As you may know, a couple of months ago I made the move to escape the bitter cold Jersey winter to Miami. There are a couple of reasons I made the move (which I knew was going to be temporary from the beginning) and there are also a lot of things I’ve learned from it.

One of the main reasons I moved was to just start living on my own, pay rent and other living expenses which would hopefully motivate me to make more money (I need a little pressure), and be able to live without depending on anybody else to be there…in a sense to be 100% content with just being by myself. I know it sounds like I’m trying to play the card of misanthropic House, M.D. here, but it was and is a real goal of mine. If you can’t be happy with just you and all you have, then you can’t be happy no matter what other people bring into your life. It was also to learn a sense of responsibility – that if something happens the only person I have to blame is myself. I’m still working on this one and a lot of times it comes from the belief that we can control everything when we really can’t.

All this is not to say that I haven’t been out meeting people though. I’ve met quite a few affiliates here and even hosting a Meetup202 Miami. It was kind of on short notice, but nonetheless it seems pretty apparent that there are a lot of underground affiliates here that don’t really come out. Although, I might have to try getting a network to sponsor an open bar or something – that just might work  There is a meetup sponsored by a few networks going on next week, Feb. 10th in Delray Beach, FL, however. It looks like it’s going to be pretty big, so if you’re in the area check it out (sflaffiliatemeetup.com).

Something I realized while living here though is that there are very few people who live the lives that we affiliates do. Most people have a set routine that they can’t really break ever…get up, go to work, gym, dinner, sleep, and do it all over again the next day. On the other hand, as affiliates we really own our time. And that can be a good thing or a bad thing. For me, I hate to waste a nice day outside so sometimes I just end up spending the day out or just hitting the beach. I guess I’m still not used to the fact that it’s almost always nice here. But owning my hours and deciding to hit the beach takes a toll on how much work I get done. Yet, I feel guilty not taking advantage of the nice weather. It’s almost as if people that are in the rat race or in a daily grind at least have some direction. As an affiliate, it’s 100% up to you to figure out how you want to spend your day.

Another reason why our lifestyles are unlike any others is something that really rang true in Ian’s recent post. We as affiliates work alone for the most part and that can suck sometimes. Sure you can bounce ideas off someone on AIM, but that’s still not the same as having people around you that you can interact with. We miss a whole dynamic of social interaction that people with jobs have access to everyday to the point where it becomes the foundation of there social lives. Think about the office Christmas party, the lunch meetings, the happy hours, and even people dating and getting married to people they meet at work. That entire aspect is kind of missing from the affiliate lifestyle. And I think that’s why people look so forward to events like ASW and ASE. It’s because we get to go out there- out of our isolated office spaces, and actually interact and have fun with like-minded people twice a year. The point of this isn’t to depress anybody out there, but just kind of bring to light how different a full-time affiliate’s life is. Now I’ve never worked a corporate job like some of my friends have and are, but I can definitely imagine them having a lot more of a social experience at work. Maybe not making as much money, but definitely having a better social experience on a day-to-day basis.

These are just my ramblings for now that I thought I had to get out there. Maybe some of you guys have gone through and experienced the same kind of things. Let me know what you think in the comments.

Back with another interview for the first full week after ASW 2011, at which I had the chance to hang out with Jeremiah Cooper, owner of Wolf Storm Media. These guys have some of the best affiliate network ratings I’ve seen on AffiliatePaying.com and I can understand why after hanging out with them. They really know how to treat their affiliates (and non-affiliates) and are just an around group of good guys who are there to see you succeed. I got to hang out with them as we were heading off to the first night of partying at the Summit, and everyone was starving after a really long day and Jeremiah hooked us up with at an overpriced pizza restaurant at the Wynn as we were looking for a really quick bite to eat ($30 plain pies ftw lol). After we ate, we headed off to the Affiliate Ball where Wolf Storm Media was one of the sponsors. I chilled with them at there table for a bit and got to talking with Jeremiah’ about what his network was all about. They really stood out to me and I think everybody can gain a little bit by learning more about Jeremiah and Wolf Storm Media. Here’s the interview (he has some great insight on what it means to diversify and when you should):

Can you tell everyone a little bit about yourself and how you came to start Wolf Storm Media?

Hey Rohail – first off I wanted to thank you for taking the time to interview me. Hopefully your readers will enjoy it – here we go. My name is Jeremiah Cooper and I’ve been in the industry for several years now, mainly as an affiliate up until the past 7 months.

I’ve always wanted to start my own network – but never really had the time or experience. Over the years I noticed that I was helping affiliates more and more, from the various coaching forums and other ways that they managed to get ahold of my AIM.

I figured that it was time that I started taking my affiliate help to the next level – so I decided to launch a network. It’s been a great ride so far and we’re looking to take it to the next level as a network in 2011!

Is there a story behind the name Wolf Storm Media? (I personally think it’s a cool name)

Honestly it’s not a very interesting story – it’s just a name that I came up with. After I had the rest of the business plan ready for the network and had no name for it – I realized I should get on that.

I was trying to come up with something brandable, and easy to remember. Animals are typically pretty memorable so I started thinking of what animal I could use. I went through and decided that wolves were pretty badass so that was my starting point. I honestly don’t remember how I thought of the storm aspect – but I remember thinking that a wolf with a lightning storm behind him for a logo would look pretty sweet.

Wolf Storm Media was born.

How do you guys see the affiliate landscape as it currently is and where do you see things going in the industry?

The industry is still growing – and it’s not showing any signs of slowing down. You’ll see plenty of posts about how the sky is falling just about every day but that’s not the case at all.

Affiliates will start working on longer term campaigns, and building more assets if they want to maintain their record setting profits. There will always be affiliates that are out after the quick buck – but I think that establishing a lasting business will be the way to go in affiliate marketing very soon.

As an affiliate you should be building out both short and long term campaigns. There’s nothing wrong with running campaigns that make a bunch of money but die off in a few days or weeks, but you should also spend part of your time building campaigns and sites that will last the test of time.

What kinds of offers do you see doing well right now? Are you seeing a shift in the kinds of offers being promoted?

We have a wide range of offers, because we have a wide range of affiliates. I’m definitely noticing some trends as our networks grows – but the top offers are doing fairly well at solidifying themselves.

When we first launched the network – most of our traffic came in on our strong staple of email/zip submits. It seems like our affiliates are growing with us – because the network is seeing a lot more dating and mobile being promoted now. Email/zip submits are still strong, but dating has become our top niche both internally and for our affiliates.

I think that we’ll see a shift to even more lead generation style offers like insurance, debt, financial and other long term niches. We’re focusing on acquiring as many lead generation style offers as we can this year – outside of the typical dating/mobile offers that we have now.

What would you say is the single most important factor in a new affiliate becoming a success? If someone joined your network today, how would you help them grow?

Focus and dedication – most affiliates give up or try too many different things. The highest volume affiliates that we have run several niches very well and they don’t stray away from those niches.

Diversity is critical as well – but when you are first starting out you don’t have anything to diversify. We help our affiliates by giving them access to our private training area, which is a growing staple of guides for our affiliates use.

We have guides from the basics such as setting up Prosper202 and learning about demographic targeting, all the way to traffic source specific guides for Facebook/PoF, CPV and more.

We’re working on launching a much larger training area in the coming months – and we have someone working full time on that so that we can provide the highest quality training possible.

I had the pleasure of hanging out with you and the rest of the Wolf Storm Media team at ASW 2011. It seems like you guys always treat your affiliates right. Did you guys find that it was a successful event and are you looking forward to meeting new and old affiliates at ASE?

The pleasure was mine – it was great meeting with you and all of the other affiliates! We definitely do our best to treat our affiliates right – and we want to hear about it if we’re not!

This was actually my first Affiliate Summit and I would definitely say it was a major success. I met up with a lot of people that I have been talking to online for years, I met lots of new affiliates and networked all day and night.

We’ll have more of our team with us at the next Summit and we’ll be ready to network some more!

What makes Wolf Storm Media different from all the other networks out there and what would you tell someone who was looking to join a network today?

Every network seems to tout the same exclusive payouts and top offers. We do our best to provide the highest level of support in the industry. Our account managers and myself are always available to affiliates and we put affiliate support above everything else.

I think that our training definitely helps us stand out – and many of our affiliates agree. We offer weekly payouts to all affiliates with small thresholds, and every affiliate is given a dedicated account manager that is also an affiliate.

We offer competitive payouts – and we encourage affiliates to split test between other networks. We’re here to make you more money – and I only want your traffic if it’s making you the most money that it can.

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Want to thank Jeremiah for taking part in the interview. If you’d like to learn more go to Wolf Storm Media, and learn more about their inclusive training program here.

Wow what a conference. Affiliate Summit just keeps getting better and better. If my memory serves me right, there were 4,600 attendees this time around. And not only that, the keynote speakers once again did not disappoint. I caught Drew Whitman, author of Cashvertising, and even though I’ve read the book I still learned a lot from his keynote. I kind of wish I could of stole his powerpoint. He was an all around entertaining speaker and really took us to the core of the business, which is direct advertising and human psychology. It doesn’t matter whether you’re an affiliate, merchant, advertiser, or network. Everybody in the business is dealing with how to successfully advertise and that takes a look at what makes customers click – something Mr. Whitman covered very well.

I checked out the meet market the first day, which was absolutely packed and bustling, followed by a few sessions. There were a lot of sessions focusing on mobile marketing which I liked because that’s an area I am focusing on currently. There were also a few sessions on how to profit from trend spotting and popular culture, which I also found really interesting. It’s amazing how much money has been made just by being able to spot a trend and hop on before anybody else does.

Aside from the sessions, there were the dinners and the parties of course. I hit up the IANteract dinner with Ian Fernando, which was sponsored by Executive Fortunes, and hosted at Switch at the Encore. Everybody filled themselves up with great looking appetizers and a juicy steak. That and we had a great round table of affiliates and others in the industry including Riley Pool, Brian Evans of Daily Conversions, Eric Nagel, and Ryan Gray to name a few.

Monday night was the Affiliate Ball party sponsored primarily by Profit Kings Media at the Rio Crown Nightclub. I chilled there with a few affiliates and a couple networks until we couldn’t take much more of the pre-show rappers. We were waiting for Three Six Mafia to come out, but eventually we made our way to Marquee. Overall, I would have liked to see better planning with the parties. Maybe there should be an Affiliate Summit party planning committee  I say this because both the Affiliate Ball and the Tip off party were happening the same night. Would have been cool if I got to attend both. Most of the parties that I’ve been to during ASW have been pretty legit, and hopefully Affiliate Ball will impress at ASE (apparently Snoop Dogg is in order).

That’s all I have for now. All I can say is it was a great conference, especially being at the Wynn. I’m glad about the new location and hope that next year I’ll be staying at one of the big suites there =)   Thanks Shawn Collins and Missy Ward for putting together another successful Affiliate Summit and it was nice to meet old friends and new affiliates at the show. Also have to thank the three or four people that came up to me and said they read my blog (I must have hit the big time huh? lol kidding.) I appreciate every reader and it’s always great meeting them in person!

I know I haven’t blogged a personal update in a while, but here’s a quick one.

If you know me, you probably know that I’ve moved down to Miami for a bit. The weather down here is certainly nicer and so far it’s been awesome. We’ll see how long I want to stay down here though and what my next move will be. When I first moved down here, I thought it’d be easier than it is to connect with affiliates in the area.

In fact though, it seems that a lot of the affiliates here like to stay underground even though some do come out to the occasional show (AffCon 2010 in Miami, which I attended a couple days after moving here). And I know for a fact that there are a lot of affiliates and advertisers in the area. I hosted a kind of impromptu Meetup202 Miami a couple weeks after I got down here in hopes of getting it going again (it seemed as though meetups had come to a halt, and now I kind of see why). However, I haven’t given up hope, and I think I’m down to make another attempt- this time with more planning and perhaps a sponsor or two. I’ve already talked to a network that’s willing to sponsor it and let us use their rooftop bar.

There’s more I have to say about living down here, but I think I’ll save that for another post. I just want to let everyone know that I’ll be in Vegas for ASW this weekend, and if you’re looking to meetup shoot me an email or use the contact link at the top of the page. If you aren’t already, follow me on twitter so you can stalk me at the conference. Also, let me know if you want to set up a meet for lunch, because I literally have nothing planned for this conference as I decided to go really last minute (hey, I like this weather and its snowing in Vegas). Looking forward to a good time and meeting new affiliates. ASW FTW!!

What’s up? Another awesome interview for you guys today. I’m going to keep the intro short because for one, it’s 3am and I have another packed day of AffCon 2010 Miami to attend to in five hours and two, because this guy needs no introduction. Here’s what Ralph Ruckman aka Ruck, Convert2Media‘s main man had to say in response to my questions:

1. First of all congrats Ruck on all your success with P90X, I think everybody’s inspired by you and wonder where you get the time to dedicate yourself to working out AND run a successful network. SO what’s your secret?

No real secret to completing the P90x and Insanity courses. I was in terrible shape, facing personal depression and exercising gave me sort of a coping mechanism to deal with a lot of crap. It still does. I recently begun P90x and Insanity again but it’s on a less aggressive scale. More of a “stay tuned” type regimen versus wanting to lose a lot of weight.

2. I saw more than a few faces at the C2M booth at Ad:Tech NY, and I think it’s safe to say that something good is brewing at C2M with the quality of the new players added to the team. Among some of them that I’m familiar with are Rob Adler, Ryan Gray, and Kiley Lenstrom. What roles do you see these guys playing at C2M and how do they incorporate into your vision of the future?

C2M recently went thru a tracking platform migration into Cake Marketing and during this it was noticed the amount of inactive publishers on the platform. With so many networks out there affiliates have a variety of options of who they want to work with so we decided to move these inactives around into our system and really only work with active publishers. For us with the ones we had active, we just didnt have the man-power to handle all the active publishers so we went after some of the well known guys in the industry to accomodate us on publisher relationships and the consultant side of the business. As C2M takes on more active publishers these guys will play vital roles in their affiliate clientle to have the knowledge to hand down to publishers to increase their loyalty and business with C2M.

3. You’ve been hinting at something new coming to C2M on your UStream sessions. From what I understand, it’s supposed to help affiliates learn the advertiser side of the business and teach them step-by-step how to launch their own offers. Is that accurate and is there anything else you can spill at this point about what’s to come?

One of the easiest ways to build an affiliate marketing business is to build out what looks to be an advertisers offer and arbitrage the backends with other affiliate  offers. Build an affiliate business with “legs” so to speak. Something we’ve been teaching select affiliates since the start of C2M but maybe something we will be releasing on a much more public level maybe later on. At this point, there is a lot going on, so wont really go into it.

4. I’m always keeping up with C2M’s killer emails with tips and new offers. From gaming to scholarships you guys are always on top of it. What verticals do you see performing the best in 2011? Any predictions for the new year in terms of the industry?

Gaming will continue to go up but I’m not so sure on the Performance side. Dating will remain a strong vertical in 2011 along with bizopp, surveys and education.  The offers that have been around for a long time are the sure fire bets for 2011. You can count that lead gen will be here to stay but more entertainment traffic offers like psychic offers and horoscopes will probably go thru a large trend.

5. I see that you guys will be representing at AffCon 2010 in Miami. I’ll be down there as well (moving to Miami). How has being a network that always puts its relationships first, whether it be by attending trade shows or pinging affiliates on AIM, and really being one of the first networks to offer solid tips and tactics to affiliates helped C2M grow?

By attending trade shows and putting relationships first it’s really help on the whole “persona” effect on C2M. Even with a lot of publishers and bloggers who dont actually run offers with C2M, we have been able to pull business just from their referrals and shout outs. Offering solid tips and tactics is a double edge sword because you get inactive affiliates getting your tips and running elsewhere but we just focus on the positive aspect that  affiliates running with us appreciate these tips, use them to go into other verticals and ultimately increase their business as well as ours.

6. Along with the new features at C2M we’ve been hinted to about regarding being an advertiser, are we also going to see something take place of the C2M coaching forums and specific-offer training?

This is still up for grabs. Would I like to go into a full flege coaching program to scoop that piece of the pie out there with inexperienced publishers turning into solid affiliates? Yes, absolutely. Has it been talked about ALOT? Yes of course. Is it set in stone? No, not at this point. One way or another though you will probably see me involved in some type of coaching program. I’ve ran my own communities and moderated other communities such as Wickedfire since I been online so I do like that atmosphere.

7. You and your team have worked with a variety of affiliates, amongst which I’m sure you’ve seen some who see initial success and grow into even bigger affiliates and others who see initial success and then get lazy and live off their one-time successful campaign. What keeps the first group going? How do you prevent laziness that arises as a result of success?

The first group tend to be more business oriented and will start to get into other things to build their bottom lines. The lazy ones stick to what’s working and ride it out. I’ve done both, I still do both. Laziness is hard to prevent, when times are good, you want to of course enjoy them. You have to go thru the good times and the bad to really find what you want. If you want to promote that hot rebill offer till you cap it so be it, however the publishers who use their profits to build out other things, will be the ones around for years to come.

8. Where do you see Convert2Media in five or ten years? I know that C2M was one of the first networks I worked with and you guys really helped me grow as an affiliate. In your own words, what makes you guys better than the competition and why should affiliates be running with C2M (obvious answer here)?

Imagining Convert2media in 5-10 years is hard. With the network landscape changing so drastically this year, it’s hard to say. Do we plan to leave? No, we are still building business everyday. Our service really speaks for itself. You dont find people talking about C2M stiffing publishers, and you dont find them talking about our managers being lazy and not being able to help them. On the network side of C2M, publishers and advertisers, that’s what matters and that’s where our focus and efforts go. Some networks want to build out their ad agency, search marketing sectors, social media sectors and blah blah blah. When you come to C2M, you as a publisher better be prepared to work, because we just dont work with everyone. 1 out of 10 publishers get accepted and at the end of the day much like publishers wanted to work with a dedicated network, we as a network want to work with those dedicated publishers and that’s what matters.

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I just wanna say thanks to Ruck for taking the time to do this interview. If you guys aren’t already running with Convert2Media you guys are losing out…I’m serious. Check out C2M’s blog here and click here to see if you qualify to become a C2M affiliate (learned that one from Ruck  )

Affiliate Summit West 2011 is coming up faster than you think.

Here are five reasons why you need to go to ASW this year.

1. The keynote speaker is Drew Eric Whitman, author of Cashvertising. Whitman is the modern day expert on direct advertising. His book was one of the first I read on direct response strategies, before it even spread like wildfire in the affiliate marketing community. Seriously, the stuff he wrote in Cashvertising makes you realize how many factors in your advertising determine whether a person buys your product or service or doesn’t buy your product or service.  By the way, if you haven’t read Cashvertising yet you need to.

I don’t have my own review on the book, but here’s Shawn Collins, author of Affiliate (Tip) and one of the founders of Affiliate Summit, doing a quick video review of Cashvertising.

2. Brian Solos is also a keynote speaker. His blog, BrianSolos.com, is among the top 1.5% of blogs on Technorati. He’s a contributor to TechCrunch, BrandWeek, and Mashable and is recognized for paving the way for social media and PR 2.0.

Check out this (somewhat dramatic) video to get an idea of what’s in store for his ASW keynote.

3. It’s being held at the Wynn and it’s Vegas.

4. An unmatched opportunity for networking coupled with partying. Let’s face it, people come to Vegas to have a good time and affiliates are no exception. I met some of my closest friends in the industry at my first ASW in 2009.

5. It’s starting to get ridiculously cold in Jersey and elsewhere in the North East. Maybe that fact along with Spearmint Rhino should account for #5 for some of you =P

Just a quick post here and shout out to Profit Kings Media.

They sent me an iPad earlier this week for doing over 50k in revenue for September.
If you guys aren’t already on PKM, sign up today. Yousif’s always been great at getting me the offers I want at the payout I want. Not to mention, his network as some pretty sick rewards. See for your self right here: PKM Rewards

Check out PKM today and tell Yousif I sent ya, he’ll hook you up =)