The Performance Marketing Divide
Last night, we came across a blog that, for lack of a better description, could be the exact opposite of our own publication. We’ve been called many things, but motivating has yet to make that list. People are curious about what we say; they will make time for it, but they aren’t anxious to see what we write next. The same can’t be said for Amit Mehta’s Super Affiliate Mindset – as much about the person behind it, if not more so, than the words contained within. To understand his style of writing, we’ve selected some admittedly biased sections from posts about living the super affiliate lifestyle. Ready? Here we go. "Affiliate marketing & being a super affiliate is not just a business, it’s a way of life!" "So let me ask you: are YOU willing to put in 4 years into your affiliate marketing business to be wealthy and free for the rest of your life?" On investing, "…Stop wasting your time trying to figure out what stocks and IRAs you’re going to ‘invest in’. If you really care about your financial future, you’ll do everything in your power to learn how to generate an infinite return on your money with ppc affiliate marketing. Not only will you not have to worry about your retirement or funding your children’s college education, you NEVER have to worry about money PERIOD." Or, "Having a 9-5 job in the rat race not only severely restricts your income potential, but also restricts where you can live. Now I know some of you are proud of the fact that you have 4 weeks of vacation time. How about living your dreams EVERYDAY. Doing what you love, and taking as much or as little time off of your business as you want while you make $1000s a day on autopilot." Almost all of these lifestyle posts also contain the requisite American Express Centurion (Black) Card.
Were there to exist an infomercial for affiliate marketing, it would have to include Amit’s past where he speaks of his and a friend’s lives prior to affiliate marketing saying, "We were both dead broke, I mean REALLY broke. But you know what, we had a dream of a better future, we had a dream of being financially freewith a solid passive income coming in month after month. For the next two years we busted our butts trying to build our network marketing business. We were willing to do whatever it took to become financially free, at the time we just didn’t know that we were in the wrong vehicle!" It’s an amazing story, and Amit finds a way to transmit his enthusiasm and success in an eloquent and inspiring manner, one that has you rooting for him not jealous of him. He certainly doesn’t stand alone in his declarations of the benefits to becoming a super affiliate marketer. Another blog, The Uber Affiliate proclaims, "Quit Your Day Job Already" in the title and despite an audience of less than 1000, managed 80 comments on one recent entry. His posts also talk heavily of personal success, an example being, "November was a great Q4 month, some great things happened and some barriers were smashed. Spent a lot of money testing and was only making ~$2,000 profit/day in the beginning of the month, but all the testing paid off because now things are rolling at over $5,000 profit/day. I have a couple of offers that I am VERY excited to start up hopefully in the next couple weeks, and I’m hoping to gross my first $500,000 month to finish off the year."
Somewhere in the middle of this universe sits another personality, Jeremy Shoemaker, a Sears to PPC to blog personality success story, whose persona falls somewhere between egocentric and brand genius. What separates "Shoe", from many other affiliates is an exit, something not often associated with affiliate marketers. As his blog took off and revenues from referrals to networks such as Azoogle started to eclipse his success in PPC, he started to focus his efforts on what might be considered the true evolution of affiliate arbitrage – platform development. While technical, he did not necessarily build the product that has made him more money than any of his other efforts to date, Auction Ads. Similar to so many Internet businesses, his came out four years after the first such attempt to syndicate eBay listings into display ad units – a model not too dissimilar from Chitika that uses CPC shopping feeds. He succeeded where others didn’t because he understood his strength, marketing. Rather than simply using his affiliate celebrity to drive referrals for another ad network, he used it to drive signups for a venture where he had equity. And he did it at the right time, when a long tail of publications existed, ones hungry for new ad programs outside of just AdSense and less impersonal than the remnant ads they’d receive from the larger networks (if accepted). It’s not important that he was first, but that he had one of the key piece of the execution at his disposal.
Jeremy went from a super affiliate to an equity generator, and while he eschews the spotlight, perhaps the best example is Vantage Media’s Marc DiPaola who went from single affiliate to the creator of a company worth hundreds of millions of dollars. That transition and the difference between being an affiliate and an equity generator describes the Performance Marketing Divide. As a single affiliate, you can generate some impressive returns, real returns not the smoke and mirror kind from network marketers, but you will never have the type of wealth that comes from becoming an equity generator. The guys that will make truly life changing money have done two things. First, they’ve gone from super affiliates who might have a small team to companies employing tens and in a few cases hundreds of people. Second, they’ve built something that doesn’t necessarily rely on them or, more accurately revolve around them. The downside though of crossing this divide, is that while you can gain a potential exit that will beat almost any affiliate revenues over time, you now have the lives of many as your responsibility, which for most who build these businesses means forgoing the quality of life business that the successful affiliate marketer often strives. At the end of the day, what’s the better outcome – freedom for you or enriching the lives of others along the way?
