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- Apr 17, 2018
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The response to my last interview with Servando Silva was so awesome that I immediately started considering who from the community I should interview next. One guy came to mind immediately, Brent Dunn (@Morticai).
It's likely that even if you didn't know Brent before he joined affLIFT, it's likely you have landed on his blog (PPCMode) in your affiliate marketing research. In fact, I first talked to him in 2015 when he emailed me to participate in an expert roundup he was doing for his blog then.
As you'll see from his answers below, Brent knows his stuff. He's been doing affiliate marketing for awhile now and he's shared a ton of great information that has benefitted a lot of affiliates over the years. He's exactly the kind of person I want in our community and needless to say, I appreciate him being here.
Read his responses below and I'm sure if you reply with some questions of your own, he'll be happy to answer them
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How much is the most you have made in a single day with affiliate marketing?
Running as a solo affiliate I've made $18k in a single day doing a direct buy.
When I was running with a team we were just $3k short of a $90k.
Having a big day comes down to a lot of luck. The stars aligned in both cases where the offer converted like fire due to a fresh database or the advertiser not knowing the KPIs and over paying per conversion.
What is the most you've lost in a single day? I know for my own experience, I try to block out losses pretty quickly, but give me an estimate if you can't remember.
Well sadly it was the day after my best day ironically... I got hyped up from how well the offer was converting and setup a few more direct buys. Problem is it crashed my server and I had no way of pausing the traffic. It was a little after 24 hours that I finally got the upgraded server and domain DNS to propagate. At the end of it all I was down a little over $20k and got a bit trigger shy on doing future buys.
The lesson I learned there was to be more calculated even when things are going well. Make sure all your ducks are in a row before scaling to quickly.
What is your favorite hobby?
Video games are my favorite hobby and worst enemy. I have the habit of going hard on whatever I do... That means if I play a game I truly enjoy it's very easy for me to do... nothing else. So I avoid them as much as possible these days.
Other than that I really enjoy learning. Reading, courses, etc in mostly Economics, Psychology, Business / Marketing.
What is 1 skill you've learned since starting affiliate marketing that has helped you the most with getting your campaigns profitable?
There are very few professions that you can work as hard as possible for days or weeks and still not make money. Even worse you can end up losing money each of those days.
Most people I've learned view money as the things they can buy. The main skill that has both helped my mental state and improve as a media buyer is viewing money as a video game. It has to be just a number with no other emotion tied to it. I still get excited on really profitable days and depressed on days I get my ass kicked. But by viewing money in this way, allows me to test properly and scale quickly once I do find a winner.
The biggest screw ups I've had in this space was always due to emotion hijacking my common sense.
I saw you were tweeting and doing videos about crypto. How'd that work out for you?
In terms of the success of the videos it went really well. Economics is something I know quite a bit about and it blended well into Crypto.
I'm a big believer that our current monetary system is unsustainable, which can be proven by every country being in massive amounts of debt.
I've been running trading bots for a little over a year now in Crypto and even though the space fell on it's face, I haven't really lost or gained anything in terms of dollars, but my holdings continue to grow.
What is your favorite blog post you've ever written? Which one has gotten you the most traffic?
My favorite post would have to be my pay per call marketing guide. That was the post that kind of set the stage for me to up my quality with my posts as much as possible. I just had a lot of fun with it by adding the random ass cartoons and the structure of the post. It ultimately became one of my largest posts in terms of traffic and subscribers very quickly after posting it.
What is 1 thing we can add to affLIFT to make it better? This can be something the community does or something I do personally to make the forum better.
Honestly, you're doing a ton of stuff right. The only thing I see as an issue (which all forums have this) if your user to post ratio. affLift has a ton of users but many of them are what I call lurkers. I was a lurker for many of my earlier years because I was nervous I had nothing to bring to the conversation. Ironically one of the things that really improved my knowledge and ultimately helped me succeed in this space was just always asking questions in forums.
So some type of gamification of the forum that could help motivate people to post. Different prestige badges, perhaps a private webinar for everyone that posted that month, etc.
What is your favorite book you have read recently?
I've read this book before but just actually finished it again last night: Pre-Suasion by Robert B. Cialdini
He also wrote the book Influence. They are both Psychology books but are extremely helpful for any marketer.
What is your least favorite part about affiliate marketing?
I would have to say the mental teeter totter of the day-to-day. Seeing how much you're making or losing that day put you into a stress or manic state no matter how seasoned you are. It's very easy to judge our own self worth based on how well we are doing that day.
What traffic source are you most excited to test this year?
I was a bit late to the party but I've been going hard on push traffic the last month. Honestly, I think push is going to be very time limited before Google lays down the hammer, so I've been putting a lot of time into testing what works and scaling. It's been one of the smoothest types of traffic to get profitable on that I've seen for a longtime. Back when app push on places like Airpush, Leadbolt, etc was the only other time I've had this many successful campaigns this quickly.
I've had a few push lists for various niche sites I own but never really thought to make one just for running offers too it. So I am in the process of making my own niche specific lists just to run offers. The churn and burn method lol.
I see you wearing those sweet glasses in your avatar and videos. What are they and where can I get a pair?
Ha! The story with those glasses is the Howard Stern method (any publicity is good publicity). Before these glasses I was wearing gunners in my videos and noticed a lot more people would comment on my videos / posts to say how cool they were or to be a hater. So I had to up the "douche scale" when I started making my Crypto videos.
They're called Pit Vipers and their marketing is at a whole new level: https://pitvipersunglasses.com/
Where do you see the industry in 3-5 years?
Without attempting to sound like a hipster... It's going to continue to become more mainstream. If you look back 5-10 years most people didn't really know much about affiliate marketing. It's safe to say that has changed quit a bit.
That means to be successful will require a few more steps due to competition increasing. This is already true in a lot of niches, but I think the real winners will be those who turn their campaigns into entire businesses. By creating content such as Youtube videos, email lists, push lists, blogs, etc.
The other possibility is we'll have another new device such as the smartphone and the computer before that , which will change the game. It may be Virtual Reality or Brain Machine Interfacing who knows, but when that new device comes out the first movers to learning how to monetize it in terms of ads will make big bucks.
What is one question I should have asked you that I haven't? Please answer it as well.
I guess a good question to ask would be: "Do you have any tips for someone just getting started in the space?"
If you're just starting out I would lower your exceptions on yourself in the beginning. Most people set a monetary goal on their selves before even running their first campaign. Making a goal such as "make $100 a day" when just starting out most likely will set you up for failure.
Set simple goals such as "learn how to use a tracker" "setup my first campaign to understand how traffic works, etc" will help you stay in the game long enough to actually gain the skills you need to succeed.
It's likely that even if you didn't know Brent before he joined affLIFT, it's likely you have landed on his blog (PPCMode) in your affiliate marketing research. In fact, I first talked to him in 2015 when he emailed me to participate in an expert roundup he was doing for his blog then.
As you'll see from his answers below, Brent knows his stuff. He's been doing affiliate marketing for awhile now and he's shared a ton of great information that has benefitted a lot of affiliates over the years. He's exactly the kind of person I want in our community and needless to say, I appreciate him being here.
Read his responses below and I'm sure if you reply with some questions of your own, he'll be happy to answer them
--------------
How much is the most you have made in a single day with affiliate marketing?Running as a solo affiliate I've made $18k in a single day doing a direct buy.
When I was running with a team we were just $3k short of a $90k.
Having a big day comes down to a lot of luck. The stars aligned in both cases where the offer converted like fire due to a fresh database or the advertiser not knowing the KPIs and over paying per conversion.
What is the most you've lost in a single day? I know for my own experience, I try to block out losses pretty quickly, but give me an estimate if you can't remember.Well sadly it was the day after my best day ironically... I got hyped up from how well the offer was converting and setup a few more direct buys. Problem is it crashed my server and I had no way of pausing the traffic. It was a little after 24 hours that I finally got the upgraded server and domain DNS to propagate. At the end of it all I was down a little over $20k and got a bit trigger shy on doing future buys.
The lesson I learned there was to be more calculated even when things are going well. Make sure all your ducks are in a row before scaling to quickly.
What is your favorite hobby?Video games are my favorite hobby and worst enemy. I have the habit of going hard on whatever I do... That means if I play a game I truly enjoy it's very easy for me to do... nothing else. So I avoid them as much as possible these days.
Other than that I really enjoy learning. Reading, courses, etc in mostly Economics, Psychology, Business / Marketing.
What is 1 skill you've learned since starting affiliate marketing that has helped you the most with getting your campaigns profitable?There are very few professions that you can work as hard as possible for days or weeks and still not make money. Even worse you can end up losing money each of those days.
Most people I've learned view money as the things they can buy. The main skill that has both helped my mental state and improve as a media buyer is viewing money as a video game. It has to be just a number with no other emotion tied to it. I still get excited on really profitable days and depressed on days I get my ass kicked. But by viewing money in this way, allows me to test properly and scale quickly once I do find a winner.
The biggest screw ups I've had in this space was always due to emotion hijacking my common sense.
I saw you were tweeting and doing videos about crypto. How'd that work out for you?In terms of the success of the videos it went really well. Economics is something I know quite a bit about and it blended well into Crypto.
I'm a big believer that our current monetary system is unsustainable, which can be proven by every country being in massive amounts of debt.
I've been running trading bots for a little over a year now in Crypto and even though the space fell on it's face, I haven't really lost or gained anything in terms of dollars, but my holdings continue to grow.
What is your favorite blog post you've ever written? Which one has gotten you the most traffic?My favorite post would have to be my pay per call marketing guide. That was the post that kind of set the stage for me to up my quality with my posts as much as possible. I just had a lot of fun with it by adding the random ass cartoons and the structure of the post. It ultimately became one of my largest posts in terms of traffic and subscribers very quickly after posting it.
What is 1 thing we can add to affLIFT to make it better? This can be something the community does or something I do personally to make the forum better.Honestly, you're doing a ton of stuff right. The only thing I see as an issue (which all forums have this) if your user to post ratio. affLift has a ton of users but many of them are what I call lurkers. I was a lurker for many of my earlier years because I was nervous I had nothing to bring to the conversation. Ironically one of the things that really improved my knowledge and ultimately helped me succeed in this space was just always asking questions in forums.
So some type of gamification of the forum that could help motivate people to post. Different prestige badges, perhaps a private webinar for everyone that posted that month, etc.
What is your favorite book you have read recently?I've read this book before but just actually finished it again last night: Pre-Suasion by Robert B. Cialdini
He also wrote the book Influence. They are both Psychology books but are extremely helpful for any marketer.
What is your least favorite part about affiliate marketing?I would have to say the mental teeter totter of the day-to-day. Seeing how much you're making or losing that day put you into a stress or manic state no matter how seasoned you are. It's very easy to judge our own self worth based on how well we are doing that day.
What traffic source are you most excited to test this year?I was a bit late to the party but I've been going hard on push traffic the last month. Honestly, I think push is going to be very time limited before Google lays down the hammer, so I've been putting a lot of time into testing what works and scaling. It's been one of the smoothest types of traffic to get profitable on that I've seen for a longtime. Back when app push on places like Airpush, Leadbolt, etc was the only other time I've had this many successful campaigns this quickly.
I've had a few push lists for various niche sites I own but never really thought to make one just for running offers too it. So I am in the process of making my own niche specific lists just to run offers. The churn and burn method lol.
I see you wearing those sweet glasses in your avatar and videos. What are they and where can I get a pair?Ha! The story with those glasses is the Howard Stern method (any publicity is good publicity). Before these glasses I was wearing gunners in my videos and noticed a lot more people would comment on my videos / posts to say how cool they were or to be a hater. So I had to up the "douche scale" when I started making my Crypto videos.
They're called Pit Vipers and their marketing is at a whole new level: https://pitvipersunglasses.com/
Where do you see the industry in 3-5 years?Without attempting to sound like a hipster... It's going to continue to become more mainstream. If you look back 5-10 years most people didn't really know much about affiliate marketing. It's safe to say that has changed quit a bit.
That means to be successful will require a few more steps due to competition increasing. This is already true in a lot of niches, but I think the real winners will be those who turn their campaigns into entire businesses. By creating content such as Youtube videos, email lists, push lists, blogs, etc.
The other possibility is we'll have another new device such as the smartphone and the computer before that , which will change the game. It may be Virtual Reality or Brain Machine Interfacing who knows, but when that new device comes out the first movers to learning how to monetize it in terms of ads will make big bucks.
What is one question I should have asked you that I haven't? Please answer it as well. I guess a good question to ask would be: "Do you have any tips for someone just getting started in the space?"
If you're just starting out I would lower your exceptions on yourself in the beginning. Most people set a monetary goal on their selves before even running their first campaign. Making a goal such as "make $100 a day" when just starting out most likely will set you up for failure.
Set simple goals such as "learn how to use a tracker" "setup my first campaign to understand how traffic works, etc" will help you stay in the game long enough to actually gain the skills you need to succeed.
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