1
3.5 Years In Recap
2
My FUT Hair Transplant: The First 5 Months
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Why I Quit Launching Affiliate Campaigns

3.5 Years In Recap

Well, it’s been a while.

Just when you thought the world couldn’t descend in to a more farcical state, I’ve decided to blog again.

There are a few reasons why I wanted to ‘check in’ after 4 years AWOL.

The first, and probably most important, was to get my surgically repaired hairline off the damn homepage.

I mean, if you’re going to abandon a blog, you probably don’t want your lasting legacy to be a graphic image from 24 hours after a hair transplant, right?

Fun fact: After 10 years writing about affiliate marketing, that one post (and the interest it received) lead to my entire site being re-categorised as a ‘Hair & Beauty Blog‘ by SEO tools.

My main organic competitor is a site called Hair Transplant Diary.

So, there’s that.

But no.

The main reason I wanted to post is because I’m currently shut off from the world in National Lockdown, with none of my usual hobbies available, and a burning itch to commit a lot of fucks and shits to WordPress.

If you read this blog several years ago and wondered what came next after affiliate marketing… the answer, will probably disappoint you.

But here it is anyway.

What I’ve Been Up To

First, the life changes.

When I last posted, it was August 3rd 2017.

I lived in Thailand and was recovering from my second vanity operation, the first being LASIK eye surgery in 2016.

I look back on those days through some seriously rose tinted glasses.

Not everything was perfect in Bangkok, but it was definitely the most exhilarating few years of my life.

If you haven’t had the chance to live abroad, my advice is simple: do it while you still can. I love my life now, but the energy of Bangkok completely transformed me.

It broke me out of the mundanity of British suburbia, shattering my comfort zone along the way.

It changed my entire perception of what a productive lifestyle looks like.

I met a lot of great people in Bangkok, from completely different walks of life.

The best way I can describe it is that in the UK I tend to gravitate towards people who share the same hobbies, the same interests.

We might not have much in common, but we like doing the same things.

In Bangkok, I found myself learning and growing from people who had lived completely different lives. You might not share hobbies, but you share the same spirit.

Living abroad there is a camaraderie amongst expats and a spirit of ‘go-getting’ that I just don’t see in the UK.

Here, life is comfortable.

It’s great and it’s fine, but it’s comfortable.

Getting Married

Thailand wedding

My three and a half years in Thailand culminated in getting married on the beach in Koh Samui.

We had close friends and family with us, many of them using the chance to explore South East Asia on their own holidays.

We took them on a sunset cruise the night before, and then celebrated our wedding on the beach with cocktails, wine and a couple of stray dogs.

Thailand Only, as they say.

It was a tough decision to get married in Thailand when so many of our loved ones wouldn’t be able to make the trip. But it was a chance for us to share the lifestyle that we loved.

I have glowing memories of Thailand, and this was the pinnacle.

Just weeks before, my wife and I had taken a long trip across Thailand to the small town of Pai.

That experience trekking through the mountains was our last major ‘adventure’ before returning home.

We still talk about it after two sips of wine.

Trip to Pai

Moving Back to the UK

One month after the wedding, we moved back to the UK.

Neither of us felt particularly attached to a location, and our friends and family had scattered to various parts of the country.

So to decide where to move, we basically stuck a pin in a map.

We settled on Bucks as a good middle ground between two of our favourite places – London and Oxford.

Since settling in Bucks, we’ve bought a house and slowly begun to rebuild our social circles.

There’s no doubt that life is ‘easier’ in the UK.

Everybody speaks English, for one.

Sounds stupid – but you don’t appreciate the foundations of your own culture until you’ve been starved of it.

Becoming a Daddy

By far the biggest life change since I last posted.

My daughter was born in December 2019 and has swept through my life with a ferocity that would make the new strain of covid blush.

Everything has changed.

I don’t want to bang on about the rites of passage of becoming a father, because it can sound offensive to those who don’t have (or want) kids.

Parents can all too easily develop a superiority complex where they think they know better, when they don’t.

But what I will say is that the process has changed me.

Getting to know her has rewired my entire reward circuitry.

There are times where I miss some of the ‘freedoms’ that came more easily before parenthood, but… not really.

They are two separate realities – and her world is the one I want to live in.

bubba 2

What I’ve Been Working On

Life may change, but the grind stays the same.

OK, the work stuff.

“4 years. What the hell have you been working on, Finch?”

Well, for some perspective…

This site started as an affiliate blog in the Wild West days of 2009.

Back then, blogging was the craze and the entire affiliate industry could be bundled in to a single Vegas exhibition hall.

Affiliate marketing has changed so emphatically that I don’t even feel qualified to talk about it anymore.

Blogging is dead.

All the popular affiliate bloggers of that era have gone on to other things: ecommerce, crypto, consulting, retirement… whatever.

There are certainly none of us left offering anything practical or actionable when it comes to the industry I remember.

There’s still a large contingent of guys using Facebook, AdWords or Native Ads, but I’m so divorced from the process that I couldn’t tell you what the hell they’re actually running, except that it’s probably not what those traffic sources imagined when they drafted the Terms of Service.

Even before I quit blogging, I made those concerns clear.

Crash and Burn Marketing

The affiliate ad campaigns I used to run offered immediate returns, but required almost constant upkeep.

Launching ads on Monday, checking stats on Tuesday, getting them profitable by Wednesday, and then putting out fires for the rest of the week.

That was life.

It was a high risk, high return business model that worked brilliantly for several years… but like everybody else, I saw the writing on the wall.

On numerous occasions my campaigns would go from earning thousands per day to losing thousands. As the years went by, the cycle became shorter and more pronounced.

Most of the time, success resembled a familiar pattern: BOOM, followed by a slow pitter patter of eroding profit. 

And the BOOM was on a lucky day.

You could launch a winning campaign and the future would look bright. At times, very rosey indeed.

But I could never get over the fact that we were still just affiliates – expendable ’traffic experts’ with a short term interest in driving sales for somebody else’s business.

Once the genie was out of the bottle – the marketing sizzle – anybody could replicate the success. And that’s what happened.

We quickly learned the dangers of an indefensible moat. 

As the industry got more competitive, and mainstream advertisers caught up, the space became harder and harder to navigate without resorting to… the dark arts.

Cloaking, bait and switch, burner accounts…

That’s not to say those tactics weren’t commonplace from the very start, but they became unfair competitive advantages. And in many cases… necessary.

If you weren’t prepared to use them, you had no chance of keeping up.

We don’t need a recap of the shit that went on, and still goes on, but I was left with no doubt that the walls were closing for ‘white hat’ affiliates – or at least, those who weren’t prepared to operate at exceptional economies of scale.

At which point, my theory was – what’s the point?

Might as well change business model completely than pursue one which comes with all the complexity of selling your own products but without any of the actual ownership. 

Anybody who read my last affiliate guide back in 2017 would have sensed the self-loathing dripping from every page.

It was called ‘A Complete Guide to Affiliate Marketing’ but it might as well have been titled ‘Things I Hate About My Job’.

I knew back then that the industry was evolving – for the greater good – and if I wanted to sustain a lifestyle business, I needed to build some competitive advantages that weren’t going to be outbid in the night. 

So that’s what I’ve been doing.

For about 4 years now.

Replacing Arbitrage with Asset Building

I still work in affiliate marketing, but I’ve stepped away from paid advertising arbitrage. 

Since I stopped blogging, and since I left the arbitrage game, I’ve enjoyed probably the most productive stint of my career. 

And it all boils down to the fundamentals of building assets – instead of crashing and burning from one affiliate offer to the next.

My job these days revolves around publishing and monetisation.

Building websites, flipping websites and investing in predictable income streams.

Whereas my 21 year old self was ravenous for instant profits, instant wins, instant success… the work I do these days is much more gradual, strategic and – as you can probably guess – less worthy of blogging about.

I have dozens upon dozens of websites in my portfolio. 

Some are very profitable, others are ticking along nicely, and there’s a good handful that stand as virtual testaments to how wrong a man armed with a GoDaddy account can be.

About 80% of the projects I’ve worked on over the years are abandoned.

Ghost ships. Digital fossils.

I laugh when I look at them today.

But you only have to win 1% of the time to be ‘successful’, just as long as you are prolific, and scale the shit out of the successes you have.

Whatever the case, I am much more invested in the process of building out these assets.

Every day that I spend working on them feels like a step in the right direction. I can set clear goals for the week, month and quarter that don’t start: 

“1) Deal with…”

Working in high stakes arbitrage clouded my judgment in ways that I never really appreciated at the time.

Most importantly, it obscured my underlying goal – to build a business that works for my lifestyle.

Instead of a lifestyle that works for my business.

In that sense, things have been going great.

There’s just one problem…

You know?

The problem.

Some fucker ate a bat sandwich.

Working Through The Pandemic

No shit: Coronavirus has been hard for us all.

Years ago I used to brag to friends about the idle joys of working from home.

No commute, no crowded trains, no early morning rise. Oh, such paradise.

What’s not to love?

OK, I take it all back.

You win, office rats.

The last year has been mentally tough. 

As a Brit writing this in national lockdown for the foreseeable future, I’m definitely reaching peak pandemic fatigue. 

There’s this misplaced idea that those of us who are used to working from home should be the best prepared for a situation that demands it.

Maybe, but anybody who works from home with their faculties in tact knows the importance of establishing routines and rituals to break up the monotony.

For me, a good work day involves: a few hours sifting through whatever tasks I’ve mapped out, an hour smacking balls around the snooker hall, and a bit of light reading over a Flat White in Caffe Nero. 

A healthy mix of work, mental detox and coffee beans.

Despite being objectively dog shit at the game, snooker is my number one mental escape. 

It’s one of the few activities that is so mentally taxing that I can’t possibly think about work or my inbox while I’m playing it. 

With the snooker clubs closed, and coffee shops operating as delivery-only, I’ve resorted to a sad daily march to the Costa Express machine at my local Tesco. 

If I’m lucky, I might talk to a stray cat on the way. 

“Y’alright mate? S’shit innit. Everything. Least you don’t have to wear these fucking masks…”

“Anyway, catch ya tomorrow. Same time, yeah?”

There are a few things I’ve learned about myself in the midst of the Pandemic:

  1. I’m a lot more socially needy than I thought. 

One of the perils of a reclusive career (working online) is that you have to self-regulate your social life. I’ve done this several times in the past when I’ve felt myself slipping too far on the introverted scale. 

Like when I suddenly took up cricket in Bangkok.

Those were some good days.

All of my social activities revolve around sports.

Or beer… but we’ll say mostly sports.

With sports banned, my social life has been detonated. 

Unlike my wife who makes a big effort to Zoom her friends and family, video chats are not a natural environment for me.

I’d rather launch my PS4 controller at a virtual stranger on Fifa Weekend League than face the weirdness of calculating when it’s my turn to say something on a video call.

I suppose this is how you end up talking to stray cats.

  1. Willpower is finite.

Without my usual options for burning off steam, I’m much more reliant on vices to get me through the week.

Caffeine, alcohol, Deliveroo takeaways…

You name it. 

It’s probably in my face.

I tip my hat to anybody who is successfully navigating Dry January. 

You must be truly fucking insane.

My wife and I joke from Sunday onwards: “Are you looking forward to the big day?”

We’re talking about Saturday.

Saturday has become code for ‘Scheduled Date Night’ with at least two bottles of wine and a lot of brave talk of “…one day going on holiday again”.

  1. I’m too eager to wish away time.

On numerous occasions I’ve found myself wishing away time.

  • “Wake me up in March when this shit is over.”
  • Looking forward to getting Christmas done because it’s a step closer to the vaccines being here.”
  • “Don’t worry, the weeks will start to go quicker in January.”

I try to catch myself, because… is there a worse habit?

I can’t think of one.

My daughter turned 1 last month. 

When I look back on the year, it seems criminal to have ever wished any of those weeks away. 

Those precious moments with her are worth more – much more – in the here and now, than a teleport to a covid-free future where I’ll probably be just as grumpy but a little bit older.

(Does it count if my blog sidebar still thinks I’m 29?)

Ultimately, we’re all faced with the same dilemma. 

How to make the most of a time that is… less than optimal.

I don’t really know whether blabbering in to this abandoned corner of the web qualifies as time well spent, but that appears to be what has just happened here.

Happy Covid Times, everybody.

See you in the next pandemic.

My FUT Hair Transplant: The First 5 Months

Those who have seen me in the last 5 months, or seen my updates on Facebook, will have noticed a slight change in appearance.

I’ve piled on 200 lbs and taken to smoking cigars.

I’ve had a hair transplant.

I know, I know.

It’s not often you find affiliates posting about hair transplants.

Probably because they have some sense, and/or know what a Flog is.

What follows below is a long, meandering post riddled with insecurities, selfies and follicular challenges that would probably have halved my FeedBurner count back in the day.

Still, this blog is nothing if not personal.

If you’re intrigued to know what the process of getting a hair transplant is like… well, count your magic beans.

If you have no such interest… see you next time.

If you’d prefer to skip straight to sending me Hate Mail, please find the comment form attached below.

Got all that?

Right, let’s see loads of pictures of me.

Why a Hair Transplant?

It’s funny, but one of the first questions I get when I mention the transplant is… why?

Why would you do that?

The answer, if it wasn’t already obvious, is MPB: Male Pattern Baldness.

I had it, mate.

Loads of it.

I was going SuperBald.

The Longer Story:

I’ve been the reluctant owner of a thinning and receding hairline since my early 20s.

As young as 20, 21…

While it’s not something that I’d lose sleep over — especially back then — I’ve never been exactly chuffed with my prospects up top.

What started as a few innocuous comments from friends in the pub (“You’re going bald, you slag“), lead to self-examination in the mirror (“Hmm, little bit more light bouncing off the dome than usual…“), which in turn lead to scrutinising my latest tagged photos on Facebook (“Untag.“).

Nevermind the drunken dinosaur I saw staring back; the shouting, stupid, sweaty mess parading as myself on a nightclub floor — often horizontally — oh no… that was to be expected.

What unsettled me was the fraying temples.

I resented the idea of losing hair in my early 20s.

So, I told myself, I’d just wait for the inevitable and then change tacks.

“Yes, Finch, the signs are there. You’re probably going to lose most of this hair. On the bright side, people will stop calling you James Blunt. On the downside, you’re not built for baldness, my friend. So, here’s what we’ll do… We’ll wait until it’s all gone, and then we’ll hit the gym HARD. Slender and bald? No, no. Not gonna work. The answer is pile on muscle. Fast and FURIOUS.”

In other words?

Compensate.

When it’s gone, forget about it

Just get Buffting, instead.

Amirit?

That soothed me, for a while.

But it didn’t stop the scrutinising (“Oh hair, where art thou?”) in each round of tagged FB photos.

I’m not sure what coaxed me towards sitting down one day and researching cures, but I credit LASIK surgery 2 years ago with opening my eyes (literally) to what’s possible if you have money and a good surgeon.

So, 5 months ago, I remember vividly…

A couple of lazy Google searches on the sofa.

  • Best Ways to Restore Hair
  • How Do Hair Transplants Work

“This is how suckers get rebilled…” I thought.

It didn’t take long to stumble across the many case studies of FUE and FUT surgery.

Within a few hours, my mind was made up: “Fuck it, I work from home, I can keep a low profile for a couple of months if need be…”

So, I set up a consultation for the following week.

And proceeded to read a thousand Before/After hair journeys like the one I’m posting now.

Choosing the Clinic

Bangkok has several high quality hair transplant clinics.

I went with the DHT Clinic based in Ari.

It’s led by Dr Damkerng Pathomvanich (Dr Path) who has an excellent reputation, and a formidable track record for Making Noggins Great Again.

There were cheaper options available, but you’ve got to be slightly masochistic to invest in a hair transplant only to leave the quality to fate.

The Consultation

What happens at a hair transplant consultation?

First step was to diagnose my current state of hairloss on what is known as the Norwood Scale:

Norwood Scale

I was currently a Norwood 3, but heading towards a Norwood 4/5 based on male pattern baldness running through my family.

Anybody reading this now who is hovering around stages 2/3, but doesn’t want to get a transplant, I have one word for you:

Finasteride.

Well, two actually:

Finasteride and minoxidil.

Had I known about these drugs five years ago, I probably wouldn’t have had (or wanted) the surgery.

Taken together they can halt premature hair loss and thicken your remaining hair.

But once it’s gone, it’s gone.

I was looking to restore, not preserve, so surgery was my only option.

Ignore any bullshit marketing-talk slapped on shampoos, conditioners, and hair products that suggest otherwise.

FUT vs FUE

Next step was to discuss the two main types of hair transplants: FUE and FUT.

FUT vs FUE

FUT is known as the ‘strip’ transplant.

A curved strip of the scalp is harvested for its tightly packed hairs, then sliced up in to hundreds of tiny grafts, and planted in the recipient area.

FUE involves the individual transplant of hair grafts, one by one, requiring a larger donor area but without leaving the same strip scar that is synonymous with FUT.

Based on the number of grafts I required to fill the temples and mid scalp, Dr Path suggested FUT as the best solution.

FUE could lead to the risk of over-harvesting and leaving my donor area thin.

Good enough for me.

I always planned to be quite open about this process, so the presence of a scar that might ‘reveal the truth’ wasn’t an issue.

Hairline Details

Next up, Art Attack.

I was sat in front of a mirror as the assistant grabbed a thick black pen and started ‘shading in’ various hairlines by colouring my temples.

  • How far forward did I want the hairline?
  • Widows peak or straight hairline?
  • Which way did I normally comb my hair? (Answer: What’s a comb?)

It was exciting to see the ‘proposals’.

It was the first time in about a decade where my hairline had actually been present.

Tide’s in! At last!

In terms of ‘design’, my requests were pretty simple.

Nothing crazy, nothing ambitious.

Just make me look how I did 10 years ago — minus the beer stains.

Number of Grafts

The assistant then wrapped a plastic sheet over my head and started sketching out the areas that would require grafts.

Quite a nice massage, actually.

Dr Path assessed the area of the sheet, then drummed a bunch of numbers in to a calculator.

Hair transplants are generally costed by the number of grafts required.

Which is affected by:

  • The area of the recipient site
  • The density/thickness of the donor hair
  • The desired density/thickness at the recipient site
  • How far forward you want to lower the hairline

A Norwood 2 patient looking to fill in the temples might only need 1000-1500 grafts.

A Norwood 6/7 patient looking to rebuild an entire hairline might require 5000-6000 grafts.

I was given three different quotes, ranging from 2900 to 3600 grafts based on the area I wanted filled in, at various densities.

We settled on 3260 grafts.

I wanted to fill in the crown, too, but Dr Path was adamant that it was unnecessary, as I still had a lot of hair there.

Taking Minoxidil and Finscar would be sufficient, he suggested.

Six months later, he was right.

Risks and Expectations

Finally… risks and expectations.

Yadda yadda yadda.

I won’t bore you with the sensible stuff.

I was booked in for the surgery four weeks after the initial consultation.

Luckily for me, a patient dropped out of his surgery just a few days after my consultation.

I heard about the vacancy on Sunday, got in touch, and was promptly booked in for surgery the following Tuesday.

All in all…

I went from researching hair transplants, to having one, in the process of seven days.

As illustrated by this amusing note in my Evernote ‘Things to Try’ folder:

Hair Transplant things to try

Day of Surgery: 22/2/2017

As you might expect, hair transplants are long procedures.

They can take several hours, and for true bald eagles, even several days.

My operation was due to start at 9am, and I wouldn’t leave the clinic until 6pm.

It was a strange experience catching the skytrain to Ari in rush hour, knowing that 10-15 doctors and assistants would be taking a similar route and I would be their task for the day.

The poor bastards.

I arrived at DHT Clinic around 8:30am after wolfing down a quick breakfast.

Stunning view of downtown Bangkok from reception…

View of Bangkok

After the initial greetings, I was given a cocktail of sleeping pills and valium to take the ‘edge’ off the day ahead.

I wasn’t particular nervous, but I wasn’t going to turn them down either.

Before the operation… a standard check of the vital signs, and a quick blood test against various diseases (HIV, etc).

After a thorough antiseptic shampooing, the doctor’s assistant marked out my hairline design on another plastic sheet and started drawing various lines that would be used, presumably, during the surgery.

At that point I met Dr Path again, this time in his funky pyjama surgeon get-up.

We spoke about the procedure and finalised how many grafts would be used, and the density.

DHT Clinic was fantastic throughout the entire process, but if I could nitpick a single complaint, it’s that you probably shouldn’t expect a patient to follow along with hair graft density calculations when he’s just chowed down a bunch of sleeping pills.

I was basically nodding along to anything at this point.

“Whatever you think, doc.”

Finally I was guided through to the operating room, which had a reclined chair lined with pillows — with a large hole in the front to rest my face.

The radio was playing bizarre Thai pop music, which is about all I remember as the gaggle of assistants promptly began massaging my feet and legs.

Hospitality, mate.

Next up, the strip harvest.

This is probably the most uncomfortable part of the op, where the surgeon slices a thin strip of skin from the back of the head.

I don’t have a picture, obviously, but here’s what it looks like (not for the screamish).

It looks worse than it feels.

My noggin was fully numbed by several injections at this point.

The only sensation I could discern was the sound of the blade delicately cutting through my scalp.

A sort of unstitching sound.

Followed by, literally, a stitching sound, and the snip snip of twenty-something staples being pressed in to my head.

Again, sounds gruesome, but it was pretty much pain-free.

The action was out of sight and out of mind.

(In contrast, I found LASIK considerably more uncomfortable.)

After about an hour, the donor strip had been taken, and I looked up to find 8-10 assistants slicing it up in to thousands of tiny follicular units, each containing between 1 to 3 hairs.

The rest of the day would be spent painstakingly ‘planting’ these grafts in to what would become my new hairline (and mid scalp).

This process… took about six hours.

Turned on to my back, two doctors began delicately planting each graft – one by one by one.

Lunch time came and passed.

Several of the assistants who had taken part in the graft harvesting disappeared throughout the day.

Dr Path would come and go, with the occasional offer of sleeping pills and more painkillers.

I didn’t take them as I wanted to be fully cognisant for my journey home.

Throughout the day the assistants would take turns giving me foot massages, helping to pass the time.

To be honest, it felt more like a spa session than a hair transplant.

Finally, at around 6:30pm, the procedure came to an end and I was given the back and sides ‘mirror’ treatment, as you would after a haircut.

I can’t remember my words but they were along the lines of:

“Thank you very much, I look mental, but thank you very much. Mental.

They led me back in to the waiting area where I was offered a quick meal and shown how to put on a bandana, which I would need for the journey home.

I was also given a compression headband — key for reducing the swelling over the next few days.

I paid the bill, hailed a Bangkok taxi, and set off home to scare the living shit out of my waiting dogs.

Day 1 Post Op

My objective for the next day was simple:

Get the rest of my head shaved.

FUT, unlike FUE, doesn’t require a buzz cut prior to the surgery. This left me with the horrendous two tone look you see above.

Bald and Bristle.

The clinic had told me I could get the hair evened out the next day, which I saw as pretty much mandatory.

First night, I went to bed with my head raised in ones of those neck cushions that you’d pick up in Boots at the airport.

I slept well.

Until… about 4am when I woke up with the back of my head feeling, as you’d expect, rather tender.

Like it had taken a holiday to the fires of Hell… would be a better description.

So, that’s what the extra painkillers were for, eh?

I bolted them down and the searing discomfort was gone within 15 minutes.

The next day, I returned to DHT Clinic to have both the recipient and donor areas examined, as is the norm post transplant.

All clean was the verdict.

The team had done a fantastic job.

I was also given a demonstration of how to clean and wash my hair properly using a luminous red antiseptic shampoo.

My takeaway thought:

“I really don’t want to get that shit in my eyes.”

Several hours later, as I danced around the shower naked, swearing and clawing at my burning retinas, the verdict came back strong:

No.

No, you really didn’t want to get that shit in your eyes.

Day 2-5: A Scabby Man

The first few days were marked by the scabbing process and a much-needed buzz cut.

By the time the scalp had ‘cooled down’, the swelling had reduced, and the scabs had been and gone (helped by coconut oil)… I quite liked the buzz cut look I was left with.

Ironically, I’d never had my hair this short.

Of course, it was helped by the newly inserted grafts… which I’d soon be losing in the shed phase.

One thing I learnt over these days was the importance of the compression headband.

It traps the swelling above the band.

If you forget to wear it… the swelling travels down your face and you’ll wake up with two black eyes.

Not a good look, at a time when good looks are hard to come by.

The scar itself was recovering well.

Was taking every last ounce of willpower not to pick at the immense crust forming on the back of my head.

Every time I caved, I’d quickly regret it.

A bloody handful of half-dissolved stitches and fresh crimson seeping from the wound is a useful reminder. Not. To. Pick. The. Scabs.

RESIST!

Day 14: Stitches Out; Shedding Begins

After around 10 days, I had the remaining staples removed from the back of my head.

21 stitches in total.

Was glad to see the back of them; especially the dissolvable stitches — which were by now dangling in No Man’s Land, hanging out of my head like pieces of frayed string.

If I gave them a tug, the string would either ease free… or cause a shooting stinging sensation.

Again… RESIST.

At around 10 days, I began to notice the new grafts shedding.

I’d shampoo (extremely delicately) and notice hairs in my hands.

“Here we go, then. See ya later, buzz cut.”

Days 21-30: An Ugly Duckling is Born

The first few weeks post hair transplant are a cruel, cruel process.

First comes the euphoria.

Well, I’ll be buggered, I’m going to have HAIR.

Then as the scorched earth scalp redness subsides, and the swelling goes down, you can already see the makings of your new hairline.

Unfortunately, you know it won’t last.

After the initial hair transplant comes a dramatic shedding process.

Around 80-90% of those newly inserted grafts fall out, naturally, in the first month.

It’s normal (but it still takes the wind out of your sails).

Under the surface, the roots will have taken hold.

They enter a dormant stage before growing back after 3-4 months.

In the meantime… it can be mentally challenging to see the new hairline, and then lose it.

Clump by clump. Hair by hair.

As the shedding gets underway, the patient enters what is known as the ‘Ugly Duckling’ phase.

And as most FUT/FUE patients will confirm, this is the hard part.

It’s not just the shedding that constitutes an ugly motherfucker.

There’s also the shock loss.

Due to the invasive nature of FUT, many patients suffer dramatic hair loss around the donor site in the weeks after surgery.

It can take several months for the hair to grow back.

Well, as you can see below, I got the arse end of the shock loss deal.

“Just a warning: I look like somebody’s been at me with a lawn mower.”

— March 2017 stump speech, if required to remove cap in public.

2 Months: Signs of Life

You know what helps to speed up a hair transplant recovery?

I’ll tell you:

Catching the norovirus.

On a trip to Krabi, I contracted a severe strain of vomit and shits, which did wonders for my perception of time.

In the sense that I no longer cared about the changes happening on my head. Only those falling out of my guts.

The last few days were horrific.

And flying home was the worst.

Flying with food poisoning is an indignity I’d wish on probably less than ten people, off the top of my head (give or take a couple).

When we land, I haven’t had anywhere near enough water for the 38 degrees Bangkok furnace.

It tells.

I’m dizzy, delirious, anxious…

I know full well, it’s a race against the clock.

I am going to shit myself.

The only question is where.

“The worst flight of my life,” I tell my fiance, grey-faced, in the middle of a tantrum at Don Muang Arrivals. By this point I’m scowling unbridled terrorism at anybody who makes eye contact with me, interchangeably shoving wafers and Imodium in my face.

“But you handled it really well,” comes the reply.

I nod my head.

Several decades pass before I realise she’s taking the piss.

Silently my hair continues to grow.

[/AdrianMole]

3 Months: Day Zero

Progress!

The recovery from a hair transplant follows a reverse bell curve.

You start with excitement and enthusiasm, which is swiftly replaced by a downer as you face up to shedding, shock loss, and the loss of novelty in it all.

The general consensus is that after 2 months, you will recover sufficiently to reach the same stage that you were pre-transplant.

As in… if you hadn’t seen somebody since the day before your hair transplant, and you saw them 2 months later, they shouldn’t notice too much difference in your appearance.

Personally, it took me around 3 months to reach this Day Zero.

Due, mainly, to shock loss.

Both in the donor area, but also in the recipient area where some of my ‘good’ hair around the temples had taken a while to grow back.

I was also suffering from intermittent folliculitis; which is very common when new hair is attempting to break through the skin.

Regardless, to reach ‘how I was before’ was a big thing psychologically.

You can then get excited that it’s all ‘new hair’ from here.

That shit you paid for when you signed up for the transplant.

Typically, in keeping with my personality, I started to lose interest in the recovery as soon as I reached Day Zero.

I no longer felt awkward going outside without my cap.

I slowly began to forget about what was happening on my head.

New hair growth is so subtle and slow that the effects will be noticed more by other people than by yourself.

If you’re reading this thinking a transplant will have a transformative effect on your life, filling you with oodles of newfound confidence and vigour…

Nah, mate.

The Self adjusts accordingly.

You’ll be less invested in the results just as they’re rearing their tiny follicular heads.

4 Months: Rapid Growth

The 4th month post-surgery marked some rapid progress.

My left temple has been around 6 weeks ahead of the right temple. Probably because it managed to retain some of the original grafts.

I also had more hair on that side to begin with.

(A common genetic MPB trait, according to the doctor.)

Not only was I seeing a lot of new growth by Month 4, but the hair around my crown was thickening up from the prescribed 5mg Minoxidil and 5mg ProScar taken daily.

The areas of shock loss were slowly growing back; barely distinguishable with my hair kept longer. Although, as you can see in the image below, it was still noticeable with wet shorter hair.

Any tenderness or loss of sensation to my scalp had disappeared by this point.

The scar was now just a faint pink line.

I was told it would be invisible unless the hair was cut to a 2 grade, and that was certainly the case with my usual mop.

5 Months: Pretty Hairy

Here we are now, in the present, just over 5 months post-surgery.

It’s at this point that most people begin to report substantial new growth and a major change in hairline appearance.

I think I’ve been around one month ahead of schedule throughout most of the process.

Things are definitely moving fast.

Apparently a warmer climate, massaging the scalp, and eating well can help to spur growth.

(Unlike a lot of FUT patients, I haven’t taken any additional supplements or used any fancy hair products.)

My hair has always grown ridiculously fast. Being younger than the average FUT patient, too, perhaps explains why I’m further along the timeline.

Appearance-wise, the right temple is catching up with the left.

They both now appear fully ‘filled in’.

The hair is getting thicker week by week – definitely most noticeable when it’s wet.

All of the areas that suffered shock loss have grown back.

The crown seems to be thickening, too, although that could just be depth perception given my hair is now much longer than I’m used to keeping it.

Five months down, and I’m way beyond Day Zero.

Very happy with the results so far.

In Summary…

This was initially going to be a 12 month diary.

It takes over a year to see the full results of a hair transplant, so I’m still less than halfway through the process.

Over the next six months I should see more growth, plus thickening of the hair and changes in texture.

That’s all gravy.

But I’m pleased with the results already.

If I didn’t grow another hair, that’s fine by me.

Which is how I should probably end the most self-indulgent blog post I’ve ever brainfarted in to existence (“Marketing blog, he says!”).

Why post about your hair, Finch?

When I was researching the operation, ‘follow along’ diaries were my catnip.

They were some of the most useful resources for understanding the hair transplant process.

(Yes, I did check to ensure that it wasn’t one of you affiliate bastards penning them.)

I know hair loss is a thing that affects a lot of men — and women — so I have no qualms in spilling my guts like this.

Overall, I’m really glad I had the transplant.

I wouldn’t describe the process as ‘life changing’ by any stretch, but I’m happier with how I look, and I’m not filled with that same dread: “Oh god, what’s gonna be left of my hairline in ten years?”

That’s not to speak down on any readers who are Bald And Proud, either.

If you’re happy with it, who gives a shit, right?

For some people, the bald look is a winner.

Alas, so ends my little story.

I hope the above does a decent job of summarising what to expect if you are one of the 0.02% of readers considering FUT.

Failing that…

I hope it explains why I have somewhat more hair than I did 6 months ago.

Thanks for reading.

Why I Quit Launching Affiliate Campaigns

About a year ago, I stopped launching affiliate marketing campaigns.

It was an easy decision, despite those campaigns being my primary source of income for the last decade.

As was the decision to quit this blog.

Well, as you can tell, I’m writing this.

Shutting my cakehole wasn’t nearly as sustainable.

Nevertheless, I thought I’d explain why I decided to get out of the CPA business. Maybe some of you can relate.

Why Give Up CPA?

To be clear, when I say that I stopped launching campaigns, I don’t mean that I abandoned affiliate marketing altogether.

I still have several toes and half a bollock in the affiliate industry.

What I gave up was the conventional CPA model of affiliate arbitrage.

That is:

Running ads on Facebook, Exoclick, PopAds, etc… Sending users to a landing page that forces an offer down their throats… Hoping to get paid more in commission than I lose in ad spend.

This model has made me a lot of money over the years.

And don’t get me wrong: it’s still a good model.

But I had several reasons for abandoning affiliate arbitrage:

  • Professional stagnation
  • Mental stagnation
  • Shifting barriers to entry
  • Desire to take more ‘ownership’ of my assets
  • Increased unwillingness to burn my bridges (and ad accounts)
  • Ten fucking years doing affiliate arbitrage

There was another factor.

Can you smell the billowing winds of change?

Or has my dog just farted…

When Affiliates Stop Talking About Affiliate Marketing…

I was listening to a keynote at a recent affiliate conference.

The talk was pitched around how to build your own product, whilst outsourcing the day-to-day management, and living happily ever after.

(Well, cheers mate. I’ll take ten quid’s worth…)

You hear more and more of this, don’t you?

“Build your own product…”
“Be so legit they can’t ban your Ads account…”
“Treat affiliate marketing like any other business…”
“Go work in an office…”

Hmm.

This would have been the prelude to a savage bottling had the speech been given at, say, Affiliate Summit 2008.

But times have changed.

“The difference between thousands of dollars and millions of dollars is building an asset, an ‘actual business’ that can eventually be sold — and what better way to build that business than by leveraging the remarkable powers of affiliate marketers?”

I’m paraphrasing here, but this is the grand takeaway in 2017:

Don’t be an affiliate. Use affiliates.

It’s funny because most of the room appeared to be sat in silent agreement at such an obvious idea.

And yet here we are…

At an ‘affiliate conference’.

Like preaching to the pigs that they’d be wise to move in to selling pork.

Only for the pigs to sharpen their knives with approval.

The industry has changed, clearly, and many affiliates are finding their interests piqued by topics that aren’t so much affiliate marketing, but entire business models we used to proudly avoid.

  • Developing products?
  • Dropshipping?
  • Ecommerce?
  • Building a large team?

“The indignity!”

These topics are front and center at affiliate events; they are the talk of the conference; but what’s so strange is how the traditional affiliate models we used to bumrush are falling out of fashion.

Affiliate marketing conferences are starting to look a bit like AA meetings.

Together we flock to celebrate tales of triumph, reform, and lucky escape, courtesy of successful ex-affiliates who still know how to slap together a completely irrelevant PowerPoint about PopCash.

We listen to ex-affiliates and never-been-affiliates drafted in as walking talking case studies to convince us that, yes, we too, can soon work on something that doesn’t involve ‘that thing’ that brought us here.

Namely: affiliate arbitrage.

The words lift us up.

We scribble hasty Evernotes.

“That’s it. I’m getting this shit together. I swear to god I am done hijacking back buttons. I refuse to refresh Voluum until I’ve mastered Shopify and White Hat Facebook™. NOPE.”

Nervously farting at the prospect of new frontiers is the state of affiliate marketing today.

Or, at least… it was for me twelve months ago.

One of those frontiers, a major rising trend in the affiliate space, is something we used to scowl at as the bloated ugly sister of get rich marketing rebills.

It goes to demonstrate the hilariously cyclical nature of our business, because that trend is called E-Commerce.

The Rise of E-Com

How about another flashlight, me old mucker?

Flashlight affiliate

If you’ve had your ears pinned to the ground — or simply not up your arse — you will have undoubtedly heard about the sophisticated funnel that has seen items like flashlights and survival kits blitzing every last corner of the social and native web.

While these offers have provided some excellent opportunities for affiliates using traditional arbitrage, they have also opened many eyes to a future after affiliate marketing.

To understand why, you need only look at the single greatest barrier to entry facing affiliates today.

Barrier to Entry: The Cloaking Economy

Generally speaking, arbitrage affiliates need to be cloaking to be competing on the largest platforms.

(The alternative is to be operating at a tremendous scale beyond the scope of most readers.)

No surprises there.

Personally, I don’t like cloaking campaigns.

Over the years, I chose to focus on niches and traffic sources where it wasn’t a prerequisite for profitability.

It’s widely accepted that to run the more ‘traditional’ types of affiliate campaigns successfully on Facebook or Google, you will need to cloak.

Sweeps, adult, casino, dating, anything related to a rebill… good luck running that shit naked, cap’n.

Previously, you didn’t have to cloak on the smaller platforms.

The Tier 2s.

There was enough volume to get profitable through fresh new offers (often unregulated), unsaturated markets, and novel creative angles.

My view is that, while this may still be possible today, the traditional lines of affiliate attack are increasingly leading to attritional bloodbaths — rather than the rampant profiteering that made them desirable in the first place.

If you are not willing to cloak, how do you compete with somebody who does?

Bear in mind, many of the most popular offers are ‘forwarded’ to affiliates precisely because the owners don’t want to get their own hands dirty.

Some affiliates, undeterred, are convinced of a middleground.

A grey hat nirvana.

They’ll ask:

  • Isn’t it possible to profit running White Hat campaigns but simply “pushing the envelope” to the edge of compliance?
  • Surely there’s a way to run aggressive CPA campaigns on Facebook, profitably, without risking an account ban?

Well, perhaps.

But what are you?

A fucking masochist or something?

This is the famed ‘guideline straddling’ that allows a Facebook rep to speak with a straight face to a room full of CPA affiliates and insist that yes, it really is possible to co-exist on our platform with just the tip of our penis in your arsehole. Be our friends. It’s worth it.

The truth is that not cloaking, for better or worse, increases the barrier to entry of large-scale affiliate marketing success.

And even if you do cloak… you can’t sleep any easier. Your ad accounts can, and probably will, hit the skids eventually.

So, how does this fit in with the rise of E-Com?

Well, as one door closes…

The barrier to entry for launching profitable affiliate campaigns has increased, but the barrier to entry for launching successful products via traditional E-Commerce has decreased.

Affiliates, over the last two years, have found themselves enviously glancing at other industries where the potential for rapid growth is just as big, and the payoff arguably even greater…

Many trends have aligned:

  • Platforms like Shopify, Magento, WooCommerce, Teespring and others have brought total convenience to selling online.
  • Crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter, GoFundMe and IndieGoGo have erased entire start-up costs (and cannily allowed entrepreneurs to pass risk on to the consumer).
  • Marketplaces like Amazon FBA have opened up insane ready-to-tap economies of scale.
  • To top it all, any Tom, Dick or his sister knows how to source cheap products from China.

Whichever way you look, there are companies — start-ups and giants — making it easier than ever to bring tangible products to market on a scale that matches the potential of rapid wealth accumulation associated to affiliate marketing.

Consider some of our biggest pet peeves:

  1. Caps
  2. Lack of exclusivity
  3. No control of the funnel
  4. Requirement to cloak ads
  5. No tangible business to sell
  6. No ability to project long term growth

Who wouldn’t want to sample post-affiliate life?

There is a price, of course.

Many affiliates, including myself, have come to accept (through gritted teeth) that our best efforts can be multiplied exponentially only with the backing of a good product.

The likes of which are seldom found in the CPA space.

Good products.

I know, right?

Affiliate Summit 2008 and they’d be sticking a fork in it.

Good products are the inevitable future of affiliate marketing for anybody who cares about advertising on Facebook, Google, etc.

So, while the affiliate industry of today is becoming harder to penetrate without a competitive edge — such as cloaking — many affiliates are deciding that to commit to a competitive edge, they might as well take ownership of the product itself.

It’s the carrot of more work for a considerably bigger reward.

Of course, an explosion in E-Commerce doesn’t have to come at the expense of affiliate marketing.

As a few gajillion flashlight sales attest.

What’s changing is the incentives for the individual.

Turn back the clock ten years and one of the reasons why we LOVED this industry was because we could try X on Monday, Y on Tuesday and Z on Wednesday. Get rat arsed on Thursday. Sleep on Friday.

It was easy to sling shit at the wall and something would stick.

These days, the big opportunities in affiliate marketing punish such a lackadaisical mindset.

It doesn’t take a genius to see how E-Com is turning so many affiliate heads.

It offers the same flexible terms, minimal risk, and insta-scalability that brought us to affiliate marketing in the first place.

With the added advantage that you can build your own asset.

And share a bed with Facebook Ads.

I expect a slow exodus of arbitrage affiliates as the platforms we love work harder to clamp down on products that customers do not.

Not because of ‘failure’ on the affiliate’s part.

But rather a better payout elsewhere.

Seriously, though…

My decision to step back from this blog, from writing about affiliate marketing, and from actively launching campaigns day-after-day… was rather simple.

I got sick to fucking death of it.

Who wants to be doing CPA forever?

One person, and I’ll tell you his name:

The Gingerbread Man.

The Gingerbread Man

He loves flirting with destruction, does the Ginge.

And in affiliate marketing, so do we all.

Which is why I asked myself:

If you don’t want to be doing CPA forever — and you’re successful enough to choose what you do — why the hell are you doing it today?

I did an excellent job of finding acceptable answers to that question over the last decade.

Answers that allowed me to continue focusing on A/B tests, without ever applying such a concept of open-mindedness to my own career.

My tendency to identify as somebody who focused only on CPA — rancid arbitrage and Voluum stats roulette — had become self-limiting.

And it was liberating to finally say:

Fuck it. This is utter bollocks. What’s next?”

Well…

It’s been a fun year exploring the opportunities beyond affiliate arbitrage.

Successes, failures, wake-up calls and all.

‘What’s next?’ is underrated.

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