1K Post: AMA Time

[mont7071]

What are your thoughts on the future of social (Pinterest, FB, Twitter, etc.) in terms of leveraging them for marketing purposes?

With mobile becoming more and more prevalent in the scene, will we see the major players shift towards mobile marketing and other ad standards starting to be abandoned?

I kind of missed the boat on social advertising early, and am now scrambling to make up for lost time, but I think a lot of Advertisers are going to start treating social as more of an "amplifier" for other mainstream marketing, rather than an independent channel by itself.

With the rise of native advertising, guys like Facebook can always be in the customer's field of vision, and they can bring brands with them. It used to be, you looked at different content on your phone vs your desktop vs your tablet. Now, everybody is connected to their FB account on all their different devices. Add to that the rise of cross-platform retargeting, and I think a lot of Advertisers stop running independent campaigns on each platform, and start working on cross-pollination between them more. When I see an email for XYZ dating from a newsletter in my desktop Inbox but don't act on it, then later log into my Facebook account on my phone and see that "Jon Smith and 2 other friends like XYZDating" in my feed, and then later surfing cat videos on my iPad and see a 250x250 banner add offering a special one-time free month trial for XYZDating, that is far more impactful then seeing 3 different ads on any of 3 devices. The brands that figure out multi-device/platform attribution and how to account for it in their ad spend are going to crush it, I'd like to be part of that wave.

 

[Grindstone]

I'm not going to fluff your balls (save that for a chrystal charging session amarite) but you know you're an inspiration to a lot of us. Thanks for all the wisdom you've shared with me over the years, definitely made me think about my thought processes more than I would had you not been so open.

My question: With so many opportunities that present themselves every day in this industry(ies) and time being limited to 24-7 for all of us, what's your methodology for helping you choose what you're going to go after and what is better left for a later date or just kicked to the curb?

 

[ncmedia]

I'll bite:

Spikey multiple rev streams fluctuating life cycles, or one big long charting spike over many years with your lead product/service?

Most important DO OR DIE moves you've made in biz - sacrifices, diving into debt, head first into a knowledge base you know little about - etc.?

Biggest costly mistake (not like lacking a mentor, I mean actual hardmoney loss over something you may have prevented if doing again today)?

The three best things you being in charge of your time allows for so you are happiest (as that's what we do this all for - sounds like cars do it for you in one area of life, what about other areas)?

Do you have an off button at all in the year?

When you go on vacation, do you tend not to tell anyone?

Have you every been hacked/attacked/cloned/top level biz snipers coming at you?

Is there a number you're looking to reach to cash out/live for a while - or are you simply maximizing any/everything for as long as it feels right?

Expatriate to somewhere warm in the winters yet?

Did you stay made the first time or did you lose it all a few times first before really cherishing and nurturing the blessing?

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I know these are all over the place - I'm approaching my 1K soon and have also kinda 'made it' so thought it would be fun to ask some shit I get asked a lot IRL once people peel back the usual layers.. Funny how you're also no kids/pets/married/tv/distractions - much the same here.

 

[mont7071]

I recently started my own health supplement after being an affiliate for some time.

I'm curious, based on your experience with owning health & beauty offers, where did you find the most success in terms of advertising platforms?

Early on, PPC was the clear winner, there wasnt much competition, no such thing as Quality Score, and bidding 50 cents a click would get you as much of the traffic on the major search engines as you wanted.

Over time, that shifted to more banner ads, then evetually over to social media, then mobile platforms, and now across a combination of native ads and social media. It's harder now than it used to be, because there are a lot more advertisers competing for eyeballs that are paying less and less attention to ads.

 

[flaw3d]

I just wanted to say thanks for taking the time out of your day to do this AMA. It's nice to know that even though you made it you can still help others who are not there yet.

 

[saltyfishscales]

Really looking forward to see other q&a's thanks!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[mont7071]

Do you plan to retire(by this I mean work less than 20 hrs a week regularly) with in the next few years? If the answer is no is that because you'd like to still save up more money or because you simply love the game to much and don't know what else you'd want to do with your time?

I noticed you said 14 years in health/beauty niche, wow! So you started in IM out of college in 2001? What was your biggest traffic source that year? I don't even know of any besides Yahoo/AOL.

Yes, I am *supposed* to retire in the next few years, based on an agreement I made several years ago. I'll never truly "retire" in the regular sense of the word, but the plan is to phase myself out of the daily operations of my companies by 2018, and then work sub-40 hour workweeks while traveling the world.

I already hit my "Number", so at this point I'm just adding to the nest egg until I retire. I save/invest 95% of my income anyways, so there isn't as much of a need to work for financial reasons as much as it's just what I'm used to doing. I'm a worker, I like to work. I like getting up every day and spending a full day at the office solving problems, I've never been good at "not working." I'll always do something work-related, I"m just going to take a step back from the 70 hour workweeks while I'm still young enough to enjoy life.

Circa 2001, my biggest traffic sources were GoTo/Overture, with some 7search in there too. Overture was originally the ad partner for both Yahoo and AOL (which was really high-converting) before a new upstart took the AOL business from them. That new upstart was Google.

 

[mont7071]

Is is true that Blokblok is indeed one of them there homosexuals?

Okay no seriously...

I've known you for four years and we've done a pretty significant amount of business over the past few years. You've indirectly taught me an unbelievable amount about this industry and I'd consider you to be one of the guys I both respect and look up to in this industry. Okay, enough sucking your cock...

As someone who is finally getting into the advertiser side in a fairly obscure skin niche, what would you say is the single biggest obstacle a new advertise will face: processing, scaling, FTC bullshit?

2 years ago I would have said scaling, now I'd say processing. The usual sources of merchant processing for this industry have really taken a beating, and being able to take Visa/MC at a reasonable discount rate is the lifeblood of skin/health product marketing. The FTC stuff, while serious when it goes wrong, is farther down the list; the guys who get in trouble with the FTC almost always deserve it, it's hard to piss them off "accidentally" if you're running an offer legit.

 

[DanTe_0101]

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

 

[bluechinagroup]

The FTC stuff, while serious when it goes wrong, is farther down the list; the guys who get in trouble with the FTC almost always deserve it, it's hard to piss them off "accidentally" if you're running an offer legit.

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?

 

[avatar33]

If you could go 20 years back, would you still do the same thing? Would you have done anything differently?

 

[skohh]

You wake up, your pants are missing -- there's a funny smell coming from the other room. You remember one thing only from the night before; Jeffrey going to pound town on 2 Vietnamese ladies in Nader's favorite gentleman's club. Then everything goes dark.

The jig is up.

Suddenly, you see Dwight being carried outside by a group of Asian men through your window. There's nothing you can do, you're locked in a room with only a computer and a chair.

A group of men enter the room heavily armed. They tell you that if you want to see your friends again to listen up, they demand that you show them how to make money online.

They give you some cash and tell you to begin working...What do you do?

 

[mont7071]

I'm not going to fluff your balls (save that for a chrystal charging session amarite) but you know you're an inspiration to a lot of us. Thanks for all the wisdom you've shared with me over the years, definitely made me think about my thought processes more than I would had you not been so open.

My question: With so many opportunities that present themselves every day in this industry(ies) and time being limited to 24-7 for all of us, what's your methodology for helping you choose what you're going to go after and what is better left for a later date or just kicked to the curb?

It has to have a big upside. It can be risky but the potential payout now has to be decent-sized, otherwise I'm better off doing the stuff I already do "better" with my time instead of jumping into uncharted waters. If it's an investment, I have to be bringing something to the table besides just money, the venture has to be something I bring some kind of edge to. I still get involved in a lot of projects that seem pretty unrelated at first, but the goal over time is to connect the strands of each together into a web of businesses that have some type of synergy, while still giving me some diversity in my income streams.

I've gotten a lot beter in the last 2 years at not chasing every shiny-object project that I think I can do well at, but takes too much bandwidth away from executing on the projects I've already got going.

 

[mont7071]

I recently started my own health supplement after being an affiliate for some time.

I'm curious, based on your experience with owning health & beauty offers, where did you find the most success in terms of advertising platforms?

early on, it was definitely PPC, but now its harder, and more expensive, to use for health/beauty stuff, I'd probably go straight to social media and revshare affiliate stuff now if I was getting into it today. There is still some reasonably-priced PPC traffic on Yahoo/Bing, but the reach is limited.

 

[mont7071]

I'll bite:

Spikey multiple rev streams fluctuating life cycles, or one big long charting spike over many years with your lead product/service?

Definitely spikey multi-streams with fluctuating life cycles

Most important DO OR DIE moves you've made in biz - sacrifices, diving into debt, head first into a knowledge base you know little about - etc.?

Using my student loan money to buy inventory while in law school, that was a bit scary but put me on the right track.Taking a full year after college to devote myself to IM full-time, I think if I'd tried to do it "on the side" while working in the corporate world I wouldn't have taken the same risks or gotten the same rewards.

Biggest costly mistake (not like lacking a mentor, I mean actual hardmoney loss over something you may have prevented if doing again today?

Spending north of a quarter-million on direct TV infomercial advertising when I knew that 7/10 lose money sticks out in my mind. I was one of the 7

Do you have an off button at all in the year?

Unfortunately, not really. I kind of have a restless mind, even when I'm on vacation or away from the office, I'm pretty much always thinking about this stuff. I never was very good at just "leaving it at the office".

When you go on vacation, do you tend not to tell anyone?

I always have my phone and laptop with me, so some business associates don't even notice, other than my hours on Skype change a bit

Have you every been hacked/attacked/cloned/top level biz snipers coming at you?

Not personally, at least that i remember. I've had a couple of my brands cloned by competitors who try to trade on the brand name

Is there a number you're looking to reach to cash out/live for a while - or are you simply maximizing any/everything for as long as it feels right?

yes, but I already hit that number, so now it's just working till the end of my timeframe

Expatriate to somewhere warm in the winters yet?

I travel throughout the year, and cold weather doesn't bother me. I prefer to take a lot of shorter trips throughout the year than long ones.

Did you stay made the first time or did you lose it all a few times first before really cherishing and nurturing the blessing?

I never did lose it all, I was fortunate (or lucky) enough to not have any big missteps early on when it could have cost me it all, and since then I've always kept enough of a cushion that no single catastrophe could really wipe me out. The downside is I know it's made me a little more complacent then I was early-on, when I HAD to make things work or I would have been broke. It's not do-or-die anymore, so that costs me some of my edge.

 

[mattseh]

When does a business partnership not make sense, and it's best to do it on your own?

 

[miketpowell]

Yes, I am *supposed* to retire in the next few years, based on an agreement I made several years ago. I'll never truly "retire" in the regular sense of the word, but the plan is to phase myself out of the daily operations of my companies by 2018, and then work sub-40 hour workweeks while traveling the world.

I already hit my "Number", so at this point I'm just adding to the nest egg until I retire. I save/invest 95% of my income anyways, so there isn't as much of a need to work for financial reasons as much as it's just what I'm used to doing. I'm a worker, I like to work. I like getting up every day and spending a full day at the office solving problems, I've never been good at "not working." I'll always do something work-related, I"m just going to take a step back from the 70 hour workweeks while I'm still young enough to enjoy life.

Circa 2001, my biggest traffic sources were GoTo/Overture, with some 7search in there too. Overture was originally the ad partner for both Yahoo and AOL (which was really high-converting) before a new upstart took the AOL business from them. That new upstart was Google.

Thanks for answering! Yeah I don't know you personally but know the breed and would never expect you to stop working. Just at some point "work less" for the most part. It doesn't even seem like work when it's what you love doing really.

I have similar plans myself to cool things off by 2020 but doubt I'd be able to in your situation. I've got a wife with our first baby on the way that's turned out to be twins and figure I'll let raising my children become my new project over the next few years. Without that I'm sure I'd always find some new work project to fill up my time.

Interesting about the traffic sources. I knew it was pre Google/Adwords but I thought it was more about display banners back in those days before Google brought the text ads to search. But based on your other answers I guess it was search/text ads first then display.

On one hand I envy you guys that started in 2001 but at the same time I try to keep perspective that in 10 years from now guys will envy the people when I started. There are always huge opportunities to be had. Some guys started same time I did and developed a nice little app called "WhatsApp" and cashed out for more money than I'll ever make. So I remember that and stop envying the timing of others.

 

[BlokBlok]

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 Mont1707

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?

 

[eliquid]

When does a business partnership not make sense, and it's best to do it on your own?

hmmm.. i wonder where this is going?

Grind, Cam, ?????

BTW, didn't you try to go on your own before from a prior business partnership?

 

[jeffrey]

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 Mont1707

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?

Judging by our ALLEGED post-badger ball cyrstal charging session, no v-neck at all....