptop on a beach, get some work done, then jump on the next plane. I guess this is what we call “living the dream”. And for the last few months, I’ve been privileged enough to enjoy that luxury.

Understand though, this variety of “living the dream” makes it very difficult to grow a business. Nobody puts as many hours of thought in to their work on the beach as they do at their desk. Unless you’re Nick Throlson.

I’ve found myself wrestling between two states of mind. Firstly, the desire to knuckle down and spend every penny and every hour investing in my business, taking it as far as it can go and only then enjoying the fruits of my labour. After all, this is the very same drive and work ethic that got me this far. Why stop now?

Or I can listen to the other voice in my head. The voice saying, “Hey Finch, It’s 35 degrees out, why aren’t you in the pool? You’ve earnt this much”

Inevitably, after laying down ten grand in a month, the conservative side of me rose to the surface and argued with my girlfriend that as much as I can afford to live this life, it’s just not going to let me grow my business as fast as I want to.

But she raised a good point. Why even have this lifestyle, location independent albeit paying the premium, if I wasn’t going to enjoy it fully?

I think the reality is that I do enjoy it. And I do realize how lucky I am to be in a position at 23, that many people will work a whole lifetime to never have a hope of sharing. But after spending every hour of my life that came before preparing for this luxury, I’m not quite sure how to react now that I have it. Do I stand still and cherish the moment? Or do I put my foot down and stick to the same working patterns that have served me well?

Affiliate marketing is a fast-paced industry where the voices around you will constantly be telling you to push for the next dollar. If you’re not putting in the extra hour to attack a new offer, it’ll be money left on the table for somebody else. We all remember how it felt to not be making money, so we don’t want to fall back in to those trenches. Money left on the table is what we hate most.

When I look at my finances, I realize I don’t have to bite this bullshit and react to every movement in the industry. I don’t have to jump on every niche, split test every offer or open every email. But there’s so little substance to the work that we do, you could be forgiven for thinking it would all disappear in a heartbeat. Reacting becomes a natural instinct.

As much as I’d love to grow my business Zuckerberg-style and bypass millions to aim for billions, I’m slowly accepting that it doesn’t have to happen today or tomorrow. Most of us are very young and have the time on our hands to let our businesses grow naturally.

If you buy in to the affiliate marketing dream, you become convinced that scaling from hundreds to thousands of dollars per day has to happen overnight or it’ll never happen at all. This was the attitude I had back in my London bedroom, where everything about my life was focused on taking that next step.

Recently, I stumbled across a website called Kiva which I remember Bryn posted about last year. If you’re ever feeling that you’re not progressing with your goals, or that your riches aren’t accumulating fast enough, this is the website to visit for a shot of reality up the arse.

Entrepreneurs from poverty-stricken countries can use Kiva to ask for loans to launch businesses that would change their lives, and those of their families, for the better. Anybody can register to donate to their businesses and over time you will get the money back. It’s hard to read through some of the loan requests without your conversion rates fading in to insignificance.

While many of us would love to pitch a tower in Silicon Valley and claim the dominance of an industry, we shouldn’t dismiss simply providing a living for ourselves as anything less than amazing in the current economical climate. I’m trying to remind myself that Growing A Business vs Living My Dream doesn’t have to be an endless power struggle between two negative forces. They’re both great privileges and they should both be enjoyed.

I highly recommend you check out Kiva. It’s a great concept. What better way to give back as an entrepreneur than to help other entrepreneurs who have much greater challenges than ourselves? If you’re reading this and not making any money, it’s certainly not for a lack of opportunity. A lot of the entrepreneurs on Kiva have only one opportunity in life. It helps to keep that in perspective no matter how shitty you think your daily stats have been.

Recommended This Week:

My dashboard tells me this is the 100th post on Finch Sells. It’s taken me two years to notch them up, but I’d like to think it’s a fairly fluffless collection of posts. If you’re a new reader, please add me to your RSS. Love you long time. Thanks for reading.
If you’re working in the dating market, check out Adsimilis. Definitely one of the better networks with a wide range of dating offers, all on high payouts, including lots of stuff in Europe and South America. I think you’ll like them.
Feel free to add Finch to your Facebook. Yes, this is the right link. My real name is not actually Finch. Also follow me on Twitter

Are You The “One Man Wolf Pack” Marketer?

Feb 03 2011

Are you the marketer, designer, developer, copywriter, editor, accountant and toilet cleaner of your affiliate business? Do you consider yourself a bit of a one man wolf pack? I feel your pain. Not too long ago, I was exactly the same.

But then I hired an awkwardly polite writer from the Philippines and my pack grew by one. I gave him my linkbuilding chores and suddenly there were two of us in the wolf pack. I was alone first in the pack, and then Rizaldo joined in later. Rizaldo recommended his graphic designer to me, and I thought, “Wait a second, could it be?” And now I know for sure, I just added half of the Philippines to my wolf pack. All of us wolves, roaming around the Internet, making monies and publishing bullshit 500-word articles.

So tonight, I make a post. Asking…

Do you really want to be a One Man Wolf Pack?

One Man Wolf Pack Making money as an affiliate marketer can be hard work. Our monthly earnings fluctuate so wildly that it’s often stressful enough predicting our own expendable income without having to deal with hiring other workers. But you can only go so far on your own.

I tried for the longest time to handle every aspect of my business. Partly because I like to be in control and partly because of my lazy logic. In my mind, it would take longer to express exactly what I wanted from a hired worker than it would to do a hack job of it myself. But that’s the problem. If you take on every task of your business, you will inevitably resort to hack jobs and mediocrity.

How many times have you looked at a landing page concept, weighed up the costs of outsourcing against how triumphant you think you are with the fucking gradient wizard in Photoshop and decided to take a crack at it yourself?

I used to sit down after breakfast, load up my brushes, bust out my drop shadows, and absolutely massacre those concepts. You end up settling for second best due to your own limitations. I would alter my concepts to coincide with the capabilities of a half arsed designer. Hey, I like to bevel everything because it looks cool, okay? Your justification for going solo is that you saved $100 on what some Elance designer was trying to extort from you. But the reality? Your own stubbornness and refusal to relinquish control to somebody more accomplished has probably just kicked you in the balls.

I think the single most important aspect of your business to outsource is the accounting. For every thousand dollars I made in my first year as an affiliate marketer, I’m betting I surrendered at least a hundred bucks by not taking on expert financial advice in the form of a good accountant. I’ve rectified that now, but Christ, why did I ever think it would be a good idea to file my own taxes? If you’re just getting started as your own boss, resist the temptation to work the numbers yourself. Pay somebody else to get their panties in a twist at the end of every accounting period.

Pro tip: Spend your own time MAKING money not counting money.

Finding an accountant is generally a task I would leave to word of mouth recommendations or whoever happens to be the real deal in your local area. I’m signed up to Crunch which is a fantastic new accounting service for those of you in the UK. It has a flat rate of Â£60/month and for that, the Crunch team handles pretty much everything.

You don’t want to be placing your books and end of year returns in the hands of an offshore shantytown, no matter how many times they call you “Sir” when applying for the job. But that’s not to say you won’t find great value for money in outsourcing the donkey work. The stuff that would otherwise distract you from the tasks that make you money. If it’s linkbuilding, design work, filler article creation, data entry or just about anything that doesn’t require your sound business judgment…get it outsourced and forget about it.

There are a ton of sites you can use to find skilled workers. I would recommend checking out Elance and oDesk. oDesk is pretty batshit insane. You can watch your workers’ screens while they go about their business. No doubt, if I worked on oDesk, I’d be dismissed before lunchtime on the first day. It’s also worth checking out WickedFire where you’ll find some excellent hired help from just about every corner of our industry.

It’s tough, as a beginner, to shake the instinctive grip over every part of your business. But understand that scaling and making this thing a reality requires the balls to actually start visualizing what you do as a business that can grow over time and prosper on it’s own legs.

If you fail to utilize the talent of the skilled individuals at your disposal, don’t expect your business to be scaling out of your mum’s basement anytime soon. You’ll be trapped by self-imposed limitations that may save you money, but will almost certainly stunt your growth.

Recommended This Week:

If you’re in the UK and haven’t sorted yourself out with an accountant, check out Crunch. For Â£60/month you get an almighty weight off your chest, some sound support and the kind of financial advice that will save you money in the long haul.
Feel free to add Finch to your Facebook. Yes, this is the right link. My real name is not actually Finch. Also follow me on Twitter
If you’d like to advertise on this blog, I’ve got one spot available. You can grab it here.

Cashflow Tips For New Affiliates

Dec 30 2010

Forget the top payouts, best looking affiliate managers and networks with soaring reputations. For a new affiliate who’s just discovered profitability, cashflow is always king. It’s likely that to scale your business quickly, you’re going to need to make some sacrifices along the way. Handling your cashflow effectively is one of them.

No industry fills my ears with as many rags to riches tales as affiliate marketing. I don’t know if what we do is seen as a last gasp stab at financial salvation, or simply a popular way to spend your last 100 bucks. But many affiliates are faced with the challenge – even after stumbling upon a successful campaign – of being able to scale that campaign without clearing everything they have in the bank. Cashflow is the difference between riches and famine.

You’ve probably got a hundred different networks whispering in your ear, all desperate for your traffic. If you haven’t, rest assured this will rapidly become the case as you begin to earn more money. One of the biggest cashflow mistakes, and probably the easiest to make, is to spread yourself too thin.

In the search for offers that convert, it’s possible to end up sending dribbles of traffic to a dozen different networks. This normally results in you rinsing your bank balance, while not a single network sees you as significant enough to be paid weekly. When your bank hits zero, you’re left waiting on those dribs and drabs to be fed back in to your account by the various networks – many of which may be operating on Net 30 cheques as a form of payment.

Forget all the hype about the top payouts. It’s much better to be running a bunch of slightly less profitable campaigns on networks who can guarantee quick turnaround of payment. The quicker your bank balance grows, the faster you can scale. In an industry that changes overnight, you can’t afford to be left trailing in the dirt waiting on a bunch of cheques in the mail.

I read somewhere that a great idea for new affiliates is to invest in a credit card and blast your way to fortunes on the plastic. I can’t remember who said this, but they should be shot and hung out to dry. I can’t think of a worse idea than racking up a bunch of credit card debt on the principle that the “repayments are on their way”. The money isn’t yours until it’s paying for your groceries, so take “Pending Commission” with a pinch of salt and an eye on the worst case scenario.

There are circumstances where using a credit card to fund campaigns is acceptable. But you have to be in control of all the surrounding factors. Factors such as the quality of your traffic, the relationship with the advertiser and the exact promotional guidelines of the offers you’re running.

I’ve said it time and time again but by far the best way of managing your cashflow during the early days is to pick up free advertising coupons. I used to raid coupons for Google Adwords so that I could fund campaigns without having to compromise my own limited start-up capital. If you’re in the UK, snap up a copy of .Net magazine and you’ll receive a free Adwords voucher every month. Or go one step further like yours truly and simply rinse the entire pile in WHSmiths when nobody is looking.

That sounds incredibly trashy and unprofessional, but when I was getting started, I had little money of my own to reinvest. Coupons were like tiny Christmas presents to myself. Here you go, Finch. Have another Adwords account.

If you’re moving in to affiliate marketing from a wealthy background with money to waste, cashflow is probably a mere tickle on your balls. And in that case, you’ll find it a lot easier to succeed in faster time. Affiliates who have managed to build up healthy bank balances enjoy the luxury of being able to run campaigns on a lower ROI, and also work with the higher paying networks who refuse to pay any sooner than monthly.

Commission Junction, for example, is simply not a viable option as a newbie marketer investing in paid traffic. I enjoy promoting their dating offers because the ROI is nearly always higher than what I can achieve with a CPA network. But it comes at a price. That price being the need to float thousands and thousands of pounds on monthly payments. And the fact that you’re working with CJ, of course. A group of incompetent bumberclarts who should start addressing their support emails “Dear Mortal Below Us,” to show how they truly feel.

Another issue regarding cashflow involves budgeting in advance. Should you spend an entire monthly budget in a few days just because you’ve found a profitable campaign? Or should you split the advertising over a whole month? I would always say that if you find something that works, scale it ASAP and get the maximum bang for your buck while it’s on offer. From my experience, dividing your budget over a whole month can have the effect of dividing your workrate too.

Plus I find it’s a very good card to play on the networks you’re working with. If they see you’re sending a boatload of traffic in the space of a few days, and then that traffic suddenly dries up, they will sniff you out in a hurry.

“Hey Finch, I see you had some success with Offer X – how did it back out for you? What can we do to get more leads out of you?”

“Oh, well, I’ve got volume coming out of my arsehole on this one. But I’ve found a network that’s willing to pay me weekly on the same offer. So unless…”

And so you should be able to wrangle some weekly payments out of the equation very quickly. This enables you to refill that bank balance and get back in the game. The faster the turnaround on your balance, the more productive you’ll become and the faster you can scale. It really is a case of get money get paid.

Recommended This Week:

If you’re working in the dating market, check out Adsimilis. Definitely one of the better networks with a wide range of dating offers, all on high payouts, including lots of stuff in Europe and South America. I think you’ll like them.
Feel free to add Finch to your Facebook. Yes, this is the right link. My real name is not actually Finch. Also follow me on Twitter