Let this be a lesson, never trust no one - The Banners Landers Story (27)
Let this be a lesson, never trust no one - The Banners Landers Story
Once upon a time, when i was a fresh face on STM meeting many of you, and discussing mobile app installs and how to run campaigns it came to me, there’s a huge lack for something; something that can solve not one, two, three but FOUR problems us affiliate marketers have.
-We need landing pages for offers
-We need banners to run offers
-We want them fast
-We don’t want to pay a lot.
Having already had 2 in house designers, I said to myself, why not put their free time to good use.
Banners & Landers was born.
At first there was absolutely no business, so I did what I do best, and wrote case studies, and guides showing people landing pages, and banners I used which Banners&Landers designed.
The orders started coming in.
Then I created various infographics, free banner packages, lander packages that I gave away.
I shared free creative angles, and I said if they need banners or landers to test them out, they should hit up my company banners & landers.
Somehow during the entire process, I started trusting one of my employees as he showed commitment and hard work. I gave him more responsibilities, and one day decided to offer him a 33% share of all profits that B&L generated.
I’ve worked in Advertising and received a 3% commission there, and talked to other colleagues and business owners and they all thought 33% profit share was INSANE.
I am not the type to cheap out on employees, so I said OK maybe its a bit too much but whatever, I want my workers to be happy. And with that thought, I made this employee the manager, entrusted him with contacting clients directly, and managing the day to day operations including delegating tasks to the other designers.
THIS IS WHERE I MESSED UP BIG TIME.
Things were starting to take off, we were getting so many orders everyone was working over time. It started to become a true nightmare, as we needed to hire more people but couldn’t because the kind of landers affiliate marketers need require a lot of specialized knowledge, and well it’s hard to find that for cheap.
So economics 101 made it hard, as I couldn’t find good enough employees for cheap, to still provide landers at the same low price of $40.
4 Weeks ago, one of our Jr. Designers came into my office, and announced she’s quitting because she’s going to work for the biggest job site in this country. Great, long enough notice to find a replacement I thought.
Ads went up on Facebook, the biggest job sites, and applicants came in. My entrusted manager kept on freaking out that all of these people are retards, they have no clue what responsive is, they don’t have a damn clue how to animate a banner blah blah blah.
Time was ticking. The time of month came, when I paid my manager his % of the total profits. I told him, to give me his paypal. He contested at first saying he cannot accept paypal, but after realizing he can, he was happy to oblige.
So much so, he quickly took the top 3 clients from BannersLanders, and started doing the work and making them pay him to his personal paypal account.
This started 5 days before he stormed into my office (a day later after I returned from my Italian business trip). Of course, I didn’t know he poached clients when he stormed in my office saying we have to talk. More on that later.
He told me, he can’t handle this anymore. He is burnt out. For me to help him, for me to figure out the solution to this problem. I told him, since there’s no talent we can hire as it has been proven due to lack of qualified candidates there are two solutions.
Solution A)
Increase prices and by that decrease the order volume.
After hearing it, he went on mumbling and sighing hard saying ah he’s so burnt out, this can’t go on like this.
so i said ok, here’s solution B)
We shut down banners & landers, and you go back to working for me for a fixed monthly salary which is significantly less since there’s no profit share commission.
His answer, OK then I guess you decided. This is goodbye. He grabbed his coffee mug, and confessed his love to my assistant and ran out from the building.
Now this is where things get interesting.
After 2 hours, I get emails from various affiliates I hold dear friendships with saying someone is contacting them saying B&L is no more, and if they need landers he’s available to do the work.
At this point, I just can’t believe it - he put on a real show, saying how he had enough, and then he goes out emailing every single customer of BannersLanders, a company that I came up with, a company that I built using my name and invested time.
Anyways, the reason why I decided to give you the real down low, is to stop rumors from happening. So you are in the know, as to what really happened to banners & landers. So you are in the know as to what kind of person, this ex manager I trusted so much really is.
If you worked with B&L, chances are he already contacted you, or will do. If you are ok working with people that break your trust, and you don’t mind him potentially selling your landing page to others, or running your campaigns - then you’ve decided.
If you believe in ethics, let this serve as a GREAT LESSON that you should trust no one. If you delegate a bit of trust, always have a plan in place to prevent things like this from happening.
All the best,
-iAmAttila
Owner, and Founder of BannersLanders
Sorry to hear what happened. It's shit.
But, it happens all the time. People can't stop greed, or thinking the grass is greener, no matter what percentage profit you give them. They want it all, if they think the biz can't operate without them.
As an example. One of my closest friends actually started his business (which is now mega successful), in music management, by poaching the top clients from a company he was working for at the time, and that company has now closed.
Funny thing is, the (closed) company he originally worked for was started by a woman who poached her clients from a management company she previously worked for too.
As you say, you just have to have a plan b, for when plan a goes tits up.
Pretty disgusting. Nothing surprises me these days though. You're raised to place trust in humanity only to get screwed over somewhere down the road, to be honest though he's pissing in the wind anyway, chasing shadows won't get you very far.
Your clients will likely just ignore the idiot anyway. Best thing to do is try and put it behind you now, chances are he will regret leaving when he realises there's no customers around for him.
Trusting your employee is one thing, but at the end the only employee that you need is yourself. LOL
what sort of measurements do you have in place (or plan to have in place) with you current team that's churning out campaigns for you?
Though always wondered who ordered from them anyway.
If I come up with a great angle, have them build the pages, highly likely they test those themselves. I would. It's just too tempting to hand it over to the campaign manager next door to run it. I thought that was the actual genius of bannerslanders...having an army of affiliates brainstorming ideas daily and hand them over.
Originally Posted by rostropowich
While I'm pretty sure they ran it themselves, I think the low cost for custom responsive pages done in less than a day was worth it.
So Attila, what's the future for B&L ?
I can feel you.
Years ago I had a "good" friend/partner I did JV with.
It was my idea, we were generating X,XXX/day, I went to vacation for a week, logged into server from internet cafe, saw he was running on his own.
And for the end he claimed we got banned and kept nearly all the profits.
Funny thing is, I still talk to him occasionaly and he still won't admit it lol 
Sorry to hear about the crappy story Atilla but honestly this is how we learn. So here's some take aways that may help moving forward. And of course you always know where to find me.
There's some tenants I live by for businesses, employees, partnerships and equity.
1. Trust but verify. This essentially means trust someone, let out a little rope but verify your belief is true. Growing this trust over time.
2. Silo's of information and control. Don't give all the keys to the whole company to 1 person if possible. In this case I would have had a business manager and a product manager. Your product in this case would be what you produce for clients. I would have had another person handle all customer interaction like an account manager. This way neither would know how to do the others job or have the contacts the other has.
3. Businesses are systems and processes, not people. Good people amplify the potential of the systems and are extremely valuable and as a business owner you should greatly appreciate. But the business itself is the systems and processes. You should be able to drop anyone qualified into the system and with a small learning curve and on boarding time get them up to speed to be able to do a competent job at the lower levels. Also, another thing is if you're trying to hire unicorns that are next to impossible to find you probably don't have a business.
4. If you're going to give equity in a company let them earn it over time. With stock options vs. just giving equity the employee will need to perform in order to earn those shares. I always model things with a 1 year cliff and 4 year vesting schedule. What this means is they get nothing for 1 year. Then after 1 year they vest 25% of the total grant. Which means they can buy the stock at the original strike price. Then they'll vest monthly over the next 3 years to get the full amount.
Shit, sorry to hear Attila.
Smaxor, great input.
Is there a good resource you suggest for structuring these systems? Any book or a course?
Lames-ville, sorry to hear Attila
Sorry to hear that Attila, looks like he was thinking in the short term but his actions will hurt him in the long run.
That's hilarious though that he confessed his love to your assistant before leaving! 
You should tell her to lead him on for awhile and then break his rotten heart.
Nice story.
You've inspired me to write a blog post on ways to help keep employees loyal.
Shitty Deal. There is some steps that can be taken to hopefully stoping this from ever happening again..
1. Make all employees sign a non compete agreement and clearly define company vendors, contacts, customers as people they cannot contact in the event they quit or leave (some countries have limitations on how long you can state they cannot do this).
2. Secure Company Accounts - Password reset all accounts / cloud software / tools. Start fresh, don't give them the opportunity to even try and use your resources against you.
3. Sniff out an Entrepreneur in hiding early on. Asking key questions during the interview process. Hiring someone who has the constant urge to start their own business is like playing with fire, if the company numbers are transparent its a count down till greed kicks in. Hire people who hate risk, who want stability and a paycheque not entrepreneur's. Lots of companies ask employees to take personality questionnaires to figure out what motivates a prospective hire before bringing them into the company.
4. Send a cease and desist letter. Stealing clients can be easily quantified as real world damage to your business. Scare them out of their new start up idea.
5. Sit down with your team and communicate that this kind of behaviour will not be tolerated and that you are exploring avenues to hold that individual accountable. This will stop any sort of future spin offs from employees.
The Good News: You have a brand and reputation on the forums, your ex employee can't steal good will and brand, so i'm sure this post (along with your e-mail send out will do its damage)
Further proof that loyalty and hiring in this industry are a night mare.
Best of luck man! I would have made a phone call to that guy to let him know that B&L doesn't stand Banners and Landers but rather for Broken Legs if he keeps going lol... jk
Originally Posted by synapse
https://lastpass.com/
Love but check my mum used to say about her employees.
Keeping one crucial for the business operations thing in secret may sound like a micromanagement, but doesn't have to be.
Sorry to hear that
Don't underestimate the power of jealousy.
You have your employees grunting 9-5 for a low pay and at same time make posts like this
http://iamattila.com/tune-of-the-day...re-we-come.php
http://iamattila.com/media-buying-10...oint-no-bs.php
Do they know about the existence of your blog and read it ?
How do you think this makes your team feel ? They are essentially working their ass off while reading on your blog about the joys of making 1k per day and total freedom.
This combined with the fact that you have these people in your office locally is a huge problem, even more so in the small-ish countries.
Originally Posted by 32rfs23f23f
Sorry, people are greedy , you should treat them with caution
Originally Posted by Smaxor
Originally Posted by 32rfs23f23f
My demo is aspiring aff marketers who get inspired from the successes top affiliates achieve like freedom to travel and work wherever they want.. and then there are the workers.
You brought up a good point. Thx. Guess i gotta cloak my own blog and forbid locals.
Originally Posted by iAmAttila
Originally Posted by dr_ngo
If you're going to have employees, I highly recommend reading Dan Kennedy's Ruthless Management of People and Profits. And re-reading Machiavelli's The Prince (truly reading it, it is an excellent, short book) every few months is very helpful as well.
It's funny though...These same people who backstab and steal are suddenly all surprised and offended when a back windshield falls out all on it's own...Like if someone had used a bat that's somehow worse than what they did.
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