My 1000'th knowledge bomb early (because I'll never reach 1000 posts) 10yrs in 20min.

Feels a little weird being back on teh forums, but scrolling through here I get so many damn memories, it's been almost 10 years, and I've always wanted to do a big knowledge bomb but I don't think I'll reach 1000 posts in this lifetime so let's do this now before I disappear for bigger and bigger spurts.

For those that don't know me, in 2007-8 I started out as a noobtard trying to understand our whole ecosystem as an affiliate. Championed the aff thing and became a vendor launching 50-60 sites/digital products, got my own army of affiliates, and then magic happened. I learned some cool shit, became rich, and happily ever after for now. So here's what's most important from my 10 years of 'started at the bottom now we in charge of our destiny and time'!

Things you'll need to succeed.

* FUCK YOU attitude towards anything in your way (like moments of uncertainty, fails, getting rejected/ripped off, ran over time and time again as you fumble towards finding what lane you fit in).

* Model after success: Everything has been done, the blueprints are right there, new success stories emerge daily to vibe from. However don't just copy ideas, do them better, find new micro-niches and gaps in the market to fill.

* ABC - AlwaysBeCreative: When you touch a campaign, a lot of assets start pouring out quickly, logo's/branding, copywriting, marketing assets, all of it is an amazing chance to push limits and controversy vs just clickbait/seo/traditional shit. Literally every single one of my sites, banners, graphics, dotcom naming brainstorming sessions, etc. are put through an edge to edge test to make sure I get the most out of what I'm doing, nothing is half assed or I don't bother.

* BE NICE - Often underrated, and not to be mistaken for being a pussy. If you want to network, ppl should value you as a person with a brain and heart not just the fuck you attitude to succeed. When you do business you're often tested in many ways re your trust, your past, your potential future if things go well in the venture... When I do business with ppl now it's like a background check on a chick before I take her seriously. Also the bigger I get, the less ppl I work with.

* FAIL OFTEN/FAST - Speed to market with an idea is crucial, even if it's just to test the waters before going all out. The faster you fail the faster you stop repeating stupid mistakes and start finding what works for you, and only repeat wins to start scaling on.

* TLC YOUR WINNER(s) - Sounds obvious but most ppl try to replicate vs scale or do both and fail at both. Once my winner presented itself by a big enough margin in my portfolio of sites, I pushed the rest to the side even though they were doing some ok numbers. I'm thankful, I knew it would have a lifecycle and when it was over I wanted to look back and be sure I couldn't have maximized my spike even more, and I couldn't.

* MENTOR - Have at least one good mentor, someone you can just chill with and don't ask them for shit - but ask them about a lot of shit. Now that I'm here I tend to want to help ppl more than ever. Or better put, if someone asks me about something in my world, they open a Pandora's box and I can talk forever just about my experience. I take for granted that loose casual chat to me is actually a goldmine to the person listening because they haven't experienced this life change yet.

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* Thanks Norb, that's a lot of basic shit, HOW did you do it and HOW can I do it too??

- In short, LAUNCH A SHITLOAD OF YOUR OWN OFFERS and get affiliates to the ones that work. Walk away from duds, do not recruit affiliates to duds, just start over, now with more practice on how not to fail. Do it with digital product, easy overhead on fails, and on wins .

- Find gaps or micro-niches within verticals you're comfy with (trust me you WANT to like your project if it takes off on you, you'll be stuck to it for a while during your spike and if you actually LIKE your content/project you'll maximize it more and quicker).

- Stay WhiteHat: Shout out to all the gray/blackhat stuff out there but we're talking about building a sustainable brand white-hat enough to stand the test of time and maybe even enough to be family friendly where people buy your product/service for others.

More importantly affiliates see you're not just a churn/burn vendor that will disappear soon. Most blackhat dudes I know are opportunists and have to rely on spikes vs something to grow for x years. Eventually most do find something though, and they explode THEN incorporate some BH to x fold their results (every great empire started with a great crime or something something). I'm not encouraging it, just value your skills and don't underestimate your potential if you have talent no matter how abstract, apply it right and you win big.

- You probably won't know you have a winner until it wins. I think back to all the random dumb shit I saw make the vendors around me into millionaires, and I couldn't believe some of them. Water4Gas, Earth4Energy, Magnets4Energy, BuildingAFuknCHICKENCOUP?!

I talked to all of them and we did a few products together here and there because we understood the formula, but the one's you hope go big due to said knowledge of formula still don't compare to organic virility for whatever the reason (the earth4energy dude and I talked a lot at one point, he got the idea after watching a newscast on renewable energy getting a lot of attention in the world, so he made a book or building your own solar panels, it fucking BLEWWWWWWW everything away on clickbank for a while, created 30 competitors, he created a ton of subsites, videos, other renewable stuff re water/wind/and bang, millies!).

So don't be shy to simply try shit, you never really know what will take off. I actually didn't know my big winner was a win until about 6months it, total sleeper, then suddenly it just boomed kind of out of nowhere.

- Embrace noobtards: While everyone here was laughing at CB, at WAFO, at digital point indians, I was recruiting them as aff's and saving their asses from promoting another MMO and to try promoting my established whitehat site, and made a shitload of ppl a shitload of money and success stories in third world countries, that shit just feels good and mom is proud lol.

- SO WHY CB? WHY NOT CPA? - For me it was too scary once anything got past 10K in the CPA world, everyone getting scammed, and the few offers I tried to host on CPA networks as they kept wanting my offers, were shady as fuck so I just stuck to CB. Here's my breakdown though as I did enough CPA to be able to compare the two fairly:

---end of part 1 (10K text limit reached, fuck yeah).

Part duh:

** CB takes 7.5%, true, sounds like a lot, but there is no way in hell you'll do what they do for you if your product takes off. Look after affiliates, pay them, pay you, deal with refunds, chargebacks (and a WAYYYY more lenient merch account when it comes to CB's/refunds), deal with fraud, RMS systems, weekly wires (8yrs later, never missed a payment).

Now imagine doing all that while moving 70,000 units of something through your own aff tech, risk management, fraud, payments, checks/wires to xx,xxx affiliates, and trying to look after it all yourself on top of customer support and retention, fawwwwk that. We're talking vendor roles here though, CPA for an AFF is another world. So once you scale, and are operating an actual bursting business online, these things matter greatly as your customer support alone moving xxx units a day is a team task suddenly let alone focusing on your marketing/todays biz stuff vs yesterdays money.

* Embrace being reactive vs proactive: You're hunting right now, trying this and that, scattered, some spikey money and good moves here and there but hard to replicate or grow. Just when you're about to scale, something fucks up.. then FINALLY something blows up on you. You'll notice your biz plan goes out the window, and you start getting hit up a lot from every angle. Affiliates, networks, ppl in your niche, other powerplayers, you're HOT! I had a hard time with this, I like to hunt, suddenly there are more kills in front of me than I know what to do with, time to sort and keep the keepers (good biz moves).

* SAY NO OFTEN: Keep your closed loop of profit closed, no new friends. This is where the RealRecognizeReal come together, you have little left to gain from others, but when you meet another like you - you quickly understand each other and MIGHT be able to take over the world faster, only then do you let someone into your world and you theirs and only a few layers deep, just the tip .

* PREPARE FOR EVIL: Ppl will clone you, attack you while they launch a competitor, attack your person because they want your success. Suddenly you have enemies just for doing shit right. They should be inspired, and some/most are, but you'll also quickly become a target for those with resources and low ethics, prepare for this or at least be know it WILL happen. Maybe duplicate your project a few times and have them on standby to battle new competitors leaving your main brand untouchable (I did this a few times it worked well).

* PREPARE FOR LIFECYCLE: Everything dies, eventually. I knew my lifetime chart would not be on a constant incline, shit will fluctuate, hit peaks, and eventually trend down. If you build something that is not just a spike but lasts you years, maximize that opportunity like it's going to die in a week, because it just might. I look back and am thankful I didn't take any of mine for granted.

* NEW LIFE: Money does change you, in the types of ways you'd never really think. EXAMPLE: The 9-5'ers or those running around, so many logo's/influence/data/ads/scents/energies/static/etc on a day to day basis, month after month, year to year, so much fuck in my brain!!! Once you detox, money happens, your time is yours, you stop getting all this thrown at you all day every day and you acutally start becoming a bit spiritual (what is all this for? I'm in charge of my destiny, now what?

I can just jump on a plane and go to x, for x time, this is insane..). It's easy to fuck up, self-discipline is hard, rewarding yourself is weird, you'll see. This is the part where you have to start looking at how to sustain all this shit for the long haul not just a few summers in Vegas, it won't last.

* SUSTAIN IT!: Not that many ppl I know stay made their first time. They get a false sense of "I figured it out! I can just make money anytime now!" < lol yeah ok buddy. That spike gave you a false sense of future potential and before you know it the eco-system changes, your offer dies, and you can't replicate your success as easily as you thought. STAY FUCKING MADE if you got blessed, learn how to make your money work for you (whole other thread, but there is nothing wrong with traditional asset dev, RE, PreciousMetals, diversify your basket, don't just let it sit in banks or pick away at it when you're not killing it on an offer).

* LAZY BISH: You're allowed to enjoy the rewards, just don't get too comfy and lazy. NOW you have time and resources, imagine how dangerous you'd be if you still had your hunger to succeed even more now!! RAAAAA!! Success can take a LOT out of you, it takes over your life, it's a set of golden handcuffs you don't get out of until you do and get to look back and reflect because it's kinda over for now... Once you come up for air, get bored, get laid, get lazy for a while, start thinking about your next power moves, these may be the ones to take you into millionaire territory.

* THAT FIRST 100K AFTER TAX: To many it just never happens, to others it's a milestone and they kept going, opening up new bank accounts, creating INC's, investing, etc. That first 100K is WAY the fuck harder to make than anything after that. If we use basic tax brackets, you'll need to make around 2million and get taxed+expenses+misc.costs to keep 1M NET.

And to scale from making your first 100K to 1M is way easier than to scale from your first 10K to 100K in a campaign (by then you'll figure out creative accounting and won't be taxed like that but for this example we're dumb). You just think different once you have that first chunk. Your risk tolerance is different, your strategies to money are different, you're exposed to 'clubs' and offers the gen pop aren't, a whole new world opens up (and just as many new people are out to fuck you over too , now white collar style while smiling in person vs teh interwebz scams).

* PROCESS: Probably my favorite topic and part of the whole puzzle. I love process and tinkering, split testing, maximizing, creating more from existing resources, upsells/recurs on the backend/cross sells, better branding, changing prices/doing specials, understanding buying habits, digging through logs, all the stuff that makes up the DNA of where you dollar comes from, down to the last pixel you created and why it's that color (a simple color change and upping the price could double your income on your main website, same with some header title changes, read CASHVERTISING and implement their LF technics (I think it's LF, it's been a while but it's xx points to improve your readers propensity to actually BUY vs click away and it doubled my income after incorporating into an already successful brand). Learn to love your process.

* SOCIAL vs ANTI-SOCIAL: Now that you've made it, you don't relate to most anymore, they talk about mundane meaningless shit, their world is tiny, their views narrow, their stubborn, let them be. Know you're operating at a different frequency and know it's OK that it feels lonely up here, top of the food chain is kinda fukt like that. You see through ppl faster because you've just filtered big biz moves for x years while everyone is trying to fuck you. You find dating hard because women are actually intimidated by a successful guy (young chicks and gold diggers aside, I'm talking looking for wifey). Your social life may actually get quite boring if you don't proactively LIVE and seek others like you, travel, go to biz events.

* BLESSING PPL: My mom raised me with "You've often judged by how you treat those whom you have nothing to gain from", I blessed a lot of people in my time, planted a bucket load of karma seeds over the years, from small shit to big shit like my 10khustle (I gave out 10 K online to talented underdogs in a contest, ended up being like 14K actually and it's probably my best highlight of all this shit - youtube '10khustle' you'll see a bunch of stuff from it, some of these kids are now doing great things, maybe I seeded a bit of that ).

Bless people often not because you have something to gain, but because you're good now, and ppl remember nice gestures for a lifetime. Seeds planted 5+ years ago constantly pop up with a 'THANK YOU for teaching me aff marketing years ago, I'm now helping others become financially free and off the 9-5grid too" or similar. Sometimes it comes with direct perks you'd never plan or predict, sometimes they are lifechanging in turn.

I also remember ppl around me being like "aren't you afraid of ppl copying your whole system, why are you showing me/others all this stuff?" < At first maybe I was, but by the time you build out 5-10 offers, you know how much goes into the shit, GOOD LUCK I say, to those trying to copy my whole outfit, and that's the same thing you should think to yourself in your moments of "why am I doing this, I should stay under the radar, I should hide my success" < No, you should inspire and motivate and recruit all at the same time.

Ok I'm starting to ramble (or have been this whole time) so I'll end off here and leave room for Q's as I don't really know what else to throw in here without getting technical about specifics, which I don't mind doing just want to make sure it's relevant so ask away or if you got enough from this then GO KICK SOME FUCKINGN ASS in 2016!!

N.

You know when you write so much, you just can't be bothered to re-read and proof, well that happened. I just re-read and I butchered a lot of that, sowwy, can't edit now I forgot there is a x minute rule here. It's supposed to be motivational and I'm grammar/typo'ing like fuk throughout but I haz nothing to gain from this and I'm not recruiting for anything (got some PM's asking to push my stuff ) so this is literally a first draft from the heart drop and publish, I do usually care about my writing.

N.

Heya - I like that version of your logo . BeatSoftware: She's in her old age, automated in a retirement home being looked after by others, lol...

I did a shitty comparison in my write up re cpa vs clickbank as I got lost in the 7.5% and those that always were like "you should do it yourself save that %".

So as a vendor:

CPA: You have to fund it.
You cover/are liable for any fraud (so much room to fuck you from the network to aff's)
You cover bad affiliates unless they are caught (usually with leads, networks seem LOST with digital products compared to CB as an all around solution).
No room for internal setup re cross-sells/upsells/downsells/publishing your own sales flows from any product, all on the spot without interruption or approval/audit/setup time on a networks end, also setting up rebills easily, and in my case setting up the software to be unlocked once the processor takes an order so tying in security..

CB: Nothing to fund, a little setup fee. They deal with all the shady shit, they have incredible RiskManagement, they do a great job re dealing with aff bullshit (I haz clicks, why no sales? I think there is problem I see 5 form submission and no monies), they allow you to tie into their API for security etc, everything is on the spot self-published re creating inventory, sales flows, 3 upsell/downsell steps during a one click checkout (and any can be a recur ).

This is taking into account you're removing your bias of ClickBank for a second, it was known for the MMO's, the Water4Gas funny spammy products, but for people like me (Music Production Software, totally white-hat just love their tech/processing/leniency in chargebacks/refunds, size of aff pool, and most importantly no payment issues when dealing with x,xxx to xx,xxx affiliates on an exploding offer), it's an amazing low risk solution for building out a digital empire of products vs trying to go through a CPA.

So if you're thinking ahead, and you're going to have x-xx websites all taking orders for digital products, it doesn't make sense to fund them all through CPA's, at all. Sorry if it sounds like I'm shitting on them - I know there's great ones, wish I dealt with them and had positive experiences but I when it comes to 6-7+figure territory everything becomes reallllly sensitive and clickbank makes me feel very comfy, I can operate and live life not constantly have a raised eyebrow like I did with CPA's...

Cheers.

Hey - I remember that - crockpot bars!! haha.

Glad you took some of that and ran with it - you knew/know a lot already though and you gave me some food for thought in turn so it was good vibes that's why we talked for so long. And there it is, another example of recognizing good ppl at WF, filtering, and just shooting the shit to see if you can help each other via nothing more than a convo where you may have nothing to gain, OR you might pick up a tip that changes your offer/project/life.

^ There is no magic answer, literally anything that you can get to convert and conversion master, affiliates will be attracted like flies to shit once it's popping.

It's your job as the vendor to be passionate about your product/project/offer, and be the domain expert in it - affiliates for the most part won't give a fuk what it is as long as it converts, is a stable offer, has longevity/upsells/recurs/whatever other perks that will retain them making money for longer. If you do manage to recruit people already in your niche who can move units, then great, but 95% of my affiliates had no clue about my niche they just saw a hot offer with a crazy rising gravity and wanted in.

This can work against you too, now I would whitelist and interview/approve/deny them, my shit bubbled to 56,000 anonymous affiliates worldwide, and they sabotaged the shit out of my brand and the aff system. So there is such thing is it working too good for you where you attract too many, too broad, and they dilute your campaigns with fiverr bullshit or spun articles or stolen email lists et al.

EDIT: Also in my chats today we talked about being your own best affiliate and not needing them, that's the best way to have them, not needing them and converting your own shit like a boss - THEN you will see the true power of leveraging others efforts once you have finetuned and mastered your conversion process to the point of being able to replicate/teach others to replicate easily.

Let me try that again, in point step by step form of how I used to do it and it worked really really well.

* Get Idea(s)

* Build out idea sales page first, before product is even built.

* Sometimes send traffic to JUST that, and get pre-sell optins and in some cases a few 'pre-sales' and on the thank you page tell ppl they pre-ordered for a future date, even if you get refunds who cares you're just doing this as a test to see if it's worth dumping more time/effort into. Yep, a sales page with processing and NO deliverables up front, as my tester.

* Let's assume you moved 5-10 units and it cost you little, you close shop and put a COMING SOON as you motor like fuck on your newly found little idea that just converted a little bit on random different traffic tests not just getting lucky for a day in a good pocket of buyers and not knowing..

So you build out your offer, your upsells/backend members areas/whatever else to both make customers happy, and to make future affiliates happy as you maximize your potential revenue all around not just one buynow button (I used to sell one product for $17, then it grew to $29, then $39, then got a 3 step upsell process with the third being a monthly recur, then got 90 more products in the back end and on a lot of front ends/smaller sub sites, all going through one clickbank account and about 10 domains/variations of my sales page and or product specific, now the customer can spend a few hundred easily and be on a few recurs).

NOW you're really setup to attract and RETAIN affiliates who will love you - you make them money, they make you money for a long time - vs giving them 75% of your $17 and hoping you move 100K units (which still wouldn't be a lot of money, and would make it hard for them to stay profitable. And yes 75% commission, as that's the standard at CB to attract the big boys).

* During your split testing document everything and show/give this intel to your affiliates, give them your best landers, your keywords, your banners, blog posts, whatever worked for you. By giving them a converting campaign they will obviously kill it, exhaust it, and you'll start to see the power of a collective creative marketing team perverting and variating your original campaign into a lot of cool shit (and sometimes a lot of junk, but that original converting campaign is now being carried and evolving by thousands of little ants all bringing food back to homebase via something you started them on and they are eating well off it).

* From here it's on you re how you grow, plateau, morph, and stay as profitable as possible for as long as you can as you start going through the lifecycle of the offer.

And as a closing note, I got FAST at this process, sometimes launching 2 offers a month (digital products are easy, don't let 'getting the idea of what to build' stump you). I burned out building my sites and my original thinking was "build 100 sites, each make a few sales a day and I'm laughing" but that quickly turned into "wow, this is all one big ass split test to find my winners, these shits are dying fast and only a few are converting". Don't be afraid to walk the fuk away from them don't become emotionally attached no matter how much you put in.

Glad this was received well, I'm going to keep brain dumping while I can and while I'm here for a few .

* Your first product is probably going to suck, not convert, and frustrate the shit out of you . But something special will happen, you'll learn what it is to publish something and put your own buy now button on it and actually make someone out there pull out a credit card/paypal and give you money. Maybe you'll build out your first aff promo area filled with graphics and content that didn't convert for you but it might for them (don't do that lol, only give people shit that converts, don't use them as guinea pigs and testers for your creatives it backfires badly. Also don't overbuild the area, it dilutes your core campaign, keep it simple and effective).

* Your second - fifth products, by then you'll see enough vendors around you and have a lot of 'fuck I should have.... before I launched...' moments and be ready for your first proper launch (overdoing it on your first product and trying to have the bestest launch ever is a bad idea usually a big letdown, do it right but know there is a lot you don't know yet and must experience yourself vs reading/theorizing what it will be like. Down to talking to your first affiliate, are you going to be a good vendor? Will they like you? Trust you? Want to invest into you? Will they be approved for denial? lol.

Will you actually be able to teach them, to make money? If you do, do you understand the power you now hold?? Times a few thousand affiliates you're a don with a family unit all eating well (errrr 20% eating well, 80% trying). Being a vendor with good leverage and having a big aff team can have cool side-effects re what it is you're actually doing on the sub-levels (feeding ppl that can't make that kind of money locally, feeding content providers that your aff's use to create stuff, feeding wordpress plugins, domainers, my aff's sold their sites as aff sites on flippa for xx,xxx more than once, a lot of cool shit happens by your water drop in the pond that is the web when it hits right).

This is where the 'BE NICE' line in my write up comes from, you'll be delegating to a lot of ppl trying desperately to make you money, or themselves money, which makes you money. Some ppl just aren't good at leading, which is ok that's why automation exists but that xx% you can't automate is still vital - you're still running a biz with real ppl buying, real ppl selling, you're lucky enough to have attracted them to your house so be a damn good host!

* Don't fuck with your aff's. In my come up I saw this time and time again. Vendors doing shady shit on an actual pretty damn good offer. So shortsighted to be robbing the very people that you're supposed to be feeding/helping and by doing so you help yourself. Slow and steady and don't be greedy there is enough money in this world to make anyone made overnight/overmonth/overyear, why rush you've already spent this long trying to get here, you finally found a good system, baby it so you don't have to keep making new ones and repeating your opportunistic success.

*AFF SUPPORT I had a forum, a mini WF if you will, where I taught and documented said teaching re how to sell my stuff, it was a pain in the ass but was so necessary and it grew organically out of need as I couldn't handle the volume of incoming new aff's. Some people get aff managers, I just setup a forum and wing'd it and luckily it got some traction but more importantly it semi-automated my crazy growing aff base, good problem to have but still a challenge doing customer support like crazy suddenly AND aff support to keep it going..

TAKE BREAKS: On that note, I'm going to Timmies, want anything?