Lately, I have been experimenting and moving my business in a different level. I pulled a Jonathan Volk and decided to expand my marketing mindset into the other businesses, such as the SaaS (software as a service) space . I have decided to move into the software space and came out with 2 software tools that I have been personally using, OfferSnitch.com and SplitPistons.com.
I also am in the learning phases of becoming my own advertiser and I recently signed contracts to get somethings moving. I am pretty excited about the moves I am doing but its a painful experience. With affiliate marketing, I can throw a campaign and see my ROI fairly quickly. With these new projects, its slow - especially if I am reinvesting my own money.
I have been learning a lot of new marketing methods and even taking in new advice. For example, with these softwares it really doesn't appeal to users that are starting in the online space, more so to marketers who already have a business - B2B. Most of the signups have been businesses rather than actual affiliates or marketers that are starting out.
Expanding my personal business has been talked about on this blog multiple times, but it is so easy to make money with affiliate marketing that I lose track, forgetting I want to move into other parts of marketing. Now that I am actually moving into other venues, I find myself relearning and understanding contracts, business discussions, forecasting long term, leveraging my network etc. I am even learning how to appeal more to b2b and in the past I never promoted to a b2b audience. So this is a first and learning is always a good part of online marketing.
Each phase has its own learning curve, just like when I started out in affiliate marketing, it is all about just jumping into it and learning as you go. Since I have a very good knowledge of how the affiliate space work, I can think with a much more experienced mindset than rather jumping into the idea. In the end, it is still a learning phase for sure as I am jumping in. I am only taking the knowledge of how I do lead gen, affiliate marketing, traffic diversification, etc.
I have been doing affiliate marketing for almost 5 years, being at my first Affiliate Summit was in Vegas of 08 (never missed one yet). I want to challenge myself, I mean I started to learn SEO in the beginning of this year. Such a sllloooowww process btw. I just want to expand, grow, and learn.
At this point in my marketing career I am a noob, learning and absorbing the different parts of marketing or the business side of what goes behind the affiliate marketing such as the advertiser side, the lead broker side, etc. I know how to find an offer and buy traffic base on demographic, then target the audience base on site or keywords, etc. I know how to generate leads and make money online.
Don't get me wrong I love affiliate marketing, without it I wouldn't know how to optimize traffic, find traffic, monetize traffic, learn how cpms work, learn to create direct response landing pages, etc. Affiliate marketing is a great place to learn everything about marketing, especially the paid traffic side. Even more so the friends I met along the way, an amazing asset by itself.
Ye shall be known as - noob.
