1K Post: AMA Time



I'm going to go for a simple angle on this...

What are your biggest regrets in life (any aspect of life I mean) ?

What accomplishments are you personally most proud of (that give you a really big grin when you step back and think about them) ?
 
DanTe_0101 said:
Hey,

thanks for the AMA, so I wanted to ask how do you go on hiring people(smart) that run your campaigns or manage all the VA's etc stuff?

can you quickly tell your daily routine?

thank you
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All of my "VAs" are in India currently. I used to hire individuals, from India, Phillipines, where ever. Any $$ savings I may have had were offset by spending too much time herding cats and trying to make people accountable for their actions, a huge problem I found with the Philippines.

I eventually realized I was going about it all wrong. I hired one Indian manager directly, at a very high salary, and put him charge of hiring his "own" team. Now, he was responsible for putting the right team in place to get the job done, no excuses. He had complete hiring/firing authority, but he knew it was his ass if any of the other hires didn't complete there job. Since then it has run much smoother, that manager (whom I've never met or even spoke too) has been a valuable member of my staff for going on 6 years.
 
bluechinagroup said:
Once the FTC gets involved, in your experience do they always take a heavy handed approach and sue everybody? What about a borderline offer that has good customer service with a good refund policy that refunds most customers that ask, but maybe their advertorials and credit card page isn't as ideal as the FTC would like them to be?

Would they go in with the velvet glove and try to take corrective action or would they just go guns blazing?
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Mixed, by the time I see most cases, they have gone really far south for the companies involved, asset freezes, criminal charges, etc. State AGs are often worse than the FTC, since they can move faster, and aren't subject to the same budgetary restrictions if they get wild hair up their ass to teach someone a lesson. "Borderline" offers in particular have more issues at the state level (AG) than the federal level (FTC). State AGs are mostly, I think, easier to negotiate with upfront though, before things head too far south.
 
mont7071 said:
All of my "VAs" are in India currently. I used to hire individuals, from India, Phillipines, where ever. Any $$ savings I may have had were offset by spending too much time herding cats and trying to make people accountable for their actions, a huge problem I found with the Philippines.

I eventually realized I was going about it all wrong. I hired one Indian manager directly, at a very high salary, and put him charge of hiring his "own" team. Now, he was responsible for putting the right team in place to get the job done, no excuses. He had complete hiring/firing authority, but he knew it was his ass if any of the other hires didn't complete there job. Since then it has run much smoother, that manager (whom I've never met or even spoke too) has been a valuable member of my staff for going on 6 years.
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Staff has always been the biggest growing pain for me so I hire locally 80% of the time.

But I'm really interested in doing something like this for a few side projects as it sounds fucking great.

But I have a few questions:

What were the manager's initial qualifications you looked for? Experience?

Where did you find him?

How much of the "big picture" of your projects, campaigns, etc. does he have access to?

Is all correspondence via Skype and email?

How long did you give him/did he take to build his dream team?

Thanks, Mont. Really enjoying your thread.
 
mattseh said:
When does a business partnership not make sense, and it's best to do it on your own?
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When one side isn't bringing something to the table that the other side(s) don't already have or can do.

I never think the contributions have to be "equal" (they seldom are, and it's hard to judge what is equal anyways), but when one party doesn't bring anything unique, even if its just hard work, I think its best to be independent.
 
mont7071 said:
When one side isn't bringing something to the table that the other side(s) don't already have or can do.

I never think the contributions have to be "equal" (they seldom are, and it's hard to judge what is equal anyways), but when one party doesn't bring anything unique, even if its just hard work, I think its best to be independent.
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I always ask myself... What do I need them for OR what do they need ME for if it is not significant then the partnership will not work out
 
Thanks Mont!!!

From your experience in being a publisher (Affiliate) and having other publishers run your offers. What do you think separates the high volume successful affs and non-successful affs?

is there any strategy or system that you've used/seen on testing offers/campaigns etc that increases the chance of being a successful affs??

Last at least, anymore tips you'd recommend to affs these days? (FB cracking down hard etc, etc, cloaking becoming hard etc)

Thanks againnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn~
 
avatar33 said:
If you could go 20 years back, would you still do the same thing? Would you have done anything differently?
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Not really, I'm not much for wishing I did things differently after the fact, hindsight is always 20/20. I try to make my decisions using all the info i have at that time, if something changes later that makes it a bad decision, I can live with that.


Though I DO wish I had actually bought the Google stock during IPO I was ready to pick up around $70/share, then panicked at the last minute and cancelled...
 
BlokBlok said:
I basically owe all my success to Mont, if there is ever a case to be made for traveling out of your Mom's basement to attend a conference I am it.

Broke Blokblok going to his first ASW and meeting Mont turned into a 7 figure business relationship.

I'll never turned down a public opportunity to show some #prohomo love to Mont7071

To contribute to the thread, my question would be what value to you see for affiliates and IM'ers in general to attend conferences/events?

Also, what color V-neck do you prefer me to wear?
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The teal-colored deep V is always perfect attire for Affiliate Summit, but that bright neon "Sun's Out, Gun's Out" tanktop is what brings all the boys to the yard....
 
secretagentdad said:
Do you use any kinda project management system?

Assuming you have some kind of system. How do you use it, and how hard was it to get everyone fully on-board.
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not really, we use Smartsheets+ Snagit with most of Team India to communicate. Here at the office, its mostly post-it notes, Skype, and yelling back and forth between our offices. Every time we've tried some project management sysem, e.g. Basecamp, Asana, we abandon it pretty quick.
 
What are some of the worst things that offers do that bring on AG / FTC action, that they could have not been doing, and still had a profitable operation?

Is AG / FTC action inevitable when a certain volume is reached? What revenues is when an advertiser should be worried about possible scrutiny? I mean, obviously an AG or FTC is not going to after an offer with only a few complaints, so there must be a connection between volume and possible legal action.
 
Beach Affiliate said:
Staff has always been the biggest growing pain for me so I hire locally 80% of the time.

But I'm really interested in doing something like this for a few side projects as it sounds fucking great.

But I have a few questions:

What were the manager's initial qualifications you looked for? Experience?

Where did you find him?

How much of the "big picture" of your projects, campaigns, etc. does he have access to?

Is all correspondence via Skype and email?

How long did you give him/did he take to build his dream team?

Thanks, Mont. Really enjoying your thread.
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The manager's initial qualifications were he used to work for another guy that did work for me, and he was the only one on that guy's team that wasn't A) the guy's family member, and B) lazy.

I found out much later that the guy he had worked for hadn't paid him for work he'd done on my projects, but he finished them anyways out of pride. After he left that guy and I found out about that, I tracked him down and offered him a position. He's great because his interests are aligned with mine, he literally loses sleep worrying about problems my biz has, that's a great, and rare, trait in an employee, especially an outsourced one.

He's got a fair amount of access to my stuff, but I trust him, and it'd be hard for him to duplicate my biz model effectively anyways

I've never talked to him on the phone (My VP has a few times for random things), but I chat with him via Skype pretty much every day. His "dream team" is an ongoing process, he stills has some turnover, but his main 3 guys have worked for him/me for 3+ years now. He hires short-term project-based people for my stuff off and on fairly constantly. Much easier to ramp up and ramp down based on workload that way, vs having to layoff people in my physical office.
 
Whenever I see your name, I read your posts with interest Mont.

Two random questions -

Favorite web analytics software for your web pages?

Random legal question: Can a Canadian citizen(located in Canada), without entering the United-States, hire a lawyer to act on his behalf in American courts? - This would be specifically to handle copyright complaints with works already registered US Library of Congress.
 
mont7071 said:
Mixed, by the time I see most cases, they have gone really far south for the companies involved, asset freezes, criminal charges, etc. State AGs are often worse than the FTC, since they can move faster, and aren't subject to the same budgetary restrictions if they get wild hair up their ass to teach someone a lesson. "Borderline" offers in particular have more issues at the state level (AG) than the federal level (FTC). State AGs are mostly, I think, easier to negotiate with upfront though, before things head too far south.
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Thank you for that insightful answer.

I always figured that the FTC is much worse. I didn't expect the FTC to have budgetary restrictions.

I've heard the California AG is a hard ass when it comes to consumer protection, but doesn't the California state government have major budgetary issues right now? Does that affect the CA AG in anyway?

Since you mentioned that some of your clients had criminal charges on on top civil action, does your law firm offer criminal defense too?
 
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