This post is about an affiliate. A well known affiliate with a popular blog. He posted something on his blog saying basically, if you’ve been slapped or your traffic has run dry on Google, send me your campaign and I’ll run it and give you a cut of the profit.
That’s nice, I guess, if you are lazy and don’t care about what you are really giving up when you hand over all your information. I’d take 30% of something that took me absolutely no work… except for those hours of campaign setup, research, money for banners and landing pages, and all that split testing I did to find the best combination of work. You can take that 30% or hand him a check for thousands of dollars. Either one of those will work.
If you decide to do this, you are pretty much “fucking” yourself in the ass (excuse my use of language). You’ve spent countless hours on campaign set up (time = money); monies on landing pages and coding and creatives. Basically, its a charity to someone who already claims to be making 6 figures a month. If you want to be the one to help him to 7 figures, then go for it. Be a dumbass.
And if you do hand that campaign over, you’re just taking the easy way out. Just because you got slapped on Google doesn’t mean you can’t make it back up. Obviously, the guy knows something because he’s willing to take slapped campaigns and use his “techniques” to get them back up. If he can do it, others probably can, too. Ask around – Stop being lazy.
On top of this, Google isn’t the only place in the world to buy traffic. I can guarantee he’ll be moving your campaigns over to other traffic sources and making even more money off of your shit. Yahoo, Bing, Media Network Buys, Direct Buys, Social Media, PPV, Twitter, Offline Advertising (TV, Billboards, Radio)… there are so many places you can transfer your campaigns.
Because I think this dude is such a joke, here is what I’ll offer. You give me your proven Google campaigns, your best converting LPs and creatives, all your keywords and targets, and I will run them for you. Instead of only giving you 30%, I’ll give you 100% of the profit. Why? Because it’d teach me a shit ton more than what I already know, expose me to new niches and ideas, then take those campaigns and transfer them to new sources and make more money that way.
So if you are really that lazy, hit up my contact page here. Honestly, I don’t want anyone to tell me any of their campaigns. It shows me you’re a lazy ass that doesn’t want to figure anything out on your own. I can understand your frustration with being banned from a profitable traffic source. But with a little effort, you can A) either get back up on that traffic source, or B) move the campaign on to bigger and better places for traffic. It happened to me with Facebook, but now I can’t wait to get back on there and I have a plan to do it.
That’s actually funny. This same blogger told me he’d run all my profitable campaigns at 50% gain for himself and 50% for me. Yeah, hey now… blow me.
I kinda had respect for the guy before, but this either sounds desperate (all his current campaigns are losing him money) or he can’t come up with his own ideas (he himself is too lazy to try to break into new niches, campaigns, keywords, with his own work).
Sorry for the harsh language, but I think this shit is all a joke, and if anyone falls for this BS, well, then you kind of deserve it. Figure out shit for yourself and profit 100%.
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TipJar
Hey Justin,
I see where you’re coming from but:
Honestly dude, I consider Volk one of the good guys in this industry. There’s tons of people who’ve been slapped on Google and just leave their shit sitting there….forever.
Right there, those campaigns are sitting there and earning $0. He made a legitimate offer to those people that leave their shit sitting there – he does the work (and by work I mean resetting it all up), he finds the traffic, he brings HIS strategies into the mix — that those people otherwise wouldn’t have invested the time in to do, or didn’t feel like it. That’s like free money right there. Sure, they still created the campaign and did testing, but Google gave them a huge bitch slap and now they’re fucked….and maybe they tried porting it to other traffic sources without any luck or simply didn’t have the budget (like with media buys) or the time to redo all of that shit.
The 70/30 split is because of course he’s going to want the bulk of the profits, anybody would, especially if he’s running all of it, AND taking a 30% loss from the profit margins. The 30% is great for the other person because before it was $0….and they don’t even have to do any of the work. It’s his terms, and a very generous offer to anyone. You either take it or you don’t. Obviously anybody that doesn’t want their niches revealed or think they can run it elsewhere won’t take the offer…
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Justin Dupre Reply:
October 4th, 2009 at 5:47 pm
Anyone stubborn enough to take up that offer just comes off sounding like they aren’t willing to work for their own money. They’d rather have someone else build off their own work. I can understand what happens when you feel like you hit a brick wall, but even if your whole account gets slapped, there are steps you can take to get it right back up.
If you take up the offer it comes off to me as you don’t care enough about your work to really grow as an independent marketer.
While I agree, he is one of the more trusted affiliates in the blogspace, I don’t think that post really makes him shine and says a lot about him that I didn’t previously know. Especially when he emailed me saying he’d take over my Facebook campaigns for a 50% split. It comes off as desperate, and to me, that doesn’t sound like an affiliate making $400,000 a month like he really claims.
[Reply]
Tran Harry
I don’t wanna start nothing. But wow I read the offer too.
I can’t believe he did that. Good job for him if anyone took him up on his offer but all the work you put into learning and testing to give it to someone else is insane.
[Reply]
TipJar
To each his own I guess.
If it were me, and my shit kept getting slapped/banned from Facebook, I’d be handing my campaigns over for 50/50 profits. Saves me hassle and gives me time to go work on something else while taking in a residual/passive income.
It’s a simple choice dawg….bust your ass and try to make those FB campaigns work again or whatever, maybe netting you a loss or wasted time, OR hand them over to him and you guys split the profit? If you’re choosing the former (which you are), then be done with it. An offers an offer…I’m sure his aff managers can vouch for his income. Nobody would make an offer like that if they weren’t banking, they’d be TAKING his offer.
[Reply]
Justin Dupre Reply:
October 4th, 2009 at 7:42 pm
I have a pretty good idea why lots of things are getting slapped, and to fix them, it honestly wouldn’t take more than a days work.
In fact, I’d rather take about a week out of my life to hire some college student, train him, and pay him to set up campaigns, split test and research quality score attributes for me. I pay him/her a few hundred bucks a week and keep the other $XXXX to myself. It takes time to teach the employee a few things, but I think you’ll get a lot more out of it in the long run than handing it to someone who knows how to take your data and capitalize a lot more off of it.
I dunno. You make $1000 a day on one campaign. Hand it over to him and then you’ll make about $9000 a month on it. Or, you could take 1 week to rebuild the campaign (I don’t even think it would take more then a few days so I’m being generous). You find out how to make you campaign compliant with Google and give them what they want. You take 7 days of no profit. Even if your changes mean you only make $500 a day, you’ll still make $6000 more a month than if you handed over your campaigns. Say he could only make it with those same changes. Then you’d only be making $5,000 a month from him. Worth the extra $10,000 a month just because you put in a little effort and research? I’d say so.
If you can’t take the time to figure out why you got slapped and how to get it back up and running, every single time you get slapped you are going to be handing you assets over to someone else for only 30% of the cut. He takes 70% of each 10 of those campaigns you give him cause you are too lazy to figure out what’s wrong yourself or don’t think it is worth the time. Each of those campaigns makes you $1000 a day. You now get $3000 a day; he gets $7000. Yeah… that extra $210,000 a month… totally not worth it…
[Reply]
Jonathan Volk
No worries man – I’m not offended – you’re entitled to your opinion and regardless of you thinking I’m a joke, I still think you provide good content and wish you best of luck on your next ventures.
Thanks,
Jonathan Volk
[Reply]
TipJar
Fair enough. But I don’t think he’s trying take anyone’s “assets” — I think it was more of a business opp and an offer for people who have dormant/slapped campaigns to make some extra cash.
Another issue/factor is scaling…let’s say I had a campaign that did $1,000/day ($30,000/month) and BOOM a slap from Google/Facebook. Now that campaign is doing $0/day and I don’t have a budget to start media buying or dealing with FB/Google/yahoo/whatever. I hand over my data to Jon and let’s say he starts doing $3,500/day and I get 30% of that which means I’m making $1,050/day. That’s $50 more a day without having to worry about budgets, managing a campaign, training some n00b, waiting 7 days, etc.
I’ll still read your blog because you write good stuff, but this was way off base.
Peace.
[Reply]
wower
Gratz you’ve just made enemy with one of the nicest (and most influential) guys in the industry. I am shocked you’d bash Jon Volk publicly. Seriously. Just keep the comments to yourself. You don’t think before you post? Just like the previous blog post you started asking for help to look for this girl which caused a backlash and you had to pull that post. I hope this post doesn’t end up like that one…
[Reply]
Justin Dupre Reply:
October 5th, 2009 at 3:59 am
@Wower – Enemies, hardly… People gotta take shit sometime. Volk is a good guy, and he does have good intentions. I just think its rediculous that you’d send your hard-earned data and creatives to someone for only 30% share. Like I said, I’ll take it and give you 100% share just for the data and information I’d get from it. That data alone is worth thousands and thousands of dollars… Oh yeah, one more thing I wanted you to know: you’re a douche. (Oops shoulda kept that comment to myself)
When I think about it, this post should make more people think about how they want their business to grow – Do you want someone else to handle it, or do you want to seize the opportunity to learn and expand upon your business for the long term. I think Volk’s answer is short-term profitable, while the long-term answer would be much more profitable and beneficial for your business. You’ll be learning how to avoid slaps, how to structure campaigns and content, how to increase QS. This is what Volk has done, and you could take the path that he did which is obviously a harder path to take, but I believe the experience that you’ll gain would create hundreds of thousands if not millions more in profit each year you continue to be a direct response marketer. Handing over your data just means you aren’t putting in the effort I believe you could be.
TipJar brought up the point saying maybe cash flow is the issue. If I had $0 and had a profitable campaign waiting to be started up, yeah I might consider it (after I’ve asked for my parents/friends/bank for a short-term loan). I think if you look hard enough, there are an infinite amount of answers to cash flow issues. Sell some assets, sell your TV, Xbox… Whatever.
I’m entitled to my own opinion and god dammit I’ll give it if I want to. “Affiliate Marketing with an Attitude”… It’s there for a reason.
[Reply]
Phoebe Ann Williams
Great post Justin lol…. i like the way u express yourself. Glad u would not give into this crap even if loosing some traffic with Facehook!
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Ryan Bellinger
not to mention it’s your blog and anyone who doesn’t like what you say can easily stop reading it haha
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PPCpimps
If you guys don’t think that the campaigns won’t be run everywhere else besides google then you are silly stupid. Plus, would you trust someone to you don’t know and have never worked with to give you your correct split? What type of tracking are you looking for …blah blah blah… If you are that lazy then just stay out of the game.
[Reply]
mushie
well said J-bud
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