Anyone in Minneapolis? (want to surround myself with successful affiliate marketers)

ccrookston

New member
Jun 21, 2011
8
0
0
Minneapolis area
First post on the forum... was directed here by Scott at Neverblue who's been wonderfully helpful with a few general kicks in the right direction, but I've still gota heckufa long ways to go.

We all know that one of the secrets to success is surrounding yourself with successful people. In that light, I'd love to meet and get to know other affiliate marketers in the Twin Cities area. I'll buy lunch. And a few beers. :drinkup:

I'm not looking for a new "best friend" here (think: Jim Cary in Cable Guy). I'd like a/some local brain(s) to pick.... person/people who I can add to IM and to my cell phone's contact list, who I can use as a sounding board for ideas ("NO dumbass! Don't do that!", etc), and with whom I can meet every couple of months to swap horror and success stories.

Brief Background: I'm a web developer by trade... been at it for fourteen years. I've recently become disillisuned with the idea that this gives me an edge in affiliate marketing. All such pride has been stripped away by my initial rounds of failures and lost investments. But for reasons I will share later (and only if you care) I'm also terribly hungry to get this right. It goes a little beyond "Screw My Boss!" and "I Want To Party Non-Stop!" and has to do with a wife entering medical school and kids who will need at least one full time parent in the home.

So, if you lives in or near the Twin Cities, and if you are willing to act as a semi-mentor and sounding board to a newbie, I'd love to hear from you. Heck, even if you don't live near the Cities but would be willing to do the same, I'd love to hear from you. I'm willing to join networks with you as the referrer so you get $ credit, or in any other way be your lackey (I draw the line at scrubbing toilets and picking up dry cleaning).

(One more thing... to preempt the inevitable "just participate in this forum, dude" comments... I will. I've been lurking here for only two days and I've already learned a ton. But I also believe in the importance of real-time, actual human contact between two people w/o the Internet as a barrier.)

Thanks!

Casey Crookston
 
Last edited by a moderator:


What projects are you looking to do? Strictly SEO/PPC->PPC offers? Full content sites? Ecommerce? Whats on your mind and what are you passionate about?
 
It wont happen. The industry is very 'Dog eat Dog' and people protect their methods of money making. Most affiliate marketing has a low barrier to entry, its just a lander and some clever ads. If anyone helps you learn more about how to do this they are just giving themselves and everyone else more competition.

If you do happen to find someone willing to teach or give advice about stuff. You can expect their methods to be out dated or dead. Ebook methods for example are all methods dead and gone. They will not be telling you about the latest and greatest stuff they figured out.

My advice is just to to get to work, read the forums, and make it happen. Once you are successful on your own then you can start hanging out with your peers.

tldr: Helping you hurts everyone's bottom line.
 
It wont happen. The industry is very 'Dog eat Dog' and people protect their methods of money making. Most affiliate marketing has a low barrier to entry, its just a lander and some clever ads. If anyone helps you learn more about how to do this they are just giving themselves and everyone else more competition.

If you do happen to find someone willing to teach or give advice about stuff. You can expect their methods to be out dated or dead. Ebook methods for example are all methods dead and gone. They will not be telling you about the latest and greatest stuff they figured out.

My advice is just to to get to work, read the forums, and make it happen. Once you are successful on your own then you can start hanging out with your peers.

tldr: Helping you hurts everyone's bottom line.

Pretty much this. Work hard - > Go to Affiliate Summits and meet people.

What are you providing to this friend? I have meet great people in this industry I just never was one for asking for "training". No one is going to walk you through it, develop REAL RELATIONSHIPS by participation in industry events and forum discussions..you'll make friends.
 
What projects are you looking to do? Strictly SEO/PPC->PPC offers? Full content sites? Ecommerce? Whats on your mind and what are you passionate about?

Ecommerce... no thank you. I've been on the programming side of that for years and I have zero desire to deal with angry customers, inventory, lost shipments, returns, merchant accounts, etc etc etc. Yuck.

Full content sites... I've already got a small sample of sites that I built on my own. They revolve around stuff I enjoy and bring in a few hundred bucks a month from Adsense and related affiliate programs. Nothing to brag about but still something. I'll keep expanding that avenue, but....

What I'd like to learn is PPC affiliate marketing. To a buncha experts this probably sounds lame, but right now I don't know what I don't know. I do know this.... simply buying clicks and pointing them to the advertiser's landing page won't work. What else I know is.... yeah, that's about it.

What are the best platforms to buy ads? What networks should I avoid like my mom's meat loaf? How the mighyt-hell do I build a landing page and what should it say and look like? How do I write ads? That's just a start. I know I know. All of this is discussed, and more, on this forum. And trust me, I will properly devour.

In the mean time, I'd still like to meet some people who make a living at this.
 
Ecommerce... no thank you. I've been on the programming side of that for years and I have zero desire to deal with angry customers, inventory, lost shipments, returns, merchant accounts, etc etc etc. Yuck.

Someone is in for a rude awakening...
 
It wont happen.

I appreciate your honesty. Really. I do.

And I understand. I already chased away one guy to whom I initially said, "Let's do this together." Just a few days ago, I told the same guy "You're on your own." I pointed him to this forum, told him about a few tools like NeverBlue and POF, and told him I'd be happy to swap tips with him along the way, but I have no interest in a partner.

I guess I should have been more clear. I don't want someone willing to share every intimate detail of their methods. I just want to know people who are doing this successfully. And it would be nice if we could do lunch a couple times a quarter.
 
Someone is in for a rude awakening...

Okay. Fair enough. Wake me up, and feel free to do it rudely.

I've worked for eCommerce shops before. Big ones and small ones. I've seen the money (which can be good) and I've seen the struggles (which can be great). I just have no desire, like, at all, to do this as a one man shop.

But like I say.... the reason I'm here is to have people tell me how and where I'm wrong. So, let loose.
 
My suggestion is that you spend a lot more time reading and much less time typing than your current ratio so far on this forum.

There is more than enough information in the Affiliate Marketing and Traffic/Content forums to keep you busy for quite a while. Once you've gone through and got caught up to speed, and have intelligent questions to ask, then come back and start typing again.

No one is going to give you a free hand out, or "wake you up"...

the reason I'm here is to have people tell me how and where I'm wrong

This isn't going to happen, as BeerNuts said. You need to learn for yourself in this industry.
 
Okay. Fair enough. Wake me up, and feel free to do it rudely.

I've worked for eCommerce shops before. Big ones and small ones. I've seen the money (which can be good) and I've seen the struggles (which can be great). I just have no desire, like, at all, to do this as a one man shop.

But like I say.... the reason I'm here is to have people tell me how and where I'm wrong. So, let loose.

The Official Wickedfire Noob Thread

read that it's the best information on the net for a newbie.
 
Anyone in Minneapolis? (want to surround myself with successful affiliate marketers)

I thought this thread was for gay buttsex meetups. I'm severely disappointed.
 
yo dude this is the meetup that most of us in the cities attend.

Minneapolis Internet Marketing Authority - SEM: SEO & PPC (Minneapolis, MN) - Meetup

come out next month for it its a good mix of people. every month we get total noobs to full timers. people work in all sorts of niches across the internet. many people own or run their own sites/offers or work as consultants.

go get to work though the more information you can bring to the table the more valuable the information that gets shared with you. last month we did an awesome fufillment warehouse tour.