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ncmedia's (Norbz) knowledge bomb, 10yrs in 20min.

A detailed account of a Fastlane process...

andrewsyc

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Mods, feel free to edit anything about this thread/title.
Figured this was too good not to post (known of this for a while but figured, heck).

solopreneurs and people in the digital space will find advice particularly useful.
I noticed @eliquid and @Blackman in the thread ;)

Source: My 1000'th knowledge bomb early (because I'll never reach 1000 posts) 10yrs in 20min.
click over to read some of the replies.

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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.

* F*ck 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 F*ck 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.

----



* 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
icon7.gif
.

- 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 F*cking 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 F*ck 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, F*ck yeah).
 
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andrewsyc

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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 F*cks 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
wink.gif
.

* 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 F*ck 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 F*ck 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 F*ckING 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 F*ck 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 F*ck you over too
icon7.gif
, 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 F*ck 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
icon7.gif
).

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 F*ckINGN a$$ in 2016!!

N.

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

Blackman

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I was on Digital Point forums when Norb joined back in 2007, looking for a partner to create a digital product and generally enter the world of affiliate marketing - it's amazing how time flies.

At the time, I was promoting Clickbank's PSP download products (remember those?) via Google Adwords as an affiliate, without even having a website, just using the affiliate link as the destination URL, which then re-directed to the vendor's page. Try doing that today and see happens...

I believe, Norb came from a web design/marketing background with plenty of experience and knowledge in that department, so for him it was a case of figuring out what was in demand and creating the right product, because his packaging was always top-notch.

His business advice on mindset and attitude is definitely spot on, can't argue with that, however creating Clickbank offers in 2021 and recruiting affiliates to promote your product is NOT something I would do myself.

Clickbank and affiliate marketing in general has changed A LOT in the last 10-15 years. What used to be a very niche, unregulated industry is now a pretty common sight and Clickbank is a fraction of what it was in 2007-2008. It used to have 16k+ products in its marketplace - granted most of it was junk, but some of it was border-line decent, and that was where affiliates and vendors made some serious money. Currently, it has just over 3k offers on their marketplace, so you can see the difference.

If I remember correctly, Norb's best-selling product was DubTurbo, which was a beat making software, released in 2010, when Clickbank slowly started going downhill in terms sales.

The reason for decline in sales for Clickbank was the fact that they started filtering and removing all the crap from their marketplace that was actually selling well, eventhough it provided kind of misleading information....Think running your car on water, make money online products, free downloading of music/movies/software offers, etc.

All these products were generating tons of sales for Clickbank and creating millionaires, both on the vendors and affiliates sides. If you know what "Gravity" is on Clickbank, which is basically how popular a given product is, I remember Water4Gas had a figure of around 980 in 2007...

I can't even imagine what the sales were like for the owner of that product - he was probably having 5-figure sales every day, and bear in mind, these are all digital products, so no packaging, no shipping and no warehousing/storage.

Anyway, last time I looked at Clickbank's marketplace, most top offers were in the 200-250 gravity range, which is still not bad, but I think the "golden days" of Clickbank are long gone...

Nowadays they seem to be releasing products themselves on affiliate marketing and promoting Bluehost hosting offers on their login page as an affiliate. I believe they're also running a podcast on YouTube where they discuss various products from the marketplace, which are apparently "hot", and should be promoted - won't be surprised, if you can be featured there for the right sum...

Sorry, I got carried away a bit, probably because I was in this game for over 10 years myself, but mostly lost money, rather than made anything...Despite this, being involved around people who made it BIG, completely changed my thinking of what's possible and how to approach things in life, so I guess there's always a positive side to everything.

In general, affiliate marketing can work, but you definitely want to be on the vendor side, i.e. own the product/service, and also you want to have the right kind of affiliates promoting your product, because it can often backfire, when the Internet gets flooded with ridiculous "reviews" and "recommendations" of your offer, which is essentially spam for the sake of the affiliate commission.

Also the affiliate marketing world doesn't revolve around Clickbank and there are other networks out there, but the rules of the game are more or less the same.

A bit of a personal brain dump, but hope someone finds the above useful.
 
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eliquid

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I remember that thread.

In 2007, I already about 8 years in affiliate marketing and almost 10 years "doing stuff online".

In 2008 I had my big break, so I remember that time frame well and everything going on at the time.

I didn't actually know Norb well, mainly just from WF and threads I read. But everything in that thread from 2016 you linked to I still agree with, except now the affiliate stuff.

I have run SERPWoo's affiliate program now for years. About 10% of the affiliates drive 90% of the traffic and profit. This was about the same metric I saw at MediaTrust back in 2007 as well when we had a ton of affiliates. So it really comes down to, finding the cream of the crop ( within your own program ) and really getting them to push more. A lot of people not at the top, don't have the desire to be "pushed" and you have to let those fall to the side.

Affiliate marketing as we knew it ( Im speaking about a select group of people that blew this up ) is pretty much dead now. There is the other side of affiliate marketing which is very much alive, but I don't feel the same traction is really there, compared to what it was back in 2008 era.

Affiliate marketing where you can pick a product, throw PPC money at it, and cash out is dead. Slight variations of this is dead too. What's alive is the "content marketing" affiliates and influencers and those that build out a backend as well before passing them to the offer.

Now, that doesn't mean you still can't find a product that will crush it with PPC. I just stopped with one 2 weeks ago I was running for more than 6 months doing $100k a month in profit, but they are getting harder and harder to find and you have to end up being a "partner" with the network and on an offer where maybe only 2 other affiliates are running it too, tops. Other similar offers tend to end up being sweepstakes or casino or dating in places like Nigeria and Turkey which don't have the volume US traffic has.

Running as a successful affiliate today means having a "process" and backend too. If you are going to do all that, you might as well just run your own offers.

Also, Google is taking away a big chunk of the even the "content marketing" affiliate style of push. Check this out: https://blog.google/products/shopping/bestthings/... you might as well give up ranking in Google now for anything that is comparison or review style now. Influencers with existing audiences is one of the last places still safe atm.

Again, I can find outliers.. but I'm speaking for the majority of things as a whole.
 

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