Today marks my second year of membership to STM, and after taking some time to reflect on this past years’ events, it’s amazing realizing how far I’ve come.
Growing Networks at ASE
The month following my previous year in review, my traffic management efforts were running smoothly to the point where I was taking more time to network more and outside my usual circle of skype groups. ZeroPark had offered me a VIP pass to ASE, so I took them up on the opportunity.
The day prior to ASE, I organized a meetup at Katz Deli in manhattan. There I came across people who I’d first met the year prior at STM’s last New York Meetup event. We had fun sharing war stories, rumors and whispers about industry events, and exploring opportunities to make more money together between bites of Katz’s amazing--if overpriced--pastrami on rye sandwiches.
The ASE event itself was interesting. A group of us went for early registration and ended up joining the speakers’ luncheon being held prior to the event. I’ll never know if we were officially invited, but nobody stopped us. It was there that I met someone who has since been an amazing mentor to me on the true inner-workings of the affiliate industry and has been instrumental in making introductions to the right people who would ultimately catapult my business into xx,xxx/day territory.
While at ASE, I took a few laps around the meet-market as well as the exhibit hall where I finally met face-to-face the various account managers I spoke with on skype on a regular basis. It was very pleasant meeting them in person and helped strengthen our relationship to the point where they became useful beacons of insider information to give advance notice to me on offers with spikes in revenue.
After ASE, I had an afternoon meeting with someone who is well respected here in the STM community. It was especially interesting hearing both what was said, and unsaid to further solidify the rumors I had been hearing.
Moving My Bots Forward--In the other direction
My automated bidding tools have evolved to the point where they are capable of handling all bid-management from testing through scaling, and the inevitable campaign shutdown. Adding new networks merely requires a new interface to be written between the bid engine, and the network.
It was around this time I was introduced to direct media buys. I had always thought that the minimum outlay for these sort of buys was in the mid $x,xxx total budget, and I was glad to be wrong. Being able to monopolize a segment of traffic--and often times for a discount--forced me to focus more on getting revenue in instead of managing my costs.
The initial solution to bringing in more revenue was splitting off the traffic I couldn't monetize to places like www.getmonetizer.com and www.ytz.com. As I slowly increased the pool of offers and landing pages available to me, I found myself spending more and more time reconfiguring my flows in
I'm definitely not creating anything new here, but Monetizer, YTZ and other companies that focus on maximizing revenue for a fixed stream of traffic are better uses of that technology. One major thing that was drilled into me by someone whose opinion I respect is--and I'm paraphrasing...
“Cost-cutting--while important--is a poverty mindset. Focus instead on being able to extract the greatest revenue from a resource”
The full meaning of that opinion didn't hit me until I was flying over Siberia en-route to Hong Kong. Being able to spend more money for the same traffic as your competitors is truly a competitive advantage.
A Wild-Winter-Whirlwind Adventure
In the run up to AWA I was looking at all the points balances I earned, and I figured if I’m going to subject myself to ultra-longhaul flights, I might as well do it comfortably. Some overly meticulous planning and a couple phone calls later, I ended up booking $20,000 worth of flights for just $300 in taxes and fees, and a combined 167,500 points.
Bangkok itself was interesting, and adjusting to the heat of their cold season took a lot of getting used to. After getting settled into my AirBnb and after a quick tour of the local facilities from my hostess, I met up with a couple affiliates with whom I had kept in contact with on Skype and explored the venue that would host AWA 15.
AWA itself was exciting, but for different reasons than I had originally thought. It wasn’t the event itself so much as meeting with affiliates who were marketing full time and exchanging solutions to each others’ problems. That by far was the most valuable takeaway from the trip.
Two weeks after I came home from Bangkok, I found myself flying out again toward ASW. I ran into plenty of familiar faces at the STM meetup in Vegas and got acquainted with many more new ones at invite-only events and dinners surrounding ASW itself. A lot of what was discussed was already known information to me, but it was what happened after leaving Las Vegas that truly made the trip worthwhile.
Hitting Big(ger) Leagues
On the flight home from Las Vegas, I happened to sit next to someone who asked if I had attended ASW. That simple question turned into an 8 hour conversation that started in Row 2 of our flight, and ended in the admirals club lounge in Charlotte. Turns out the this person is responsible for digital media spending for the DNC. It took me three months to land a contract from them, and eventually with a PAC, but if it weren’t for me being prepared to take advantage of that chance meeting that break may not have come.
In the run up to the Super Bowl I was able to sell the service provided by my bidding bots to optimize and scale a portion of Draft Kings’ media buys. Spending xxx,xxx/day of their money while generating more in net deposits helped me think I finally made it. With the fairly abrupt reduction of my ad budget following the Super Bowl, I started seeking out direct opportunities to try and regain the ad budget that I enjoyed. That’s when some very humbling lessons came up.
A -$80,000 Failure
My team went spying on various networks where we have full integration and started reaching out to companies that were advertising in those spaces. What deals we made started out okay. But slowly, the advertisers we were running with were starting to become late with their payments. I had a decent cash reserve at the time and didn’t think much of it. As the weeks went on, the accounts receivable balances started snowballing and my cash reserve dwindling. I naively bought into their bullshit and excuses and figured it was merely a rough patch--everyone gets them.
On top of that, some of my media buy providers were swapping traffic on me. I would put in a buy for a block of ads, and receive bot clicks in return. Having a solid written IO was useless to me as the cost of suing them in a foreign country was often times more than the cost of the media buy itself.
This series of unfortunate events kept snowballing until I woke up one day in April and realized I had given up the bulk of the profits I earned in 2016. Once I finally realized how badly I was bleeding, I stopped running traffic to those who had delinquent accounts with me, and improved the screening procedure for the direct buys.
I didn’t want to screw over my publishers just because I got screwed over, especially the ones who held up their end of our agreements. The only real option left for me was to eat the cost, something that I could barely swallow.
After stemming the bleeding, I reached out to my network of people whom I both respect and trust. They all helped me get back on my feet connecting me with people who are willing to pay for the solutions I can provide.
Looking Forward…
There are still plenty of opportunities for me to take on to make sure I finish 2016 strong. With the GOP and DNC conventions around the corner, there are several PACs forming to promote their selected candidate. I’m still in touch with the ones I worked with this year and am looking to secure more ad budget through to November.
With AWE coming up, I’ve booked myself a number of side trips through Europe to meet people I speak with on Skype, or reconnect with people I previously met at other events. The timeline will be a bit tight, but after seeing how having those relationships bailed me out of a bad situation, the face time and relationship building with the people who matter makes for a very good insurance policy.
a brilliant read, congratulations on the success.
Way to go, or as Napoleon Hill said. With every failure comes in equal or greater opportunity for success.
What an amazing journey.
Amazing stuff. Congrats on the success.