Listen in as superaffiliate Daniel Javor discusses why and how he moved to bigger profits in the White Hat arena. From theory to details, he’ll give you the formula for making new, big money in 2016.

Interview with Daniel Javor | CEO, JavaBlue, TrafficProtector & PurpleLeads

By Fernando Pizarro

Interview Transcript

Fernando:
Daniel is an expert on the area of starting a new offer. And, many of you may know him in the context of some of the work that he’s done. Daniel describes himself as a born entrepreneur and a really shitty employee, which probably describes a lot of the people in this room.

PowerSeller On eBay at 14

He started out at 14 as a powerseller on eBay. Someone mentioned earlier that you’re really into bikinis. I thought that was pretty cool but more relevant for today. Daniel actually runs the largest solar offer in the world, which is saying something. So hopefully, we’ll be hearing more about how he got that going. We’ll be taking some questions from the audience. And we’ll go from there. So actually, I’ve got a series of questions for you Daniel that maybe we can run through and kick off that way. So, for a lot of people in the room, I think the question eventually becomes for how long am I gonna be running campaigns for other people and then, when do I start my own offer? And, what do I offer, right? So, what inspired you? And what is it, or what did you build?

Something More Sustainable And Stable

Daniel:
Well, initially the reason why I decided to move from being an affiliate to an offer owner was just because I was very frustrated with the volatility that comes from being an affiliate. The usuals like losing accounts and filling up caps and all of that. I was just looking for something more sustainable and something more stable. And, so that’s why I decided to build a company as opposed to building just AM campaign.

Physical Goods

So initially, I looked at a few options. One of them being physical goods. And I know many affiliates are doing this very, very successfully. Don’t get me wrong. But for me personally, I felt that the B2C market causes a lot of challenges like, returns and shipping and fulfilment and all that. So, I thought it’s not a good fit for me.

Lead Generation

But lead gen on the other hand, I had a lot of experience with. And I felt due to the nature of a B2B business, there is less problems on the operational side at least. So, that’s when I decided to do the move. And also, I felt that once I set up the infrastructure of lead gen business that I can be very agile and flexible when it comes to bringing on new verticals. Because in the end of the day, the inventory type is still the same. It’s still a lead. So, it can be very flexible and move very fast.
Fernando:
So the business, it sounds then like the business that you created is actually a lead gen business without its own specific product. It can be moved across to multiple different verticals.
Daniel:
Yes.
Fernando:
Okay, so how did you set it up? When you started, what roadblocks did you hit? What did you learn from those?

Problem: Initial Lead Flow

Daniel:
So, the first initial problem that I had was initial lead flow. It’s like the chicken and the egg. Without good lead flow, you cannot get good direct deals. And without good direct deals, it’s hard to get a good lead flow. So, the way around it is you need to start running with networks. Get some volume going, even at a slight loss. And once you get something going, you start heading and to direct deals, and can compensate that.

Problem: Technology

The next one for me was technology. It was a big obstacle for me. Simply because before, I’d just send traffic to an offer page and I actually was the offer page. So, I had to facilitate everything that comes with it. It’s the hosting, posting or the lead delivery. It’s that affiliate tracking, it’s the internal tracking. And so, first of all you need to go out there and research all the lead delivery platforms out there. Understand what their advantages are, what are the disadvantages. What are their price points? Which lead delivery system is a good fit for your vertical?

Affiliate Tracking

Then, you need to go out there, get like, affiliate tracking solution, like has offers. But that will not fulfill your internal needs for your internal traffic. So, then you need to get a performance tracker on top of that, like Thrive or Voluum. And then you need all those systems to communicate with each other via post specs and via API’s. You need to make sure that there are no discrepancies. And the worst of it all, it all needs to kind of happen at the same time, because until you don’t have all of that working and going well, you cannot really get started and you cannot really scale. So, this took us a long time and a lot of teamwork and creativity. But once we overcame it, it paid off for us.
Fernando:
That’s interesting. So, you said that you need to match the lead gen engine to the vertical that you’re working in, right? What are some of the criteria that comes into that to that sort of choice?

Match The Lead Gen To The Vertical

Daniel:
Well, there are different form fields. So if you have a vertical like solar, it’s asking you for the electricity bill. It’s asking if you’re homeowner. For example, when you run US lead gen and zips become a very big thing, because some zips pay different payouts. And not all lead delivery systems allow routing by zip codes. So, only that is already a big thing and a big decision maker. And then also, of course, a price. It really matters.
Fernando:
It is that bit because pricing changes from vertical to vertical. And it changes what you can afford.
Daniel:
Yes exactly. Also, there is the option that you can go custom. So, if you’re not really happy with one delivery system you can set up your own more flexible system. Or you can build like a functionality via API on top of that. But that’s costly and you need a lot of tech capabilities or at least one technical partner on the team, I would say.
Fernando:
So I’m curious with whether you’re willing to share this. Which of those you ended up choosing?
Daniel:
Well, we did a mix of custom and one delete delivery system. So we took one delete delivery system and then we had some features that we still needed. We worked out like a homemade kind of functionality with them. And they were very cooperative, because it’s also in their interest. They want that feature that people need. So, we were very lucky there, actually.
Fernando:
That makes sense. So, in that sort of initial process, I mean, you hit some roadblocks with technology. But was there anything you did wrong that you learned from? And how did you overcome any of those tough spots?

What I Did Wrong

Daniel:
What I did wrong. Well, I think we were starting a little bit too fast and too aggressive. And technology was not ready, yet. We just really wanted to get it going, we had to team together. And we were very hungry. But we had a lot of technical problems. So, every time we got going and something was actually working, then again we had to shut it down because we had to fix something. And I think, if I would do it all over again, I would first go really sure that all the tech works flawlessly and in the proper way and start going from there.
Fernando:
So, this is interesting. How do you regulate lead quality? So, you’re literally, your businesses, you’re generating leads and how do you keep your buyers happy?

Keep Your Buyers Happy

Daniel:
So keeping the buyers happy is probably the most important thing in this industry. Simply because once you start running direct, you’re left at their mercy. By the end of the month, they could simply just not pay you or they can shave you. And return leads to you, scrub you. But usually, the buyers don’t want to do it. Because they want to make money with you, right? And most of those verticals, they have a very long conversion cycle. So, you start generating the lead and then there are factors like response rate, appointment rates, appointment show update rate, conversion rate in the end. So, it could take a buyer up to a month. And to realise that it’s actually losing money on you. That’s why it’s important to keep the buyer happy.

Change Your Conversion Goal

So that way you do it is just a few examples here. I mean in general, you need to change your conversion goal. It needs to be the same one as what your buyer has. If both of you optimise for the same thing, then it’s going to work. If you just optimise for cheap leads, it won’t. So, an example is, don’t be too aggressive in your ads. Be honest, tell the truth. Then the quality will be better. Tighten up your targeting, exclude maybe, younger people that have a higher chance of converting but will not do the sale down the road. And, one thing that we’re doing with some buyers, but it not all the buyers have the capabilities of doing so, is that we optimise on sub-ID with them. We actually send them leads, and then by the end of the conversion cycle, they’re gonna send over all the leads that actually converted to an end sale. We track that back to which campaign it was. And then we scale those up. So all of it comes down basically, to sacrificing ROI on the short term. But you gain something much more valuable in exchange, which is a relationship and a lot of leverage in the inner relationship with him. And you’re gonna do more money down the road.

Monitor Lead Status

Another thing that we did which was useful, was we had apps for exits after CRM. So we could actually monitor our lead statuses. And we saw it ourselves when the buyer had a problem. Then, we fixed it ourselves. So, without him even realising that it was a problem, we fixed it first. Because again, it is important for us that it works out for him, otherwise it won’t work out for us either. So, I think those are the main ways to keep the buyer happy.
Fernando:
Yeah, so I’m curious, are you doing this both on the web and on mobile or web only or?
Daniel:
Yeah, we’re doing both web and mobile. Actually, mobile is really great for lead gen. It’s simply because on mobile, there are not many ways to monetise the lead. I mean, there are, but it’s not easy right? You have to take out your credit card. And it’s a little bit cumbersome on the mobile. So with lead gen, you can kind of monetise mobile leads very efficiently. And so we do both web and mobile. And we see pretty much equally good results on both.
Fernando:
So, I guess there’s a few specifics within the context of managing lead quality, right? So, things like return leads, bad leads, fraud and so on, are the kinds of issues that you’re gonna hit. Which of those have caused you the most problems and how have you managed them?

Bad Leads

Daniel:
Okay. So, bad leads return, it’s part of the game I would say. It’s just one of the ways for the buyer to regulate you. Because it needs to back out. And, if it doesn’t back out, it just start scrubbing you and shaving you, because it wouldn’t make money otherwise. So, and first of all, test multiple buyers, always. So, you know really if he’s doing it just to squeeze out more profit or not. And, test him. Sign up as a lead yourself. And see and pretend to be on the phone to be a potential buyer, and if you catch him once, he will never do it again, believe me.
Fernando:
Yeah, I think that’s a good generic rule for pretty much everything is always test your own campaigns.
Daniel:
Always opt-in to your own offers. Yeah.
Fernando:
So, you went through some tough times at the beginning with technology. You figured out this stuff around the lead quality. At some point, you started to scale so that you got to be as big as you are today. How’d you do it?

Scaling

Daniel:
Alright, so scaling is always an exciting moment for everyone. But the main advice that I have here, is just don’t be greedy. On both from the sales side and also on the traffic side. So, on the sales side, if you’re sending to one of the clients, 1,000 leads per day, and then suddenly, the next day you’re sending 2,000, what happens is that will not have enough time to really work your leads properly. And that will actually destroy your profit margin. Yeah, it will destroy their profit margin. So that’s a big problem there.

Don’t Scale Too Hard

So the way to get around this, is in case you’re scaling too hard, first of all, don’t scale too hard. Do it slow, take it step by step. But if you must, then have fallback buyers in place. So, once you send too much volume to one buyer that you have, other buyers in place, so second tier buyers in place to catch that volume. On a traffic side, I think we all know that traffic sources, first of all, prioritise to fill up the budgets. So if you scale too hard, they will send you cheap clicks and conversion rate will suffer. If you do that, just always keep a close eye on your EPCs. And slowly, slowly, and gradually scale. And, one big problem when it comes to scaling to hard is that two things happen. First, the profit margins shrink. And second, the revenue grows. That means that you float, grows significantly. When you do it, don’t just look at the money like, “Okay, how much money can I make tomorrow.” You actually need to go and calculate exactly how this scale will affect your float and if you have enough money to handle it. Because if you’re gonna hit the full stop on the way, some serious damage that you can do there.
Fernando:
So, I’ve never actually gone through and done this Math. Is this a relatively straight-forward sort of Excel formula that you can use to figure out how much float you need to scale for time?
Daniel:
Well, luckily I’ve got an accountant. I’m not that smart.

What Is The Right Rate To Grow

Fernando:
Okay. And I’m curious, so when you say go slowly, don’t go too fast, are there are some rules of thumb that you use in terms of actual dollar amounts, or lead amounts, or ratios that you use to tell you, what’s the right rate at which to grow?
Daniel:
There’s just so many factors. It’s really hard to say a specific formula here. So for example, sometimes we scale one client stronger that has lower ROI. Simply because he has better payment terms for the float issue. Then, it depends also on the states. It depends on the demand of the buyers going back to the subject of keeping the buyer happy. Sometimes, you need to do them a favour, doing them a solid or give them what they ask for. So, it really depends on so many factors. You need to first evaluate the situation properly. And only then you can make these decisions.
Fernando:
Okay. So, as you’re looking at all these different traffic sources. Then in that context, do you like in-house traffic or do you like affiliate traffic?

Traffic: In-house Versus Affiliate

Daniel:
So I love in-house traffic because it gives me control. But affiliate traffic is fantastic because it gives you a sustainability. Having said that, whenever you decide to start bringing on affiliates, you need to be sure that you have an exceptional relationship with your buyer. Because the moment you bring an affiliate, you’re not in control of your traffic anymore. Okay, so when he does something shady or uncompliant that the buyer doesn’t like, if he knows that you have affiliates, he will understand. He will not blame you and it will not hurt the relationship. So for the same reason also, when you bring on affiliates, and also, the affiliates that we brought on were only people that we really, really trusted. They were friends from the industry for many years. And even today, we only bring on selected partners, people that we know and that are trustworthy. Just do not run in the risk that they do damage that will hurt us down the road.
Fernando:
Got it. I mean, everything else equaled. It sounds like everything else equal, you prefer in-house traffic but then you use affiliate traffic together to scale.
Daniel:
I think the healthy thing is the mix.
Fernando:
Right.
Daniel:
Because that will give you both control and stability.
Fernando:
You’re mentioning relationships as being really important. And I mean, relationships get talked about in this context all the time. But how do you approach the process of building relationships with the right people? How do you identify them, whether its traffic sources, publishers or what the case may be?

Start Behaving Like A Business

Daniel:
Okay. So I think the number one advice I have is, start behaving like a business. Go out there. Get a branded website, get business cards, get a LinkedIn page, get an office even if it’s just one of you, or two of you. Fake it until you make it. But if you want to build relationships, you need to first have a brand. And then once you have that ready, go find the email of that traffic source. Write them an email directly. Maybe, prepare a nice presentation about your company to give a very corporate feel. If they then don’t answer you, I would scout out on conferences. I would look up online which conferences they attend and just go there directly. And, if that doesn’t work, I would just fly over there and show up at their office. Just be persistent. Never give up until you find the right person to talk to. And once you do, what helped us initially was, we send them screenshots of other traffic sources in our ad spent that really helped to get the ball going. And once you start working together, there is really no need any more to be too pushy because they just care about ad spend. Once you start spending, they will naturally take you more seriously.

Follow Guidelines and Rules

But, what is important or at least what I do when I initially start working out with an account rep at the traffic source, I keep mentioning that it’s really important for us to follow their guidelines or their rules. There is nothing more traffic sources hate than affiliates who constantly try to push the limits. Which is a nice strategy on the short term. But again, if you’re going down that road, you want to really build like a long-term business. So you need to show them that you’re here to play along, that you’re here to play by the rules. And then you will have a relationship for many years, which will be very, very valuable.
Fernando:
Well, we’ve talked a little bit about how you kind of get your foot in the door. You sort of fly there. Are there any other approaches that you’ve found really useful to get that initial deal? Maybe on the advertiser side, is the approach different than it is traffic sources?

Understand The Ecosystem Of The Whole Vertical

Daniel:
Yeah, on the advertising side, it is different, I would say. The first thing I do on the advertiser side, is I try to study and understand the ecosystem of the whole vertical. I try to really understand who sells to who, and who is on the top of the chain, who is on the bottom of the chain. And I do that by talking to my current buyers, believe me they talk a lot. I talk to my competitors. I use LinkedIn, I look it up on the internet. And once I really understand, what does this market consists of, then I go to the right buyer first of all. So, I write them an email. If I see there is high potential, also I just fly over there. It always helps face-to-face, it gives a lot of value. And then, I think the advice that I have is just don’t be afraid to give out free samples.

Be Overly Generous, Don’t Be Afraid To Give Out Free Samples

I think the number one reason why high potential deals don’t work out is because the buyer is just afraid that the over-price on your leads. And he’s losing money on you down the road. So, just be overly generous. Present them with low-risk opportunity. And once it actually backs up for them on paper, and they see they’re making money with you, go in and ask for what it’s worth. Because then you got them, because they know that they can make money with you.
Fernando:
And is that sort of, part of your relationship or even part of the contract that you asked to see those financials, or somehow have visibility into their economics?
Daniel:
Well, I’m a big believer of transparency. When it comes to working with buyers, I share a lot from my situation. And actually in return, I ask a lot of information from theirs. I’m getting CRM access, I see the lead statuses, I see where they go and how many actually convert, what the response rates are. And so, I actually can tell if it works for them. And also, again it’s not a war, you know. A buyer and a seller should be a partner. And if you don’t find a buyer that behaves like that, just move on to next one because that’s the only way that can make this work. Both of you need to have the same goal down the road and you need to stick with it.

Who Do We Go After First

Fernando:
So when you’re, let’s say in the early, stages, you’ve just created this product and there’s presumably some lists of advertisers that you’ve identified, some of which are the big, 800-pound gorillas, right? Did you go after those guys first or did you go after smaller guys first or what was or how did you map out who to go after first? And what was that strategy?
Daniel:
That’s a good question. The 800-pound gorillas. They come with advantages and disadvantages. The 800-pound gorillas are bullies, okay. The big boys, they can just decide, “Well, we don’t need you anymore. We won’t pay you.” Also, they have very bad payment terms. They’re very pushy. It really depends on how ready you are for this. Like, if your traffic is stable and everything is going by plan and you feel strong enough to go for those, for the big leagues, then go for it straight up. But if you’re starting out, start with the smaller ones. They’re more desperate. They need your traffic more, they give you better payment terms. And, they work that leads harder on the phone. So, it really depends on your situation, It’s hard to give a definite answer here.
Fernando:
Well, it sounds like, start a little bit smaller and maybe with lower risk.

You Learn A Lot When You Start Slow

Daniel:
Yes, depends on your team. But this is always a good approach, definitely. Yeah. Also, sorry, you learn a lot when you start slower. Because this, again, keep talking with your buyers, constantly. The smaller ones and you’d ask them, “Who do you sell to, what you get?” Like you get more information about the industry. So, when you start with the smaller ones you can gradually go up to the big leagues.
Fernando:
Well, it sounds like you actually went from a relatively small operation to a pretty significant operation quite quickly. Can you talk a little bit about how you brought your team on? What the structure was that you had? Who you hired first and who next?

Where Do We Want To Be In A Year From Now

Daniel:
Okay so, before we even started out to hire, the first thing we did is we sat down and we mapped out our vision. Where do we want to be in a year from now? What is our goal in a year from now? And we really wrote it down on paper. Okay, I know this is flexible and this can change but this is where we wanted to be at. Then we built the departments for this vision. So, to support this vision, so we said, “Okay if we want to be there in a year from now, we need that many people in HR, we need a media team here, we need a teach team there, we need an accounting team for a collection.” Then, we took each of those departments and kind of reversed engineered them into today, what tasks or action items we actually have to do in order to get there in a year from now. Then, we picked out all those tasks that we can do actually today in order to get to our goal and we labelled them. Alright, and then we just analysed it. Because we’re media buyers after all, right? So we said, “Okay, if we have a lot of errands, we get an assistant. If we have a lot of collection to do, we get an accountant. And if we have a lot of media to do, then we get a media buyer.” And that way, you can always define and analyse the bottleneck in your business very accurately. Because for the hiring, there is no right or wrong answer. It depends on you, it depends on your situation, and also it really depends on your skill set and your partner skill set, of course.

The Bottlenecks

Fernando:
So that’s interesting. What were some of the bottlenecks that you hit along the way that you solved with hires?
Daniel:
First one we got was an accountant, definitely. Because there’s a lot of collection to do, a lot of small clients. So, you just run after money a lot. And keep in mind that this is a numbers business, okay. And you always had to be sure that the media, that you actually get the CPL’s in revenue that you’re gonna pay in revenue for you media or for your affiliates. Because you don’t always get paid on CPL. Often you get paid on CPA and you pay your affiliates on CPL. So there’s a lot of analysing to do, a lot of numbers. So, we actually got a really good accountant that could do both the collections for us, the projections for us, and also their analysis and the data analysis for us.
Fernando:
I’m curious whether you hired that person locally or whether you have an outsourced strategy?
Daniel:
He was outsourced. We were very lucky.
Fernando:
Oh that’s great. For folks starting out in this lead gen industry, there’s a lot more, sort of, legal and compliance issues I think than people realise. It’s probably worth going into it with their eyes open. So, can you talk a little bit about some of the issues that you faced or discovered?

Issues On Compliance

Daniel:
Yeah, compliance is huge. It’s a really, really big issue because before, you just send traffic to somebody else’s page. So, you were not held reliable for all the compliance issues there, especially in the US by the way, which is very, very strict. Now, you have the full responsibility here. And you need to comply with it. So, I think when it comes to compliance, you should split it up into two.

Compliance On Ads And Creatives

So, there is the ads and the creatives, which need to stay compliant. Which basically means don’t be deceptive. So, if a regulator would look at your ads and creatives, what he would try to understand is “What is the next impression a user gets from this advertisement?” Even if you have some nuggets of truth here and there, if the overall impression is deceptive, then you’re non-compliant. This especially gets complicated once you have your media buyers and they come up with their own ad copy. Then it can get very scary and dangerous. So, the advice that I would have there is to get a lawyer or attorney on a retainer that will review those from time to time. Basically you have 2 options. Either you’re gonna pay for an attorney before you get in trouble or after. But it’s cheaper if you pay the one before.
Fernando:
So that’s interesting. So you’re actually, in the business, you’re turning out hundreds of headlines over very short periods of time, are those all getting checked by a lawyer before they go out?
Daniel:
Yeah, well, we don’t blast out like hundred different angles a day, no. The angle usually stays the same. Maybe their wording changes up but we actually have a compliance lawyer in the US that reviews our ad copies and landing pages because this is really scary. If something goes wrong there, you can get in serious trouble. Especially in the US and especially in the lead gen areas that we are active in when it comes to finance and such.
Fernando:
They’re heavily regulated. That was gonna be my question. Whether those types of issues vary across different verticals?

Telephone Consumer Protection Act

Daniel:
Oh yes, they vary a lot on verticals. So, sometimes you need to be really careful and sometimes you can be a little bit more lenient. The second area is TCPA, which is the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. Yes. So, basically what that means is that you cannot just call leads without their consent. They need to opt in on your offer page because you need to be sure that you have that in place. And for that, in addition to that, there are two companies out there. One is called Lead ID and the other one is Trusted Form. So what they do is, they take some sort of screenshot and a timestamp to prove that your offer page was TCPA compliant by the time the user opted in. So whenever you have somebody complaining, “But I didn’t opt-in for this, why do you keep calling me?” Then, you can actually pull up their lead ID, which is a unique ID assigned to a lead. And you can just actually prove it to them and show them. That will keep you out of harm’s way. Because TCPA and violation can actually cost up to $10,000 in a fine per lead. So if you have a batch of like 100,000 leads, you can pay a lot.
Fernando:
I’m curious if folks in this space have gotten wiped out as a result of this?
Daniel:
Well, some of our buyers have very high losses.

When You’re Starting From Scratch

Fernando:
So, we’ve talked about a lot of issues that you faced as you scaled. And although it sounds like accounting and legal you need to think about relatively early on. But, for the folks in the room who would be starting this from scratch, what’s the step-by-step advice on, “Okay, I’ve made a decision to start my offer. What are the key things I need to go through between now and go?”

Test Out The Potential

Daniel:
Okay. So the advice that I would have is first, test out the potential. Don’t start and create a big company on just a hope or dream. First go out, test some verticals. See where you feel potential. Research the verticals very heavily. Understand where it is heading because you don’t want to build an offer and then it dies after a year. You want to know that this is gonna be an evergreen. That this is going to be around for a while or even better, growing.

The Solar Offer

Fernando:
Do you mind if I jump in there? So, if we put this in the context of your solar offer, what did that research look like? What was it about the vertical that you liked? How did you choose it?
Fernando:
This is actually a very good question. First, I did some research about the future of a fossil energy and reusable energy. And understood that there is a high demand, especially in the US to be more independent from fossil energy. So, that actually made my opinion very strong that this is going to be growing. And also, I saw the increase in market share year by year when it comes to residential solar. I actually bet on this horse, I would say. But on the other hand, I saw also that is making money today. So I said, worst case, I’m gonna have a cash cow. And best case, I’m gonna have a no, worst case, I’m gonna have a cash cow and I could maybe even sell this thing.
Fernando:
Sure, make sense. Okay. So you pick the vertical and…

Potential Partnership

Daniel:
The next advice that I would have is at least, for me, it helped me very much, is to partner up with people that have a complementary skill set. So for people that are affiliates and want to get started for example, in this space, I mean you’re currently sending traffic somewhere already. An offer owner needs traffic and traffic owner needs an offer. So that’s already a very good first point to find a partnership, a potential partnership. It will save you a long learning curve that we had to go through. If you already work with somebody who already has the whole lead delivery and distribution in place, in the first place.

Write A Business Plan

The next thing I would say is, write a business plan. Because this is a business. This is not just a campaign. So, take all the factors into consideration that we just talked about. That would be all the overhead cost, and the salaries, and the float. Calculate a 3-4 months learning curve in there even. And also opportunity cost that you lose by not running other campaigns. See how much money you need to do such a thing. It’s quite substantial. You need a lot of cash to get started there. And only then, when you are sure that you can handle it, start doing it. Because again, the same thing, if you run out of money in the middle, it can have very big consequences. It can be a big problem.
Fernando:
That’s interesting, so I think for a lot of people who get into affiliate marketing, it’s because they don’t have a large amount of capital to get started, right? So, the idea of starting your own offer, cost a lot of money like what are the big buckets of cost? Is it just the people that you’re hiring early on, and the monthly cost of having them on board? Are there other sources of cost that are kind of that upfront investment?

Costs That You Never Expected

Daniel:
Yeah, since you’re moving from being an affiliate to owning a company, you suddenly get hit by a lot of costs that you never expected. Office expenses, employees, pension fund for those employees, lawyers, contracts. There’s quite a good amount of overhead cost which you never had in the past. And suddenly, you have this. That’s why it is not something that a new affiliate should get started with. It is more of the next step after you have done successfully already in affiliate marketing. This would be the next step to keep growing.
Fernando:
Well, obviously, you figured these things out as you went. But looking back on it, would there have been a resource that would have helped you figure out like, what it would actually take to build out this offer from an HR standpoint and all this?
Daniel:
You mean in costs?
Fernando:
Yeah, I mean there’s a big investment, it sounds like. And so, how do I figure out what that’s gonna be? Did you read anything interesting or any blogs that you thought were valuable?
Fernando:
I try to project it as good as I can. Admittedly, I was off. It was more expensive than I thought it was initially. And so, you know, even keeping like a room for mistake of 20-30%. Because also, for me, it was new. But I just tried to understand from my previous experiences what it would take, and I wrote a business plan according to that.
Fernando:
Okay. So, you’ve got this business plan in place, you’ve picked your vertical and you hit go, right? What are some other things that you kind of need to do?

Be Aware That You Need A Lot Of Time

Daniel:
I would say the last thing that I would also give as an advice is be aware that you need a lot of time for this. This is going to be a full-time job. There’s no more being an affiliate on the beach, and running campaigns on the side, and going to party. You actually have a company now, you have responsibilities. And you need to dedicate yourself to this, full-time. And if you’re not willing to do it, don’t do it. If you are, then you’re all in here. That’s the big advice that I can give. Also, for anybody who is interested in more, I’m running around outside. And also, you can email me, [email protected]. I’m happy to give some advice.
Fernando:
Awesome. Should we take, I think we’ve got a few minutes. Should we take any questions from the audience? People who are interested in starting their own offers? Yes?
Audience:
When you first start picking offers to run, do you do a quick MVP test? Do you run it through an affiliate network? And then see if you get leads for solar and then test your own solar offer? Also, when you do get the leads, do you sell them the multiple buyers or just one buyer at a time kind of thing? Say, you have a stack of 100 leads for solar, do you spur some out based on who needs what or how does that work?

Affiliate Network And Leads

Daniel:
Okay, so first of all, about the first question about the network, right? The network was, so I just throw a lot of stuff against the wall and see what sticks. I don’t expect to be profitable anywhere. But I will see where I’m losing the least. And this is how I can measure where my potential lies at. So concerning your question about leads, there are different type of leads. There are exclusive leads, semi-exclusive leads and there are leads without restrictions. So according to that, what you arrange with your buyer and also whatever is TCPA-compliant by the way, which is a big thing, you cannot just go out there and sell it as much as you want. According to this, I make my decisions on how to deliver and distribute the leads.
Audience:
Okay, so you kind of get like a benchmark and then you figure out? Okay, I can work this.
Daniel:
Exactly, yes. That’s the way you can feel out the potential the best way, I would say.
Audience:
Okay, cool. Thank you.
Daniel:
You’re welcome.
Audience:
Alright. Hi. I had a question for us, affiliates running sales. It’s pretty new. At least, your own sales, how’s your experience with that? And is your office filled with salespeople or? Well, how do you think about it?

Affiliates Running Sales

Daniel:
Yeah, it’s definitely new. You’re very right. You start pitching people, you start selling to people. And you actually start getting sales people on board. And well yeah, it is a big part of this business. It is very important and it also requires a lot of research. Finding the buyers, looking for them. Again, what I mentioned before, understanding the ecosystem, understanding who sells to who, to go up the highest you can in the chain. Have sales people that understand that and really hunt for that and go after that. But yeah, it was a new experience for us, I agree and thanks.
Audience:
Nowadays, do you think your company is more like a sales organisation or marketing?
Daniel:
I think, I would consider myself as a media company, still. Yes.
Audience:
Thanks.
Daniel:
Thank you.
Fernando:
Are there any more questions out in the audience for Daniel? Okay. Well, so this has been great.
Daniel:
Thank you very much.
Fernando:
Yeah, absolutely.