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If this is true, this is sad. I was staring down the barrel of civil and criminal charges with an 8 figure fine, merchant banks ripping $1.5m in reserves, and horrible media coverage... and still paid off multi six figures in affiliate commissions down to the penny before winding down. When you pay off your affiliates and traffic sources even at times like that, they will work with you again. Brutal if this is true, hope it's not. 🤦‍♂️

Some mindsets are different. I tend to be cautiously optimistic but have become much more pragmatic in recent years due to stories like those below. These near exits would have ended very well had I sold to the first reasonable cash in hand buyer: 1) Subscription brand that did ~$50M in 2.5 years. Was on a down trend, I was offered between $5-$8M by several buyers. I chose the guy who I felt had the best chance with succeeding in that model. He was a VP of a bank. Turns out the FBI had him on their radar for forging over $10M in loans. I found out too late, the rest of the deals were cooked at that point. Lesson there was set a hard cap on the due diligence timeline and don't expect brokers to look to deep into someone. 2) Built the 50th largest website in the world (larger than Buzzfeed at one time, 1.6B all time visits) in one year during the viral site bubble. Competitors with half our revenue sold for $30M. One larger one sold for $100M. We missed the window and also allowed tire kickers. Lesson there is if the goal is to exit and you're in a bubble market, sell when it's very healthy and in an industry hype trend. 3) DTC brand of mine that had $1.5M in debt and a neg P&L was still offered $3M for an exit because the brand was and is still very strong. I turned it down because the deal was structured that initial payment would only cover the debt, and the rest was on a payout structure that might not be realized. Lesson there... hmm, one could say don't be a fukin' idiot, but I still own this brand and it's sloooowwwly turning around. Lol ask me in a couple years. One thing I can say though when it comes to private buyers. DO NOT tolerate tire kickers. Put a deadline on due diligence, and an aggressive one if they expect the LOI to be exclusive. I missed a couple of windows because of tolerating this nonsense. And obviously, run the business continually as if you don't have a buyer on the table, don't lose sight into why they are interested in the first place.

A lot of people up in arms about course sellers/bizopp today after the AppMafia vid dropped, and a week after the largest bizopp launch in history by Harmozi. I do some things in iGaming currently as well as ecomm. iGaming gets painted broadly with a certain brush. I'll tie into this further below. So, I've always seen both sides of the info product debate. Back in 2011 and 2013, I had two courses that were considered the top for traffic generation at the time, some well known and unknown killers came out of these courses. The buyers list is full of well known guys. The thing for me is, the 2013 course, Traffic Blackbook 2.0, was 17 hours and sold for $297 I think it was, at the time. The teaching roster was also a who's who of the time. The front end product was not developed to present an open loop problem for the person, to then buy an upsell which caused another problem, which then presented yet another problem that only a DWY and further a DFY could solve. You could buy that course, and go build empires. Back to iGaming. If you understand the way most do bizopp, it has the same dopamergic activity in someones brain as iGaming does. The difference is, in iGaming it's more honest. I asked 4 different AI's just for kicks, they all said the same. On a side note they said 2-3% of gamblers are considered addicted, whereas the addiction rate on bizopp is probably multiples of 10x higher with less awareness of failure rates than a normal house edge. But I digress. In iGaming, house edge is a known metric. It's a known edge the house has. 70%-80% of gamblers know that, long term, the house wins. The problem with bizopp is it's rarely, if ever, advertised that the player rarely wins. Often, the player barely gets through the course, and sometimes they don't even open it. In gambling... the gambling itself isn't when you win or lose. It's when the slots are still spinning and the dice are still falling. That's the "gambling". In bizopp, the high comes from the new course purchase, the hopeium, etc. But this isn't talked about. "Bizopp addiction" isn't even thought of as a thing, and if it is, the user is to blame. "They didn't put the work in". If you sell a course, deliver big. Imo, don't set it up for each step to cause a problem that needs to be solved by buying the next more expensive thing. I started in 2009. My dad was sick living with us, I had a baby on the way, mortgage, and $30k in debt. I googled "how to make money online". That was my start. Imagine the rabbit hole of bullshit I went through because of how courses were structured to extract cash first, teach second. I was desperate. And that's often who is buying this stuff, even if they have a budget. I've been at old Kiyosaki seminars where they got people on the phone to get their credit card limits increased. It's crazy lol. That's why when I did release info, it was an F-U to all the guys who underdelivered and didn't have real experience.

Affiliates ≠ Best Marketers. But they are often the best liars. Don't get twisted about it. Affiliate marketing is hard and high volume affiliates are very impressive in what they do. It can be harder than most models. They are often the most impressive media buyers outside of search arb'ers. However, they are not the best at persuasion. What they do is more akin to engineering or architecture. They're the best at having systems to maintain volume in the face of compliance. Even some of the higher volume VSL offer owners. Some are amazing copywriters and just ride that compliance line, credit to them. These guys are impressive. But some of the VSL guys... the VSL is just an hour long version of a shark tank or similar advertorial lol. This is not impressive marketing. The cloak and dagger setups and media buying skill are what is more impressive. I don't say the above in a judgemental way. I'd be a hypocrite if I did. This is more in response to when I've heard people state how affiliates are the best "marketers", and it's simply not true.

Wake up to Undertaker theme. Get kids lunch ready, drop one off at school. Race back home. Sue 3rd world gov. Call with head media buyer and new partner on new supp brand. Call with supp supplier. Blood draw to make sure hormone levels are optimal. Call with PSP Call with attorney for new casino model Pick up secone kid at school Wrestle sweaty men That’s the schedule

If your weekends are a bit of down time, or slower than you would like, take that time to make sure you are being intentional in your work. Truly intentional. What I mean is this... in the past, I have been horribly guilty of jumping at opportunities for the sake of it. I never gamble, but this is probably my equivalent of gambling. Basically, I would spot an opportunity or a niche/vertical that I see trending. I would immediately reverse engineer what is working, and would shift focus to it if I decided to take it on. Creation is fun for me, that's where I get the rush. They say that that gambling is not when you win or lose, it's when the slots are still spinning or the dice are falling. For me, that is the very energy-heavy process of getting market penetration. The problem with this is that by chasing opportunity like that, you don't assess all of the devils of that opportunity. This has bit me in a couple of ways in the past to where I have had to be far more intentional before starting a new venture. I have learned to say "no" a lot more. I no longer base it on if I can crack the market. I base it more on what my weaknesses are, and if those will trip me up as complexity grows. This sort of opportunity chasing actually deviated me from what I really wanted to do when I was 20 years old. I had a plan that really excited me, and I abandoned that and chased some short term money. And that was before I even knew what online marketing was. These days, you guys are getting hit with SO much opportunity. There are a million and one ways to make a million dollars. Lots of noise. Your decisions to jump into a venture must be intentional. Ideally, they are aligned with your talents, what you seem to naturally do well. Because most ventures that can go very big will take a lot of energy. I don't say a lot of "time", because energy can compress time. Enough energy and intention can allow you to do in a week what many take 3 months to do. That's why it is so important for you to truly look at the opportunity, the economics of it, what type of boat is it, and is it even a game worth winning. If there were an exception to this, it would be in global events such as COVID where, ya, from a financial perspective it might be smart to start selling masks ASAP. But if you are considering something that is a "build", and that you will spend time in... align your role with your talents, hire or partner with those that are talented in your non-talents, but above all make sure it is a boat worth being in, and a game worth winning.

When good affiliates go on to become offer owners, one of the first things they will notice most likely is how much better their conversion rates are. Even when the offer they create is very very similar to what they were promoting as an affiliate, their own offer will almost always convert better. There are some caveats that I'll explain below, but more often than not I've experienced this to be true and seen it proven by others. I think there are a few reasons for this, but imo these are the top ones... 🧵

I was asked yesterday to post a reading list of what helped me become a successful affiliate initially. When I started as an aff in 2009 there weren't really a lot of courses when it came to being an affiliate via paid traffic. I learned a lot of the tactical piece of it in forums. That said, through the years there were a few books that helped me think in certain ways that benefitted me, I'll list them below. I won't claim every one of these is life changing and won't get you to read through some multi-post thread... do with this what you will or nothing at all: - The 50th Law by 50 Cent and Robert Greene. If there is a book on this list that I think should be required reading in high school, this is it, which usually surprises people. I didn't expect much, as I wasn't a fan of 48 Laws of Power, but The 50th Law is much different. It primarily focuses on fear and self reliance. - The Psychology of Achievement by Brian tracy. I read this when I was 20. Imo, most of this book isn't special. It is pretty basic/old self-help stuff. But there was one small section that gets it put on this list. The chapter where he talks about forgiving your parents. Do it, move on, stop the nonsense of holding onto that shit. That's it. - The Millionaire Fastlane by MJ DeMarco. This was a backhand slap to the 4 Hour Workweek, and was a great early read on building scalable internet businesses. Old but still pretty good. - Cashvertising by Drew Whitman. I have probably sold a lot of these books with how much I used to promote it. If you want to get a solid start in copywriting but not read some 300 page Dan Kennedy book, this is a solid one. - The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck by Mark Manson. Great book on learning, well, to not give a fuck. Pretty useful in most ventures. - The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. Basically quit stressing on shit that happened and freaking about shit that might happen. Stay present. - Scarcity Brain by Michael Easter. Expected this one to be more psychological but has solid insights on getting people to buy stuff and gamification. - The True Believer by Eric Hoffer. Talks about how dictators come to power by creating fanatics and mass social engineering. I'm probably missing a bunch. These ones I enjoyed. Most tactical stuff I learned and continue to learn in groups/forums and chats. Drop some below because I need some new stuff to listen to after dropping the kids off at school lol

I think if you have youth on your side... yes, get your money right, don't fuk around and waste that youth. But, outside of money, try to make it so that before you go to your grave, you can have at least one badass photo. Black and white was my Dad (RIP), the other one that looked like it was shot via a potato, is me. You guys have crazy high res cameras everywhere now, don't waste it. But also please don't die trying to pull it off. The best are not posed for.

True story.

After 16 months and a lot of development cost we finally launched our own iGaming tech platform for a new brand that we spun up. This was no easy undertaking as you're pretty much building a bank of sorts. Several rounds of beta testing we are now putting real players in and optimizing conversion rates vs. the old white label platforms we used up until now. The goal is to eventually lease the platform out as a service to prospective operators as well, but next step is international expansion and heavy CRM optimization for retention. None of the other businesses I've done have taken this long and cost this much for simply the "setup". We expect it to pay off.

Trump gets cockblocked in the 2020 election. MSM not supporting him. Limited reach and suppressed email deliverability (can confirm). No supporting media outlets large enough for him to make a run at 2024. Elon buys Twitter in 2022. X becomes probably the biggest media driver for Trump. Trump behind the acquisition? 😐

There are some aggressive business models out there. But one of the wildest to me is the "halal bizopp" and the cope that surrounds that. It's incredible to me how this is accepted by people who would shun most other business models. The hypocrisy is funny. Just run any "halal business" bizopp vsl or YT vid through GPT and even it can identify the issues. If someone is really concerned about halal/haram, then almost all direct response would be considered haram if you are completely honest with yourself lol.

Novo Nordisk ends the collaboration with Hims and Hers for deceptive marketing practices. No more using Wegovy for them. That was quick. Marketers ruin everything.

If this is true, this is sad. I was staring down the barrel of civil and criminal charges with an 8 figure fine, merchant banks ripping $1.5m in reserves, and horrible media coverage... and still paid off multi six figures in affiliate commissions down to the penny before winding down. When you pay off your affiliates and traffic sources even at times like that, they will work with you again. Brutal if this is true, hope it's not. 🤦‍♂️

Wake up to Undertaker theme. Get kids lunch ready, drop one off at school. Race back home. Sue 3rd world gov. Call with head media buyer and new partner on new supp brand. Call with supp supplier. Blood draw to make sure hormone levels are optimal. Call with PSP Call with attorney for new casino model Pick up secone kid at school Wrestle sweaty men That’s the schedule

Trump gets cockblocked in the 2020 election. MSM not supporting him. Limited reach and suppressed email deliverability (can confirm). No supporting media outlets large enough for him to make a run at 2024. Elon buys Twitter in 2022. X becomes probably the biggest media driver for Trump. Trump behind the acquisition? 😐

If your weekends are a bit of down time, or slower than you would like, take that time to make sure you are being intentional in your work. Truly intentional. What I mean is this... in the past, I have been horribly guilty of jumping at opportunities for the sake of it. I never gamble, but this is probably my equivalent of gambling. Basically, I would spot an opportunity or a niche/vertical that I see trending. I would immediately reverse engineer what is working, and would shift focus to it if I decided to take it on. Creation is fun for me, that's where I get the rush. They say that that gambling is not when you win or lose, it's when the slots are still spinning or the dice are falling. For me, that is the very energy-heavy process of getting market penetration. The problem with this is that by chasing opportunity like that, you don't assess all of the devils of that opportunity. This has bit me in a couple of ways in the past to where I have had to be far more intentional before starting a new venture. I have learned to say "no" a lot more. I no longer base it on if I can crack the market. I base it more on what my weaknesses are, and if those will trip me up as complexity grows. This sort of opportunity chasing actually deviated me from what I really wanted to do when I was 20 years old. I had a plan that really excited me, and I abandoned that and chased some short term money. And that was before I even knew what online marketing was. These days, you guys are getting hit with SO much opportunity. There are a million and one ways to make a million dollars. Lots of noise. Your decisions to jump into a venture must be intentional. Ideally, they are aligned with your talents, what you seem to naturally do well. Because most ventures that can go very big will take a lot of energy. I don't say a lot of "time", because energy can compress time. Enough energy and intention can allow you to do in a week what many take 3 months to do. That's why it is so important for you to truly look at the opportunity, the economics of it, what type of boat is it, and is it even a game worth winning. If there were an exception to this, it would be in global events such as COVID where, ya, from a financial perspective it might be smart to start selling masks ASAP. But if you are considering something that is a "build", and that you will spend time in... align your role with your talents, hire or partner with those that are talented in your non-talents, but above all make sure it is a boat worth being in, and a game worth winning.

I think if you have youth on your side... yes, get your money right, don't fuk around and waste that youth. But, outside of money, try to make it so that before you go to your grave, you can have at least one badass photo. Black and white was my Dad (RIP), the other one that looked like it was shot via a potato, is me. You guys have crazy high res cameras everywhere now, don't waste it. But also please don't die trying to pull it off. The best are not posed for.

Who do I know in my network here that is truly excellent at SEO? Looking to outrank our own site in Brazil. We own and op the .com, but I want to outrank it with the .com.br which is Brazils TLD.

Affiliates ≠ Best Marketers. But they are often the best liars. Don't get twisted about it. Affiliate marketing is hard and high volume affiliates are very impressive in what they do. It can be harder than most models. They are often the most impressive media buyers outside of search arb'ers. However, they are not the best at persuasion. What they do is more akin to engineering or architecture. They're the best at having systems to maintain volume in the face of compliance. Even some of the higher volume VSL offer owners. Some are amazing copywriters and just ride that compliance line, credit to them. These guys are impressive. But some of the VSL guys... the VSL is just an hour long version of a shark tank or similar advertorial lol. This is not impressive marketing. The cloak and dagger setups and media buying skill are what is more impressive. I don't say the above in a judgemental way. I'd be a hypocrite if I did. This is more in response to when I've heard people state how affiliates are the best "marketers", and it's simply not true.

Lol made this post last week, today TT Shop sent out requirements for Prop65 and FDA disclaimers on relevant products. It'll tighten up as all distribution channels do, and with it margin will shrink. Tale as old as time. Having lived through many of these cycles in different models, both capitalizing on some and missing more... Get it while you can. Trend cycles can create incredible windfalls of cash, but the truth is in the model. Combine a trend cycle with a leveraged model and it's a different level. I don't think I've quite nailed that but will soon I think. For me it comes down to having the model in place and the trends can be ridden appropriately. Anytime I did the inverse, which is the more natural way, it was good success or very competitive, but short lived either way.

Some mindsets are different. I tend to be cautiously optimistic but have become much more pragmatic in recent years due to stories like those below. These near exits would have ended very well had I sold to the first reasonable cash in hand buyer: 1) Subscription brand that did ~$50M in 2.5 years. Was on a down trend, I was offered between $5-$8M by several buyers. I chose the guy who I felt had the best chance with succeeding in that model. He was a VP of a bank. Turns out the FBI had him on their radar for forging over $10M in loans. I found out too late, the rest of the deals were cooked at that point. Lesson there was set a hard cap on the due diligence timeline and don't expect brokers to look to deep into someone. 2) Built the 50th largest website in the world (larger than Buzzfeed at one time, 1.6B all time visits) in one year during the viral site bubble. Competitors with half our revenue sold for $30M. One larger one sold for $100M. We missed the window and also allowed tire kickers. Lesson there is if the goal is to exit and you're in a bubble market, sell when it's very healthy and in an industry hype trend. 3) DTC brand of mine that had $1.5M in debt and a neg P&L was still offered $3M for an exit because the brand was and is still very strong. I turned it down because the deal was structured that initial payment would only cover the debt, and the rest was on a payout structure that might not be realized. Lesson there... hmm, one could say don't be a fukin' idiot, but I still own this brand and it's sloooowwwly turning around. Lol ask me in a couple years. One thing I can say though when it comes to private buyers. DO NOT tolerate tire kickers. Put a deadline on due diligence, and an aggressive one if they expect the LOI to be exclusive. I missed a couple of windows because of tolerating this nonsense. And obviously, run the business continually as if you don't have a buyer on the table, don't lose sight into why they are interested in the first place.

A lot of people up in arms about course sellers/bizopp today after the AppMafia vid dropped, and a week after the largest bizopp launch in history by Harmozi. I do some things in iGaming currently as well as ecomm. iGaming gets painted broadly with a certain brush. I'll tie into this further below. So, I've always seen both sides of the info product debate. Back in 2011 and 2013, I had two courses that were considered the top for traffic generation at the time, some well known and unknown killers came out of these courses. The buyers list is full of well known guys. The thing for me is, the 2013 course, Traffic Blackbook 2.0, was 17 hours and sold for $297 I think it was, at the time. The teaching roster was also a who's who of the time. The front end product was not developed to present an open loop problem for the person, to then buy an upsell which caused another problem, which then presented yet another problem that only a DWY and further a DFY could solve. You could buy that course, and go build empires. Back to iGaming. If you understand the way most do bizopp, it has the same dopamergic activity in someones brain as iGaming does. The difference is, in iGaming it's more honest. I asked 4 different AI's just for kicks, they all said the same. On a side note they said 2-3% of gamblers are considered addicted, whereas the addiction rate on bizopp is probably multiples of 10x higher with less awareness of failure rates than a normal house edge. But I digress. In iGaming, house edge is a known metric. It's a known edge the house has. 70%-80% of gamblers know that, long term, the house wins. The problem with bizopp is it's rarely, if ever, advertised that the player rarely wins. Often, the player barely gets through the course, and sometimes they don't even open it. In gambling... the gambling itself isn't when you win or lose. It's when the slots are still spinning and the dice are still falling. That's the "gambling". In bizopp, the high comes from the new course purchase, the hopeium, etc. But this isn't talked about. "Bizopp addiction" isn't even thought of as a thing, and if it is, the user is to blame. "They didn't put the work in". If you sell a course, deliver big. Imo, don't set it up for each step to cause a problem that needs to be solved by buying the next more expensive thing. I started in 2009. My dad was sick living with us, I had a baby on the way, mortgage, and $30k in debt. I googled "how to make money online". That was my start. Imagine the rabbit hole of bullshit I went through because of how courses were structured to extract cash first, teach second. I was desperate. And that's often who is buying this stuff, even if they have a budget. I've been at old Kiyosaki seminars where they got people on the phone to get their credit card limits increased. It's crazy lol. That's why when I did release info, it was an F-U to all the guys who underdelivered and didn't have real experience.

I was asked yesterday to post a reading list of what helped me become a successful affiliate initially. When I started as an aff in 2009 there weren't really a lot of courses when it came to being an affiliate via paid traffic. I learned a lot of the tactical piece of it in forums. That said, through the years there were a few books that helped me think in certain ways that benefitted me, I'll list them below. I won't claim every one of these is life changing and won't get you to read through some multi-post thread... do with this what you will or nothing at all: - The 50th Law by 50 Cent and Robert Greene. If there is a book on this list that I think should be required reading in high school, this is it, which usually surprises people. I didn't expect much, as I wasn't a fan of 48 Laws of Power, but The 50th Law is much different. It primarily focuses on fear and self reliance. - The Psychology of Achievement by Brian tracy. I read this when I was 20. Imo, most of this book isn't special. It is pretty basic/old self-help stuff. But there was one small section that gets it put on this list. The chapter where he talks about forgiving your parents. Do it, move on, stop the nonsense of holding onto that shit. That's it. - The Millionaire Fastlane by MJ DeMarco. This was a backhand slap to the 4 Hour Workweek, and was a great early read on building scalable internet businesses. Old but still pretty good. - Cashvertising by Drew Whitman. I have probably sold a lot of these books with how much I used to promote it. If you want to get a solid start in copywriting but not read some 300 page Dan Kennedy book, this is a solid one. - The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck by Mark Manson. Great book on learning, well, to not give a fuck. Pretty useful in most ventures. - The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. Basically quit stressing on shit that happened and freaking about shit that might happen. Stay present. - Scarcity Brain by Michael Easter. Expected this one to be more psychological but has solid insights on getting people to buy stuff and gamification. - The True Believer by Eric Hoffer. Talks about how dictators come to power by creating fanatics and mass social engineering. I'm probably missing a bunch. These ones I enjoyed. Most tactical stuff I learned and continue to learn in groups/forums and chats. Drop some below because I need some new stuff to listen to after dropping the kids off at school lol

When good affiliates go on to become offer owners, one of the first things they will notice most likely is how much better their conversion rates are. Even when the offer they create is very very similar to what they were promoting as an affiliate, their own offer will almost always convert better. There are some caveats that I'll explain below, but more often than not I've experienced this to be true and seen it proven by others. I think there are a few reasons for this, but imo these are the top ones... 🧵

There are some aggressive business models out there. But one of the wildest to me is the "halal bizopp" and the cope that surrounds that. It's incredible to me how this is accepted by people who would shun most other business models. The hypocrisy is funny. Just run any "halal business" bizopp vsl or YT vid through GPT and even it can identify the issues. If someone is really concerned about halal/haram, then almost all direct response would be considered haram if you are completely honest with yourself lol.

Novo Nordisk ends the collaboration with Hims and Hers for deceptive marketing practices. No more using Wegovy for them. That was quick. Marketers ruin everything.