SuitcaseLifestyle.com

When I started affiliate marketing over a year ago, I was attracted to the theoretical freedom of lifestyle + large income that was possible. Now having been in the trenches for over a year, I’ll say it’s not quite the case. Full time affiliate marketing(especially by paid traffic) is a bit like a juggling act, when everything is right, it’s fucking awesome, and when something goes wrong, your balls are on the floor.

I still remember the first campaign I launched. I loaded up Adwords, dumped in a bunch of competitor/trademark terms, direct linked. I then jumped on a boat and went sailing for 6 days around the Caribbean. I came back surprised by 2 things. Firstly, I actually made money, secondly I had received an email from the affiliate network saying one of the terms I was bidding on was forbidden, and they are closing my account because I didn’t comply(they issued 3 warnings, I was on a boat, with 2 Swedish girls I might add). FUCK. So after a bit of apologizing and whatnot everything was cool and I kept my commissions.

I successfully scaled that first campaign into a decent income stream for 3 months, at which point, for no reason, the merchant decided to lower their commission from 27% per sale, to 6%. Balls, there went my hard work and there went my income. I couldn’t find another program selling the same product at a similar commission, welcome to affiliate marketing. So repeat this same process with a ton of other programs, now throw in some Google Quality Score, Google Slaps, FTC, the ‘Big 3′ disallowing rebills, Facebook changing their guidelines every second week, Google banning me etc. In the end, I found myself always working because nothing lasted so I decided to step back and take a different approach.

Now… The first affiliate program that I ever promoted, was from an Australian affiliate network, and the product was Coloured Contact Lenses. So I decided to enter the market with my own products and my own site(s). I can work as an affiliate for myself, and also help other affiliates make money at the same time.

In a previous post titled Blueprint – Make Stacks Online, I laid the foundations for a E-Commerce + Affiliate Marketing recipe for less work and decent monies.

Well my dear readers, I wasn’t bullshitting when I said I’d lead by example. So here’s what I’m up to.

I’ve been back in Melbourne for a week, and I’ve been crazy busy getting my new business ready.

The product you already know, is Coloured Contact Lenses, and yep, that is my site.

Although the initial plan was to ’sling as many lenses as possible, the project continues to grow. After ordering samples, I was 100% happy with the product and product quality, however I wasn’t a big fan of the box the contact lenses came in. So when I inquired about custom designing my own box, it dawned on me that I’d be more or less creating my own brand by doing so. And by creating my own brand, I am opening a possible truckload of possibilities in the future! It also gives me a reason to not get into a pricewar with the other online vendors slinging crappy Korean and Chinese brands. I can also build brand loyalty and blah blah blah. But fuck that, right now, I just gotta ’sling some lenses because I got a mountain of them!

So to digress a little, when I was designing my new contact lens brand, I researched the market. It was full of either big companies with clean/sterile/boring/made in Asia brands, and the cheaper/who are they?/obviously made in Asia type brands. And no fucking shit, mine are made in Asia too, but I decided to take a different approach to my product.

Introducing, EYE KANDY contact lenses!

So you can see the rather bolder, less boring approach I took to an existing product. It was designed to look like a candy box. And yes, every shipment comes with FREE CANDY. Like I read in a marketing book by Seth Godin, give people something they will talk about and you have a winner. And that is what I’m aiming for!

So now that my site is ready and I have a mountain of contact lenses to handle any flood of sales, I have been busy loading up a few campaigns here and there to start moving them. So far my initial in house campaigns are in the positive ROI territory so it is looking great!

When promoting my own product, I also work as an affiliate for my own program, to make sure my adspend doesn’t get out of control(a luxury that merchants have).

So lastly, a big thank you to the contact lens site that decided to lower their commissions and force me to move on. Now I’m competing against you and happily offering a 30% commission to all affiliates! If your interested in becoming an affiliate, this product is easy as shit to sell, and on top of that, I’ll be your affiliate manager! If this interests you, hit me up on AIM: thuxen88 or email me at johan@suitcaselifestyle.com

So the 16th of November will be a special occasion! I’m flying to Melbourne(Australia) which will mark my 3rd consecutive time around the globe in under 3 years!

I started a new business which is actually the reason I’m heading back to Melbourne, I had an old friend I had planned to partner with, but it didn’t work out. So I have a shitload of work to do when I get back. I’m launching a new product and website, and I’m very excited about it. It’s turned into a big marketing project which has been a lot of fun to work on. This isn’t a typical affiliate marketing project where all the important details are secret. I’m expecting boxes of my product to arrive sometime around the 20th, so expect some interesting posts after that, because I plan to reveal everything!

I also don’t plan to stay in Melbourne for long. I have a flight to Buenos Aires for the 20th of Jan, which I can push back if I need to. Hopefully I can get everything sorted out in roughly 2 months.

One good thing about always being on the move, is that you are forced to outsource the jobs that would normally keep you in one place.

So I’m leaving Penang tomorrow and heading to Kuala Lumpur to spend a day or two with some of my family that I haven’t seen in a few years. It’ll be great to change the scenery, as I’ve been in Penang for over a month. It’s a beautiful place, and I will miss the food here.

Since I now have a blog, I would like to give a big thanks to ShareASale and TrainSignal for the Amazon Kindle they gave me during Affiliate Summit East 2009 in New York.

The Kindle is great for people like myself. Since I read a fucking shit ton of books, it’s hard to constantly have good books to read when living out of a suitcase. I read really fast and books take up alot of space. It’s also very difficult and expensive to get my hands on good English books when I’m in South America, which is usually 6 months a year.

I think it’s important for everyone to read. And I’m not talking books on business and marketing. ALL BOOKS. Sometimes you can get creative ideas from reading novels too… It keeps the brain working, so keep reading!

Ok so the photo is sideways and my crap is all over the floor. Thanks again to ShareASale and TrainSignal!

Is there a difference? I think so. This is a bit of a rant and I’ll share an experience of mine.

So I have been doing affiliate marketing for the last year. One thing that has started to really bother me, is that an affiliate marketing via paid traffic is a business totally reliant on external forces. Offers going down(sometimes with no notice), Google slaps/bans, Facebook changing guidelines, DirectTrack going down , everchanging compliancy regulations, need I go on? It is not what you would call a solid foundation. What point am I trying to make? Lets start with a little story:

In 2007 I was on a night flight from Miami to Buenos Aires, in Business class. I was sitting there staring at the movie credits when another guy was stretching his legs and walking up and down the cabin, he stopped by my seat and introduced himself, so we started chatting a bit. In the end we exchanged emails and decided to catch up in Buenos Aires for a meal or a drink. Fast forward a bit, and we became friends, we exchange emails every so often to say hi and so on. I always assumed he had a bit of money, because he was flying Business class, and also because of the way he carried himself. Last year I decided to visit him in his country(not the USA), it was definitely an eye opener for me.

When I arrived, he sent someone to the airport to pick me up, who then took me to a spare apartment in a high-rise overlooking the city. I stayed there for over a month, he sent a maid over every day to make cook me lunch and clean the place. Turns out his friends with the president and has political connections(everywhere). Needless to say, he is a baller of a different magnitude.

So one day I followed him to his factory, where he employs over 600 people. His business exports to every major continent, and turns over hundreds of millions every year.

Naturally I found my all this very interesting, so I was curious how he had built up his business from nothing to the massive conglomerate that it is, with him still being under 40. Turns out it was quite simple:

Focus and innovation combined with a long-term goal.

He studied business so naturally went into business. He studied in North Carolina, which is was a furniture manufacturing area. So to him, it seemed like a good idea to get into that business. He stuck with it, building quality products and now his business is MASSIVE.

It’s amazing how small traits like focus and persistence, can have MASSIVE results when you apply innovation, hard work and dedication.

So I reflected on all this, and where does that leave me? Grinding away to find competitive edges and quickly bank on them before the competition catch on? Or raping a new traffic source before they ban re-bills? I know there are plenty of other legitimate offers around, but my point is that at any time, a bunch of things can happen at any moment  and kill your profits, and it’s quite common to see affiliates go from $xx,xxx a day to 0.

My friend has inspired me to create something of value, because it isn’t all about how much you can make in one day. It’s about REAL wealth.

He inspired me to create a REAL business again, not a business where my traffic sources, keywords and offers are secrets. I want REAL customers who are happy with my product or service that then become salespeople for my product or service(think Apple fanatics).

I sold my e-commerce business a few years ago. I was retailing CCTV products, which was unheard of at the time. My business succeeded because I was an innovator. I took an existing product and found a new retail channel for it. The new owners are still doing really well, and I’m still proud of my creation. I can’t say the same for any money that was made from re-bill offers that I promoted. Now, I want to create another business…

On top of all that, I’m lazy, I don’t want to continually be on the grind every day like other affiliate marketers. I don’t care about making $xx,xxx if it’s going to cost me my freedom to move around while I’m still in my 20’s. I want to set the foundations for a business that will grow on it’s own, I want to do some REAL marketing, and create some passive income that will last for DECADES.

So the moral of this story: Focus on the long term, build a solid business with satisfied customers and you can build a business for life.

I’ve spent the last year learning a ton of shit doing affiliate marketing. I also have previous experience with e-commerce selling physical products. If we take a quick look at the two:

E-commerce: An online store takes alot more work to begin, but once it’s running provides a very stable income.

Affiliate marketing(via paid traffic): Fast results, instant traffic and instant conversions, but there are a zillion things that can go wrong and bring you back to square one. Not to mention everything you do is a ’secret’, everything can be stolen and copied, reducing your chance of long-term success.

So if you combine the two, in theory we have a recipe for domination. Why? Because you OWN the product, you can outbid any affiliate, your only competitors who can compete with you know nothing about online marketing.

It’s amazing to see how much the affiliate marketing game has changed in the last year, it’s been pretty epic. A common theme I seem to be seeing among affiliate marketers at the moment, is they seem to be seeking more stability. We cannot continue to base our businesses on forever-changing advertising guidelines and platforms. We need to be in control, and we need to dictate the success or failure of our business, not Google, Facebook or the FTC.

This is just a blueprint, outlined in steps. Of course each step involves lots of hours of hard work, but this is business after all… You can outsource a lot of this work if you have the cash to spare.

I have my own project in the works at the moment, and I’ll expand on each part of the process with live examples in future posts.

So here we go…

Step 1 – Research: Find a product, check your competitors, consider logistics, target market, local laws/regluations etc.

Step 2 – Find Suppliers: I already wrote a post on How to source products from Asia.

Step 3 – Order Samples: This is for 2 reasons, firstly to sample the quality, secondly so you have a few of the products to actually sell and test the market, it may be wise to order more samples than you think you’ll need.

Step 4 – Build Your Site: There are a zillion options here from hosted shopping carts to self-hosted and so on. Think about the the future, and choose wisely. It’s a lot harder to change once you have a live site with orders going through and affiliates sending paid traffic.

Step 5 – Setup Payment Processing: Credit cards and PayPal. I think this is a lot easier for people in the US.

Step 6 – Test Some Sales: Now that your site is working, remember those samples you ordered earlier? Yeah, throw up some campaigns and sell that shit! Based on how this performs, this is your last chance to back out.

Step 7 – Order Goods: Most likely your suppliers Minimum Order Qty will set you back a few thousand or more, depending on whatever you agreed on. Here’s where you put your money where your mouth is and commit.

Step 8 – Make Some Money: Now that you have the goods, load up some campaigns and start moving that shit!

Step 8.5(Optional) – Make Life Easier: If you can’t be bothered sending the shit out yourself, enlist the services of a fulfillment center to do it for you.

Step 9 – Make More Money: You now know what works and what doesn’t, get some of your affiliate friends to join your program, now you are their affiliate manager!

Step 10 – Scale That Shit: There are 2 main ways to scale this up to the big-time:

• Go international: If you went with the optional Step 8.5, you don’t really need to be in your home country, do you? Now go live in London for 3 months while you repeat the process there, then Australia, etc. Think BIG.
• Launch a new sites with a new products: You already figured out your shopping cart, you already have your merchant account. You have all the infrastructure set up, make a new site, bring some new products in and your ready to go!

The potential here is fucking huge, and I hope you can see it. It’s only 10 steps, but once you start, you will hit a lot of road blocks, but remember the end result and nail each problem as you come across it.

This could work with digital products as well, I just prefer physical products because the competition is generally stupider. Digital products can be copied and become obsolete. There will always be a need for cufflinks, for example.

All of the operational workings of this business can be outsourced relatively easily, providing you with an income and lots of time… These 10 fucking measly steps can help you achieve your dreams.

I will lead by example, my project is currently up to Step 7(has taken 1 month to get this far), soon I will share everything as a case study.

The Pro’s and Con’s of doing this I’ll save for another post. I’m in the process of launching an e-commerce site which I’ll use as a live case study.

Sometimes the idea of importing your own products can be daunting if you haven’t done it before, but it’s really not that difficult if you know what to do. I’ve done this many times so I’m going to lay it out for you in steps. I actually find it alot easier to source products in Asia than from a Western country. With suppliers from Asia, if you wave money in front of them, whatever you want done, can be arranged. I recently contacted an Australian manufacturer for a product I was after, they basically asked me for a business plan of how I plan to market their product. Who’s giving money to who now? So I sent my money to a bunch of Koreans instead and the shit was on the plane the next day.

Hopefully you already have a product in mind, because there’s research to be done before you start looking for products(import duties, competition, margins, local laws etc). Call customs if you need to.

Step 1: Find suppliers. The sites I use are Global Sources and Alibaba, shortlist as many suppliers as you can find. If you have the resources, going to a trade fair in Asia is well worth it.

Step 2: Draft an email introducing yourself, tell them you’re launching a new venture and are looking for a reliable supplier to work with. Request prices for the products you’re after, their MOQ(minimum order quantities) and also find out how long it will take for goods to arrive once you’ve ordered. Send this out to all the suppliers.

Step 3: Research. Collate all the information you’ve now received. You need to start narrowing down your suppliers. More than likely the person who responds to your email, will be the person you deal with at the company. Here are some things to pay attention to:

• Response time
• Quality of response – did they answer all your questions properly?
• Quality of their English

Choose wisely and be attentive here, I’ve been burnt before by assuming people understood  me. These mistakes can be costly… Don’t worry if they quote really high MOQ’s, just bounce a few emails back and fourth asking if they’ll make your concessions since it’s a new venture, this will give you a chance to feel them out. Start asking about ordering some samples. You may even want to call them and have a chat.

It goes without saying that when dealing with people who speak English as a 2nd or 3rd language, be clear and concise, lots of dot points help. This process can be slow and frustrating depending on the products and the info you’re after, but that’s why you will bank so much harder in the end.

Also keep a copy of all the correspondence, you never know when you might need a backup supplier.

Step 4: Order samples. I’ll assume you’ve already checked the import laws of whatever country your in to see if the product is allowed and if any taxes are payable. Draft up a Purchase Order, try to make it look professional: have a logo, and not Purchase Order #0001, put a delivery address on there. List all the products and Qty you want. It’s basically an Invoice in reverse. Send this to them and request a ‘Proforma Invoice’ that includes freight costs. They will send you back a Proforma Invoice. Check over all the details, and if you’re happy, pay them. Now wait for your shit to arrive.

With sample orders, alot of the time PayPal is accepted, but depending on the amount, a wire might be more suitable. When talking about wires, don’t call them wires, they are ‘Telegraphic Transfers’. You might want to order samples from multiple suppliers if you think it’s needed.

Now wait for your shit to arrive.

Yep, it’s that simple! You repeat the process of sending a Purchase Order, and getting a Proforma Invoice in the future with bigger orders as well.

Hit me up if you have any questions.

Lets look at some stats:

Ok, so now you can see that each of these ads have received over 1000 impressions, and I’m bidding 37 cents CPM. Yet I’ve hardly been charged anything! Amazing yes?

Firstly bid CPM, and if you bid low enough, so that the impressions TRICKLE in, Facebook doesn’t bill you for the impressions as they tend to round down rather than up when it comes to billing. The result is what you see above, impressions for next to nothing! So you would have to be a complete moron to not be able to make money doing this. It’s quite easy to scale this to $xxx a day, so good for newbies who are struggling to get some profitable first campaigns going.

The only downside to this is that you need shitloads of ads to get your adspend up, so scaling the shit out of this is quite difficult, but what the hell, profit’s profit right?

You can keep increasing the bid incrementally and your average CPC will go up. Look for a reasonable margin between your CPC and EPC with maximum volume, this should help you get the most out of your campaign.

Stay away from rebill offers if you plan to be in this game for a long time! The banhammer is falling freely these days…

So, what is this blog, and why did I make it?

This blog is a cross between a travel blog and a MakeMoniesOnline blog, because I make money online while traveling around the world. Most people seem to think these 2 things are mutually exclusive, but they ain’t, it just requires some creative thinking.

So consider this the first blog post, as well as the mandatory ‘About Me’ section.

So… I’ve made money with e-commerce websites, I’ve made money investing in small risky mining explorers, and affiliate marketing. And I’ve managed to do all this while traveling through many countries in the last few years. I don’t consider myself an expert in any of those 3 things, but I’m probably one of the few who attempt all 3 while on the road. I’ve made fortunes, and lost them and learnt alot of shit on the way, so I have much to share.

I live out of a suitcase, literally. At any moment, I can pack up all my shit in 10 minutes and be on my way to the nearest airport. As a result of this, I live a very ‘green’ life. I don’t buy too much crap, only buy stuff I need, anything I buy, I have to carry around with me. Don’t get me wrong, I like and appreciate nice things, and I like to splurge once in a while. The accumulation of nice ‘things’ is one part of the rat race I’d rather not be a part of. This kind of lifestyle isn’t for everyone, but I guess you don’t know until you try it.

My dream, is to buy a sailboat, live on it, and sail around the world. I’m not sure how this will work out, because on a sailing trip I did last year in the Caribbean, I found out I get seasick. I was stoned for the entire trip though, so I need to investigate this further. I would also like to donate more money and time to charities involving animals(tigers in particular).

There’s a book “The 4 Hour Workweek” by Tim Ferriss, he talks about Lifestyle Design and the New Rich. I’ve only flicked through the book, because after reading the first few pages, I realized the book is about how I already live my life. So it’s about changing the way you do things to increase productivity(lifestyle design), and therefore freeing up more time. He defines the “New Rich”, not as people with millions and billions, but the people who have enough money, and more importantly, the TIME to do the things they want in life.

So this blog is for me to ramble on about the random shit that flows through my head.

Another reason for this blog is for me to state my goals, so I am more motivated to reach them.

Goal 1: Create a multi-million dollar online conglomerate, that runs with very little effort on my part, so I can continue doing whatever the fuck I want, when I want.

Goal 2: Visit at least 100 countries before I die.

Welcome to my blog, bitches.