Super Affiliate Marketing Blog

I just read a post by Justin Chelf, he’s our resident gay man representing at WickedFire. I know I don’t have to point out that he’s gay, but I figured I would so you won’t make the same mistake I did, like cracking a gay joke last year in Miami when I wasn’t aware that he really was gay. Haha! Doh! Anyway, back on topic.. He wrote a post about how he made some mistakes when it came to suddenly being successful and having the cash to spend on things he probably didn’t really need. He just bought himself a Benz, and I’m sure he’s wasted some of those hard earned dolla bills on all sorts of other things that he purchased on an impulse.

Anyway, I wanted to sort of continue with my own personal experiences and give some advice where he left off. Sort of show what a real affiliate marketing mindset you can get into and out of hopefully that no one ever covers.

So here’s some advice, and it may not work with everyone, but it certainly did with me.

When you start out, reinvest nonstop. I say again — REINVEST INTO YOUR BUSINESS NONSTOP! Don’t even for a moment say “well, I made a few hundred clams so I can go take my girl out for a fancy sit down dinner without ma and pa”. No. Save that shit for when you have the cash to spend on things not associated with your business. In fact, when you make enough bank, get a business credit card and use those dinners as writeoffs (just so long as you meet the IRS’ rules on what is a biz meeting and what is a way to pretend it is). See you have to continue to stay in one state of mind, and the bigger you become the tougher it will be.

Most people in the industry, especially the affiliates who end up doing really well fairly quickly make the evil mistake of taking this cash and just flat out flaunting it. Those guys are lucky. Don’t be that guy. Take every dime you make, keep tabs on WHY or HOW you did so well, and just back it up with more cash.

Now lets fast forward to a few months down the line when you’re more experienced and luck is on your side..

When you are hitting much healthier numbers and you start getting that really awesome buzzing feeling where you just want to go out and spend lots of cash on really dumb things, instead of trying to surpress it, do it! I know that sounds bad and totally goes against what I said above, but you’re in a completely different state of mind and your business is doing well enough that you can start siphoning off a paycheck for yourself and maybe some bonus cash too. However, before you go on this much needed spending spree, take a look at the total of your most recent bank statement, and take 75% of the cash, and LEAVE IT THE HELL ALONE! In case you’re semi-retarded and don’t understand that, I am telling you to keep that in your business.

Alright, so now you’ve got this nice chunk of change, being 15% of the total amount, and its burning a hole in your pocket. So where do you go first and what do you do… and why the hell is Jon telling you to be retarded with it, shouldn’t you still be reinvesting and saving?? No. I say this because the longer you try and hold in those euphoric feelings, the worse you’ll feel. It’s actually a healthy outlet in my opinion to vent by spending some of that hard earned dough. Plus it will get it out of your system, and if you do happen to make a really stupid purchase like buying every DVD ever made only to find out that Bluray is replacing it or you could have just downloaded it, for free, then you won’t have to go back to work feeling like a total loser, because 85% of that total will still be available for you to do lots more business!

When I first made a lot of bank, I went wild with it. I was also a lot younger. I come from a pretty “old money” kind of family, but I had never made my own cash, and it just made things feel so much better. Things I did with it include: Taking a charter helicopter to Atlantic City for the hell of it, even though I was too young to gamble. Going to SCORES with my friends and treating them to $10,000 nights of strippers, free flowing bottles of Blue Label, and all sorts of other not so legal nonsense. I also used to take random trips around the world, by myself, just for the fuck of it — Like deciding one afternoon that going to Amsterdam for the weekend would be cool, and when landing there thinking “What the fuck was I thinking” pre-brownies of course; Also went to the UK just to sample some real beer at a local pub and then flew back home. Becoming a Rolex collector. Hiring a driver for the Mercedes S class car I insisted on being cheuffered around in.

I know, these were retarded things, and I burned through A LOT of cash. But I was able to get it out of my system. Sounds spoiled, and definitely was, but it was well worth it. Not because I have loads of stories for the grandkids someday, but because I knew that if I didn’t enjoy the bounties of my success in the beginning, that I would end up becoming like some of my now broke friends. Since those days, I’ve become VERY frugal with my cash. But as WickedFire came along, and after I had become one of the largest and most prolific affiliates in the industry at the time, I felt like I needed a bit of a break, and stopped working very hard and just took a break, for two years, from being an affiliate.

Since the challenge had been gone, I wanted to get back to my roots, and feel that fire and desire of not having a ton of cash to fall back on, or to use my cash to solve problems.

Here’s something most people don’t know about me — I took around 98%’ish of my savings/cash and locked it up in a multi-year hedge fund investment. Why would I do something so retarded? Well, the payoffs are going to be ridiculously ginormous next year when I get it back (definitely NOT re-investing it for another year like I did last March), but I felt I was getting too spoiled.

I wanted to go back to the times when my folks went through a rough as hell divorce and my siblings and I went from uber wealthy to downright poor as hell for about 8-9 years. See, I learned a lot from that experience. It made me work REALLY hard to make money. It also showed me that no matter how cushy of a life you may have, it can all be taken away from you in the blink of an eye. It taught me to ALWAYS trust my gut instincts, because that ‘advice’ is free, and usually right. And finally, it taught me that in order to be a cutthroat businessman, you have to play the role of someone who DOESN’T have a fallback of funds to depend on. I wanted to feel that rage and fire I had as a teenager when I first started in this game.

So by not working, and reducing myself to enough cash in the bank to allow me to invest in new business ventures, but not enough to not work anymore and be a lazy bastard, I forced myself to go back to those days before making serious bank and then spending it on retarded shit that I just didn’t need.

The really good part now, and yes this is all on topic still, is that when I do get my payout, and when my new ventures do pay off very soon, I will NOT have the urge to go on crazy spending sprees or splurge on really stupid shit. I’ll save it and re-invest into places I know that will do well for me. I’ll probably become one of the wealthiest people in the industry flat out, but you’ll never know if I am or not, because after those splurgefests, I got over it. I don’t dress in a flashy way. I don’t try to bring any sort of “look at me, I have a black card and I am so fucking cool so here’s some pics of me and my fuckin black card, la la la!” attention like so many of the younger and new money affiliates do so often. You can have your black card, but remember, you still have to pay the fucking bill at the end of the month just like every other person with any type of credit card. It doesn’t make you special, if anything, it makes you an easy target and even easier to take advantage of. So quit doing that crap already, you’re only making yourself look like a giant fool. Go and spend some of that cash, and when you’re done and feeling better, INVEST IT. (investing it doesn’t include buying every color Ferrari or Lambo)

/fin - Jon Fisher